Beyond Reason and Logic

Every major spiritual tradition articulates the transformational power available when human beings join together the best parts of their individual natures (honesty, goodness, compassion, love).

When we talk about causing breakthroughs, we're talking about using our access to transformational, exponential power that takes us beyond the limited perceptions of certainty that appear to us as comfortable (aka the COMFORT ZONE).

Tapping into clarity + compassionate support enables us to edge into discovery zones so different from our customary reality that moments in these zones often appear to us as miracles beyond reason or logic.

Integrity + Support = Harnessing infinite power

It can be so delicious to dive into the dizzying sea of philosophizing about the infinite power of the universe and the infinite potential of each and every human being.

Getting present to the inter-connectedness of all humanity feels deeply touching, moving and inspiring.

But then we come back to our finite existence with all the little upsets, disappointments and arguments that run rampant through our heads each moment.

And yet, our tedious, annoying finite worlds are often where we find useful qualities like practicality and responsibility. In other words, for most people, finite engagement can be arduous but without it, the trash would never go out, dirty dishes would pile up, and bills would never get paid.

These two worlds feel at odds to most of us. But, in my experience, engaging in the tedium of responsible though mundane tasks with the support and love of other humans is actually THE PASSPORT to harnessing the diving creative power in each one of us.

The attention, integrity and accountability required to keep finances, schedules, spaces and relationships receiving regular upkeep allows us to access the deep infinite power that flows through us at all times.

In fact, I invite you to consider that the only thing blocking this power source is either vagueness or fear. As soon as you reach out for clarity and support, you will experience the surge of power that many of us refer to as a breakthrough.

What would happen if you had structures for achieving clarity and receiving support in place for each and every day if your life? I invite you to consider that your infinite power would be available at a level of mastery that would go beyond the limits of your finite human perception.

Pretty cool, huh? Welcome to the land of miracles.

Imagining the fiction of the future

My brain is so funny.

I was blogging daily and loving it. Sometimes, I even posted twice a day. Then I went on a business trip and blogged once over two days.

When I got back from the business trip, I left three hours later for a weekend in the country and didn't blog for three days straight.

When I came back, I was exhausted, under the weather and under the gun of a VERY big deadline. A week went by...no blog.

Here's the best part: for the last 2 days, I've been ready to blog again. But every time I *think* about blogging, my brain tells me that I have nothing to say.

My brain is lying.

My brain thinks that I have to have my blog clear and planned in my head before I write it. But that's never how writing goes. For that matter, it's never how life goes. No matter what ideas I have in my head of how something will go, should go or shouldn't go, the way it actually happens has only a occasional resemblance to the events I imagine.

So how does my blog actually get written? It gets written when I type norasimpson.blogspot.com into my browser, click on "new post" and place my fingers on my keyboard. Once my fingers are in place, they begin to type words...words I like, words I don't like, words that engage me, words that annoy me. But either way, once those words begin to appear, my brain stops quibbling with imaginary blog demons and starts engaging with real thoughts, sentences and paragraphs.

The funny thing is, when my brain is still in its blog demon quibbler mode, it can take me awhile to remember that criticizing a non-existent blog is a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME AND ENERGY.

This morning, when I finally remembered that blogs don't get written by sitting and thinking "No, that's not a good enough topic...and no, THAT'S not a good enough topic either," it suddenly occurred to me that if I wanted to actually have a post on the blog, I needed to stop worrying, thinking and criticizing so that I could start typing. And now here we are...a blog post.

But this blog post isn't just about remembering that writer's block comes from thinking too much about writing. It's about remembering that life blocks can often come from thinking too much about life. When I stop imagining how life will go and just start living it, amazing things happen...things I never could have predicted. But my brain thinks it's a fortune-teller. And it tells me all kinds of things about all kinds of situations before they happen.

"Watch out for this, Nora."

"Be careful of that, Nora."

"You don't want him to think that about you."

"You don't want to say that to her."

It's all pointless worry based on the notion that if I don't plan it all out, somehow I'll "do it badly." But it is precisely those voices of worry, fear and self-criticism that either keep me from engaging with life or acting like a jerk to other people. Whatever the "it" is that I'm concerned I will do badly is generally the least important detail of the situation.

The it will get done. If I do it badly, I'll go back and mess with it till it's better. If I can't make it better alone, I'll ask for help. If I do it well, I'll move onto the next thing. In any of these situations, the most important issues are

(1) that I show up for the "it"

(2) that I treat others with kindness and love as I do "it"

(3) that I treat myself with kindness and love as I do "it"

At the end of the day, being willing to do something "badly" is a great way to trick my brain into getting out of the way so that I can plug into life, show up for action and be loving to myself and others.

In fact, the original title of this blog (before I started messing with it) was "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."

Now go do some things badly! And let me know how they go!

Need something? Just ASK!

This weekend, I participated in a demanding, fast-paced 2-day activity with a bunch of friends that required all of us to perform at our best with little sleep and many unpredictable moments. I was excited and a little nervous--especially because (for those of you who don't know) I eat a special medical food plan that makes it possible for me to live symptom-free with a debilitating intestinal issue.

In new situations (especially ones like this weekend), I sometimes get anxious that I won't get the food that I need which could then seriously jeopardize my health. This brings out all my worst defenses...I can be negative, controlling, over-sensitive, over-dramatic, greedy, judgmental...and more.

In fact, there were several times that food came up in conversation and as soon as it did, I lost all my humor. Basically, where food was concerned, I was a stick in the mud. I felt trapped. I wanted to be playfully running around like everybody else--working hard, having fun. But each time this one thing got talked about, I said things that I know came off as either self-righteous or just plain rude.

But about two-thirds of the way through the weekend, something struck me. When I go to that self-righteous place, I'm acting as though I'm trapped in a cold, cruel world where nobody cares about me and the only way to get attention is to throw little tantrums. In other words, I'm acting like a scared, angry child.

I have compassion for that scared, angry child because there were very real times in my childhood when I was trapped in situations where I got hurt and my needs didn't get met.

But those days are over now. And, I've discovered that the world is not and never was looking to hurt me. Did I get hurt? Sure, but not because it was anyone's cruel intention. It's just that people (especially overworked parents) struggle to show up for each other (especially children) all the time.

I don't have to take my parents' or anyone else's actions personally. I can simply remind myself that sometimes, when people are doing the best they can, their best is not necessarily going to get me what I need. When I accept that simple fact, I get to take responsibility for the PROCESS of making sure my needs get met.

The process of getting my needs met may not always happen as quickly or easily as I would prefer. But, if I'm willing to continue asking for support and seeking clarity about myself and my needs, I will always be taken care of.

In fact, I think one of the reasons so many people struggle to show up for their children and loved ones is that they are still struggling with the fact that it is both their right and the world's privilege when they take responsibility for the process of getting their needs met.

I finally realized that all I had to say was:

"Listen guys, I've got some medical issues that are going to make it hard for me to run around and participate UNLESS I can make sure that I adhere to the strictest version of the medical food plan I use to control the symptoms. I'll be eating a little earlier than the rest of you so that I can participate with as much strength, vigor and fun as everybody else. I really appreciate your understanding and I'm so excited to be doing all this cool stuff!"

And once I did say that, the rest of the weekend just flowed. Nobody cared about the food I put on the table. They cared about the attitude I brought to the table. And once I owned my needs with simplicity and grace, it was easy-peezey to be loving, generous and joyful.

From now on, whenever I'm feeling angry, pouty, helpless or neglected, I have a new tool in my toolbelt--all I have to do is get clear on what I need to be ok and then ask for it directly with trust and simplicity. Pretty neat, right?

So, now I ask you--where are you feeling annoyed, angry, frustrated? What's the simple need underneath those feelings? How can you ask for help to get that need met with clarity and respect?

Asking for what we want and need is about trusting that either we will get it or we will be given something better than we expected. Are you ready to trust and receive? More importantly, are you ready to be overwhelmed with the abundance available to you once you really allow yourself to trust and receive?

Fasten your seatbelt! It's gonna be an abundant journey.

Leaving the Sock Puppets Behind

I have a large, loud committee of sock puppets in my head. Some of them look like my family members. Some of them look like teachers I had in school, old bosses, former colleagues, old friends, current acquaintances. But all of them tell me things that

a) reinforce some interpretation of life that I have and

b) have only a tangential relationship to how the actual person thinks, feels or behaves toward me.

I call them sock puppets because their little mouths only move thanks to various parts of the belief structure my brain created over time in response to my experience of life, especially childhood.

I have spent a lot of time in the last few years practicing saying to my friends, colleagues and loved ones: "My brain is telling me that you're upset. Is my brain right about that?" or "In this moment, my brain thinks you're angry and disappointed and I'm feeling bad about that. Can I check in with you about what you really think before I go down a dark tunnel?" This is one of the ways I build little cages around the sock puppets in my head--to check in with the real people before my head runs away with pointless worry and fear.

But checking in with people about what they think in relation to me only goes so far. After all, one of the reasons I have so many sock puppets in my head is that my brain loves to imagine what other people think of me INSTEAD of gathering information and support for creating beauty, love and service in the world.

Over the last few months, I've done a lot of work to become more aware of my sock puppets--what they do to me and what they do for me. We already see that they tend to disconnect me from reality and give me permission to say mean things to myself. But in terms of what they do for me? Well, the truth is, they keep me company.

Keep you company, Nora?

Well, yeah. When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time feeling alone and ignored. I didn't like living in the present moment because the present moment felt really lonely. So I replayed experiences of interacting with people in my head. Or I made up little fantasies (both positive and negative) of what it MIGHT be like to interact with them in the future. These thought escapes helped me make it through some rough times as a kid and I'm glad I was resourceful enough to discover them. But now, I find, that they really get in the way of experiencing the life I've been so blessed to create for myself with the clarity, love and support of so many wonderful people.

A few weeks ago, I got to a point where I realized that my brain was plugging into little fantasies and memories EVEN WHEN I WANTED TO STAY PRESENT. No matter what I did or said, those little scenes of other people's faces and voices were like a little quicksand pit that kept sucking my thoughts in without my consent.

I talked to a whole bunch of friends about it who all shared their own experience with similar voices which really helped lessen the pressure of it all. Then, just the other day, something shifted. Getting into bed, the thought occurred to me: I'm all alone in here.

And it hit me--there's no one in my head but me. This sounds obvious, I'm sure. But the truth is it was both reassuring and dislocating. Reassuring because it gives me so many more choices about my beliefs and thoughts than I realized I had (even with all the self-examination I was already engaged in). Dislocating because it means that there's no person, place or thing that will ever be CAPABLE of joining me inside this container of self and identity to ease my load and lessen my pain.

The good news is that there are still plenty of real, flesh-and-blood people who can offer me support and compassion. But the fantasy from childhood was that somehow someone could actually get inside my heart to make it all better. And the truth is no one can do that.

The disappointment that my inner child felt in response to this realization was immense. But luckily, it was my inner adult who knew to reach out for support from loving people who celebrated this new awareness with me. Why? Because the opportunity now is to fall in love with the real live experience of being the only one inside my head (except for the constant company of my Higher Power of course).

So, here we go...wait, no...there's only me in here. So...here I go. I've got a lot of living to do!

Only three answers to every question

In 2006, when I was having a particularly difficult year, a friend of mine used to tell me frequently:

"For everything that we want, God only has three answers:

1) Yes.

2) Yes, but NOT NOW.

3) No, because I have something better."

I clung to this idea as I struggled through major health complications, business failure, money issues, home problems (i.e. couch-surfing/no place to live), my own personal grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (being a New Orleans native, it affected me deeply) and--shall we say--a whole lot of TURNOVER in my group of friends.

Everything did work out eventually, though never exactly how I had planned. And as I look back now, I see my friends' words have continued to serve me through the years.

By late 2006/early 2007, I had already begun to work on what I used to call my abundance book. And I desperately wanted to make my living as an author and a coach (and in fact had been quite successful at winning clients for my failed coaching business--profit, I discovered, was a different matter). I worked tirelessly on the first few chapters. But who wants coaching from a homeless, broke coach?

This was a very difficult time for me because I got to come face-to-face with my writing and coaching dreams as somewhat disconnected from reality. In fact, eventually, I came to understand that the way I showed up to other people in that moment was that I was living in a fantasy.

I was telling this story to a client last night and we free-styled:

What I had was a FANTASY.

What I needed was a J-O-B.

It wasn't that I didn't have a right to my dreams. It's that I needed to learn to work toward my dreams with patience, diligence and integrity. I had to take responsibility for my own physical, emotional, financial and spiritual well-being. Put another way, I had to grow up.

It turned out that taking responsibility did not mean pretending not to feel my feelings or stoically suffering through a life I hated. It was actually quite the opposite. It meant reaching out for support, getting the information I needed to move forward and then embracing the loving accountability of checking in with compassionate people multiple times per day to help me shift my attitudes and behaviors just one day at a time so that I could show up for the life of a healthy mature adult.

At the time, learning to be healthy and mature meant learning to function in the work environment, learning the humility and interpersonal skills required to be a good employee and learning to manage my resources wisely. So I got a J-O-B, fell into all kinds of crazy situations, and learned to use these situations as opportunities to heal my own insanity (since I can't attract crazy if I'm not insane myself).

My fantastical desire was to be a famous, wealthy coach with no pain and no need for support. I didn't understand back then that it was part of my insanity to be terrified of asking for help. The answer to my fantastical request was "No, because I have something better." The "something better" was to be put in situations that were SO CHALLENGING that I had to ask for help...or else. And in fact, getting the help I needed to grow through those tough times was so much better than living in a fantasy. I got to learn to be an honest, humble woman who asked for and received huge amounts of love and support as I faced my problems and healed my old wounds. To this day, honesty and humility are the prizes I pray for more than anything.

The more grounded version of that fantasy was a legitimate desire to help people achieve their deepest dreams. Looking back from where I stand now, I understand that the answer to that desire was "Yes, but not now." I had a lot more to learn before I had the integrity and wisdom to be trusted with serving people and running a successful business. But when I look back at the intervening years, I see how much every single one of my experiences in the interim was training me for what I do now. Many of those experiences were obvious training--interviewing and coaching thousands of executives, leading coaching groups for people living below the poverty line, etc. But often, my best training came from seeking the information and support I needed to overcome my own painful and difficult obstacles.

On my best days here in the present, I don't worry so much about which of the three answers God will offer me today. So many painful things have turned out to be blessings. Life often throws me things I don't expect but the overwhelming answer I get again and again is: "Yes, you are being taken care of." In the space of that invitation to trust, it becomes less about what God says to me about one detail or another and more about what I say to God.

For today, my answer is YES. Yes to growth, yes to adventure, yes to learning, yes to support and yes to all the miracles I don't even know are coming.

What's your answer to life today?

The best boss I ever had?

The best boss I ever had was a woman who told me that everyone in the company hated me, that I needed therapy, and that I was on the verge of being fired...4 weeks after I took the job. Loving, supportive and mature, right?

Obviously not. But as I sat in this woman's office, listening to her say these really inappropriate things to me on a Friday afternoon, a little thought twinkled at the edge of my very worried brain. Four weeks earlier, I had thought this woman was the cat's meow. I couldn't wait to work for her. As freaked out as I was by what she said, it dawned on me that there was something very very important for me to learn from this moment.

It just so happened that I took this job after a nine-month succession of failed attempts to stay employed. Each attempt had been a "God-send" when it first came along. But within a few weeks of starting each job, I felt frustrated and resentful toward each boss, each colleague and each task required of me. And sure enough, within a few months or even weeks, I was asked to leave.

Now, here I was, experiencing the same shift, but this time it was so dramatic and so sudden, that it showed me something I hadn't wanted to think about before. Whenever a job hadn't worked out in the past, I always blamed the external situation--the boss was a micro-manager, the boss was too laissez-faire, they didn't pay me enough, there was too much to do, not enough to do...the list goes on. But sitting in this woman's office, having her reveal her undeniably crazy and inappropriate management style made me realize that the common denominator at all these jobs was me.

That weekend, as I looked back along my immediate job history, I saw that every time I left one job for another, the situation seemed to get worse. Now, here I was, listening to my boss tell me I belonged in the looney bin. It was a blessing because there was no debate. Everyone I talked to agreed that she was nuts. It turned out to be a tremendous relief. Finally, I felt no guilt or blame...after all, she was the crazy one, right? But I also knew that something inside me had chosen this job situation--the craziest yet in my crazy job history. If I quit this job, I thought to myself, how much worse would the next one be?

I decided to do whatever I could to stay in the current frying pan (instead of jumping to the next fire) until I had grown into the ability to function in a healthy work environment. I suspected that if I grew enough, the conditions at the job that played into my low self-esteem and neediness would melt into something. I finally understood that no matter how many times I tried to run away, I always took my own crazy issues with me.

And so, I began my program of education. I met with friends to get spiritually centered every weekday morning at 7:30am before work. I called other friends before work, after work and during breaks. I analyzed the text of every piece of feedback my crazy boss lady screamed, purred or whined (her mood swings were notorious) to see where she might be telling me something about myself that I needed to know.

When she screamed that her teenage daughter was more organized than I was with files and papers, a friend I told about it recommended picking up Driven to Distraction, a book with clear, actionable strategies for managing Attention Deficit Disorder. (Regardless of whether or not I was an official candidate for diagnosis, the simple principles helped me organize my work A LOT.)

When she yelled at me that I was lazy and that I should be making 40 cold calls per day, I started tracking and reporting my calls to her. I played a fun game with myself to see how many more than 40 calls I could make in a day. One day, I got as high as 56.

And then, there were the countless hours of training she gave me on how to remain calm in the face of insanity. She didn't know she was doing this, of course. But a lot of my friends reminded me over and over that I had a right to my own inner peace whether she was acting like a crazy person or not.

It was VERY DIFFICULT to remain calm when she got upset in the immediate aftermath of her initial attack. I was terrified that she would fire me. But my friends kept inviting me to imagine remaining calm in response to her outbursts and then literally ACT AS IF that behavior was natural to me. Often this involved sitting on my shaking hands and pursing my trembling lips as I attempted to remain stoic in the face of her raging.

I began to say little prayers to remind myself that I was safe no matter what, that the office was NOT a war zone, that if I got uncomfortable I could always leave the room without fleeing the job. Sometimes the prayers were as simple as: "God is in this doorknob, God is in this stapler, God is in this carpet, God is in this wall sconce." Sometimes I would touch objects just to ground myself in my own body, in the present moment. When she became particularly insane in staff meetings, I would write affirmations to myself in tiny handwriting in the margin of my notebook: "Thank you God for the unlimited abundance you send me with grace and ease. God loves me. I love myself. Nora, I love you. You are wonderful."

Through all this, I came to understand that the intense anxiety I felt when this woman was around had nothing to do with her. The day that she told me that she loved me and blew me a kiss (after screaming at someone else that day), I felt sick to my stomach. Her unpredictable combination of love and rage was too familiar to me. I realized I had chosen her because she matched my past, my history, my trauma. And as difficult as it was to sit with the anxiety and nausea she kicked up from those past traumatic times, I didn't have to let those feelings be the source of my choices and responses in the present.

The only way I got access to new choices, however, was by staying very close to my loving, supportive friends. These were friends who listened compassionately to my feelings while reminding me that I had choices in the present. They were friends who told me stories of their own similar experiences rather than diagnosing or pathologizing what I was experiencing. With them, I felt accepted and loved even as they encouraged me to experiment with new behaviors and new beliefs in myself.

One friend often told me, "Nora, you are an adult. You're not a hostage the way you were in your home growing up. You can always renegotiate. You can always change your mind. You never have to accept unacceptable behavior." Thanks to this boss, I spent a lot of time discovering and defining what unacceptable behavior actually was.

Six months into the job, the second-level boss stormed into my office after an argument with our crazy boss lady. "She's so crazy! How do you stay so calm when she's around?!?!"

I looked behind me...was she talking to me? Who was this calm person she spoke of?

"I mean seriously," she went on, "if she upsets you, none of us can tell. It's like you're the only one who can deal with her!"

I went home that night and called a bunch of friends. "You've put in a lot of hard work," they told me, "you're learning to stay calm and take care of yourself no matter what's happening outside you. That's growth."

Within a month, I had begun interviewing for what would become my next job. Unlike this one, where I interviewed and accepted the job offer on the same day, that interview process took about two months. It was worth it to go slowly...to get to know the people I would be working with over time...to see that they could be trusted...to find that we enjoyed each others' company.

Leaving the crazy boss lady brought its own challenges. But, as I flexed my now well-trained re-framing muscles to see these challenges as more growth opportunities, my old friend fear melted into adventure, discovery, humility and gratitude.

I hope I never forget the lessons this woman taught me. I look back now and see how much she must have been suffering in order to behave the way she did. And I'm grateful that, in the extremity of her insanity, she gave me the opportunity to focus on taking responsibility for my own feelings and reactions ways that continue to propel me on a path of healing and growth.

What insane people and situations can you welcome as your teachers today?

Vision? But of course!

Friday night, I was talking with my wonderful friend Keisha and we began to reminisce about the first "Breakthrough in Abundance" workshop I led months ago.

I had rented a room for 50 people. 7 showed up. As I looked out over my handful of attendees, I knew that the most important thing I could do was lead a workshop that would honor the highest potential of every human being who had graced me with their presence. I quickly forgot about all the people who weren't there and focused instead on the ones who were.

Within about 10 minutes of starting the workshop, I began to be aware of a lightness, a flow, a connection I had never felt before. It was not necessarily verbal but the words I would use to describe the feeling would be: "oh, ok, this is what God created me to do." It was a pleasant, welcoming feeling, like returning from a long, tiring journey into a warm, nourishing home.

When the workshop was over, I knew nothing about my life was ever going to be quite the same.

The following afternoon, I looked at the cost of the room, the amount of money I'd collected and the fact that I had another workshop scheduled for 3 days later in an even bigger room with even fewer confirmed attendees. I was not feeling particularly nourished.

I called Keisha and told her how down I felt. She was encouraging but didn't have a whole lot of ideas for me as to how to deal with the gap between my expectations and my results. I learned a lot over those next few months--about leadership, service, risk-taking and, yes, logistics. Every workshop I gave (and I gave a lot of them) was a blessing to give. The fact that I was doing my life's purpose was clear every time. *And* every workshop taught me new lessons about the business of leading workshops.

On Friday night, Keisha told me, "I remember how upset you were the day after your first workshop. But you didn't give up. You kept at it--learning what you needed to learn to make it possible to do all the things you're doing now. It's really an example of everything you teach about staying true to the vision, getting uncomfortable, getting support and keeping on growing."

I was touched. Keisha mirrored my journey to me with such love and positivity. Her witnessing of the journey meant a lot to me.

But then, today, her words about not giving up really hit me. People give up all the time on their dreams. They get scared, overwhelmed, shy, angry or self-doubting. They hit a physical or financial obstacle or they hear unkind words from a critic or a loved one and they begin to doubt their ability to keep going.

And I was suddenly SO GRATEFUL for the fact that once I started leading workshops, the prospect of ceasing to lead them occurred for me like the prospect of ceasing to breathe. Why would I ever give up on my vision? That would be like giving up on my heart, my health, my regular showers. It would be like giving up on God.

At the end of the day, my vision is not something to be mastered. It is something to be served. Every time I get to serve the vision, I get to re-discover myself and my relationship to integrity, service and God. Now that doesn't mean that I'm not financially responsible for myself and my vision. Vision without financial integrity is a hallucination.

I'm beginning to understand that as long as I'm committed to integrity of all kinds (including financial and personal), I will be guided to whatever training, resource or business is the next step in manifesting my vision. It may not look the way I think it should. But it will always be better than I could have imagined.

How could I ever give up on that? How could I even begin to entertain thoughts of quitting?

Quitting is the run-away solution. Walking my vision through the doubts I have then coming out the other side is the most rewarding experience in the world.

It took me a long time to get here. But I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

So what's your vision?

Discovering the Breakthrough from Scarcity to Abundance

I used to have the uncanny ability to remember the exact amounts of money I had spent for days at a stretch. When it was suggested to me by a few different friends to track these amounts on paper and build an overall picture of my spending habits, I remember thinking that it was a silly exercise, given the way that I already obsessively tracked my bank account balance and couldn't shake spending amounts out of my head if I tried. I did it anyway, and I noticed that other financial success seemed to come my way as I did so. Then, after tracking my numbers and building spending plans for awhile, a few friends suggested that I would gain more from reading my plan for spending as well as my actual spending record out loud to a trustworthy friend before and after I spent money.

I didn't see much of a difference between tracking the money alone and reading it out loud to someone. So I declined to do it for a long time. After all, wasn't my obsessive thinking about money difficult enough? Did I have to make it harder on myself by repeating all those numbers in my head not only on paper but to other people as well? Gag me with a spoon!

Then one day, a friend of mine told me how much more money she had been earning since she had started reading her spending out loud to another person before and after she spent it. I remember the exact words that went through my head. "Wow, she's a lunatic, but she's a rich lunatic. I'll be a rich lunatic." (as in: I'm willing to be a rich lunatic.)

The next morning, I called my friend and read her my recorded spending from the previous day and my planned spending for that day. I did the same thing the following day. As I did so, I became aware that every decision I made to spend money was now being witnessed by a person I trusted around both money and feelings. After about 48 hours, I was had the strangest experience. Inside my head, it was suddenly *quiet.* I didn't feel as though I was losing my mind, far from it. There was suddenly SO MUCH ROOM for my brain to stretch out between my ears.

And what was missing? What was the mechanism that had been taking up so much room in my brain? It was a running set of questions that went something like:

"Will there be enough? Do I have enough? Will I have enough?"

Again and again and again and again.

These questions were so incessant and so old that I always just thought of them as "ME". If you had asked me, I would have told you, "This is my personality, I think a lot about making sure I know how much is there so that I never run out." And I would have left it at that.

Suddenly, it was as if someone had surgically removed that set of questions and shown me that the misgivings I so often had about spending too much money or spending it on the wrong thing just couldn't terrorize my brain in the same way now that I was checking in with a supportive person about my spending choices. With those misgivings quiet, I discovered that my money obsession was a kind of insubstantial though relentless smoke rising from a primal fire of fear and scarcity first kindled during childhood.

My earliest memory of this scarcity was shortly after my parents' divorce. I was 5 years old and my mother confided in me that she had earned $6700 that year. The number sounded enormous to me at that age. But the terror in my mother's voice left a deep impression on my brain. That terror was reinforced over the years whenever it was time to ask for anything--food, clothes, money for a field trip--without fail, I always experienced my mother as either angry, terrified or both in response to my requests for things. So I learned not to ask for them. Ever.

Instead, I learned to count my pennies, save whatever money came my way from birthdays or holidays and do whatever I could to help minimize expenses. Both my parents talked loudly, frequently and anxiously about their financial problems. And I was determined to use all the power I naively assumed I had to make everything better. But the only power I really had at age 5, 7, 12, etc. was in my head. The power to obsess and worry--which of course, is no kind of power at all.

But what child understands how powerless they truly are when the adults around them are so terrified?

And so it became part of who I was--this obsession with money, this fear, this worry. It colored how I behaved in relation to friends (what could I get from them? How could they make me more secure?), in relation to jobs (how could I get more money, more perks, more validation?), in relation to dating (could this fellow make enough money to make my money fears go away?), and in relation to the world at large (how could I get the most stuff for the least amount of money?)

To be fair, I had already been working on these issues for awhile when I began my daily spending check-ins. But the shift I felt as I combined my work on my own financial clarity and integrity with the consistent, daily support of other people engaged in the same process was transformational.

It made me realize that clarity and self-awareness about my financial choices and past experiences were useful but not enough to liberate me from the scarcity mindset that had imprisoned me most of my life. In order to move from scarcity to abundance, I needed clarity PLUS love and support from trustworthy people outside myself, my immediate family or my co-workers.

My scarcity was a combination of fear and vagueness. I was never vague about spending amounts but I was plenty vague about bills, obligations, appropriate job behaviors and so much more. Even when I got more clarity, though, with the fear still in place, clarity and fear simply reinforced obsession. Also, at rare times when I got loving support without getting the information that would bring me clarity, I would feel good for a short while and then bump my nose against a wall of ineffectiveness.

To responsibly and maturely left the vagueness and fear of scarcity, I began to see "clarity + support" (or "clarity + love") as a simple formula for achieving abundance in every area of my life. Over the ensuing days, weeks, months and now many years that I've been privileged to use this formula, I've seen it create breakthroughs around every problem I've ever had. It has been even more rewarding, though, to use this simple approach to help create breakthroughs for literally thousands of people from all walks of life--CEOs, senior executives, entry-level employees, independent business owners, artists, people living below the poverty line, people struggling to find jobs, couples, parents and many more.

It doesn't just apply to money or career success either. The experience of abundance that results from bringing clarity and loving support to the lack of information and fear that creates scarcity can be applied to issues of time, life balance, communication, relationships, self-worth, vision and so much more.

How can you apply it in your life?

Trusting the Anger

So many of us feel guilty when we express anger. Often, this guilt is rooted in messages we received as children that our feelings, especially feelings of anger, fear, sadness or dissatisfaction would bring shame, rage, abuse, rejection, abandonment, and emotional blackmail from the adults in our lives. Ironically, these adults rarely knew how to healthfully and responsibly express their own angry feelings. Instead, these people were usually the sort who "acted out" from anger, either by raging or by seeking to punish and control others with judgment and shame.

When I let go of the guilt I associate with my anger, I discover that each time I get angry, it gives me an opportunity to listen to myself at a deeper level. My anger shows me new information about what I find unacceptable. After a childhood where I had to learn to hide my distaste for behavior that I now consider unacceptable, it is a liberation to discover that it is safe for me to say no to behaviors I don't like. The neat part is that when I pay attention to what I don't like, it gives me the opportunity to discover what I do like. It always helps me to listen to the clarity my anger brings and to listen to the people I respect for guidance on how to make slight shifts in my choices so that I can have better experiences.

When someone we care about does something that angers us, it can be very scary. Often, we think, if we tell them we're angry, we might lose their love or lose the relationship itself. But if we're willing to take the risk to express anger in healthy ways, it can actually bring us to a deeper level of connection and compassion for ourselves and the people we love.

For instance, a few days ago, a friend of mine sent an email that was very upsetting to me. I called her up and said, "So-and-so, I'm calling to let you know that I love you but I'm very upset with you for sending that email. I know we will work this out, I know you didn't mean to upset me, but I'm feeling really angry."

It was an honest, open conversation. I shared what was troubling me. She shared things that had been troubling her. It was not an easy or comfortable conversation, but we both affirmed the relationship even as we discussed specific actions that we didn't like. In the end, we ended the conversation with compassion and connection. Neither one of us was bursting with the warm-fuzzies, but the honesty and commitment to growth we both expressed made the conversation feel positive even in difficult moments.

From pain to gratitude

Today, I felt the pain of rejection and it was hard. I know it's hard for everybody. But there are actually days that I forget that rejection and pain are hard. You know what I mean by hard--heavy heart, frowney face, teary eyes. Just plain hard. Sometimes I think that being committed to seeking integrity and service should be some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for the feelings that pull me down.

And then I'm reminded...being self-aware, surrounded by support and committed to growth doesn't make pain go away. It just gives me more choices on how to respond to the pain.

Here are some choices I made in response to the pain I feel today:

1) Talked with some supportive, encouraging friends

2) Wrote about the ways certain choices I made helped contribute to things not working out the way I wanted and then read this writing to a friend. (This was painful but liberating. It soothed the little girl inside me and got me more focused on how to grow.)

3) Got some good work done. (Funny how when I attend to business I've been putting off, strains on the heart tend to soften.)

4) Made delicious, healthy meals

5) Took a really luxurious nap

Here are some things I chose NOT to do:

1) Hide from my feelings

2) Eat unhealthy food

3) Call unsupportive people

4) Argue with the person I felt rejected by

All in all, a beautiful day. Not because life was easy today. It was not. But because I chose to treat myself with love and make choices from grace and dignity.

Wow, I can honestly say I'm deeply grateful for today.

Choosing a Life that Loves You

You deserve to be loved. You deserve to to feel good, to breathe easy, to be inspired.

You deserve to take care of yourself. You deserve to feel connected to others. You deserve to be surrounded by love.

Most of us don't know this. But it's true.

What choices are you making today that surround you with love, validation and support?

How are you treating your body? Are you letting it rest? Are you giving it opportunities to loosen, stretch and strengthen? Are you bathing yourself with soap that feels good and smells yummy? Are you putting foods in your body that nourish and nurture it?

How are you treating your spirit? Are you surrounding yourself with loving, supportive people? Are you giving and getting hugs? Are you having fun? Are you showing up with honesty and integrity so that your spirit feels clean and your heart feels open?

I hear a lot of people talking about building a life they love. But what about building a life that loves you? There are plenty of people, places and things I love that don't exactly return the favor. How do I choose the situations that make me feel loved, nurtured, cared for?

I ask myself a simple question: am I comfortable or uncomfortable? If I'm uncomfortable, is it because I'm growing into new territory? Or is it because something just happened that makes me feel unsafe? Many of us are so busy getting through the day, the work, the boss, the traffic, the crowds, that we forget to ask: "How do I feel in relation to what's happening right now? Is this ok with me? Do I feel good in this moment? Or do I feel lousy?"

If I feel lousy, who can I talk to about my feelings? Who can I talk to about my choices?

When we talk to people and reach out for support, we often discover new choices we didn't know we had. Choices that bring us closer to love, closer to peace, closer to living from the knowledge that when we lead happy, purposeful lives. When we make these choices, we are far more capable of generosity, love and compassion than when we are frustrated, annoyed and resentful.

By choosing a life that loves you, you give yourself the ability to love openly, generously, soulfully. By choosing a life that loves you, you give yourself the capacity to attract people who love you, visions that inspire you, and wonderfully synergistic experiences, discoveries, and "coincidences." Some might even call them miracles.

By choosing to take a stand for your own worth and lovability, the old manifestations of worthlessness, rejection and loneliness simply won't have the oxygen to survive in your new world. Sometimes they'll slip away, sometimes they'll march off in a huff. But they will always be replaced by still more abundance and love.

So, what life do you choose today?

Shame as a ticket to love

On Sunday, I wore an outfit that was particularly fun for me to put together. My baby-doll dress was silvery gray with blue polka dots. My stockings were dark purple with knee-high black boots. My camel jacket tailored and flirty. I buzzed with color and springtime as I walked. And when I arrived at my destination and greeted my friends, I was suddenly overcome with shame. Why should I feel shame for looking cute?

For me, it dates back to being the chubby girl as a kid. I just never felt worthy of looking as good as everybody else. There were other experiences wrapped up in that, of course. Public humiliations about what I looked like from well-intentioned though terribly misguided family members were a regular feature of my childhood. Private humiliations too. But, I've done a lot of work on those issues and released a lot of that old pain.

Still, it surprises me how much pain and shame is still hanging out inside me, just waiting to bubble up irrationally, even unexpectedly. And I'm grateful for it.

Grateful, Nora? Now you've lost me.

Whenever I feel shame, it's usually because I'm betraying some law of family dysfunction. Even though my family's a lot more functional now (shout out to my awesome, growth-oriented family members--you guys rock!), back in the day when the family system was suffering from more, well, STRESS, there were certain roles and dynamics that all of us fell into in order for the rag-tag family system to work. When we venture outside the roles of that system, the powerful conditioning of the experiences we had as children often creates feelings of shame, fear and sadness. These feelings are designed to have us stop engaging in whatever new/growth-oriented behavior we're trying out and go back to following the rules of the crazy family game.

Interestingly, even when members of our family have recognized that the crazy family game doesn't work for them...even when they are capable of showing up in new ways, the old conditioning is still inside each one of us, just waiting to grab us by the throat if we stray too far off the reservation. How do I know this? Because many of my family members HAVE worked on themselves. Many of them have said to me, "Nora, I know this happened to you" or even "I know I did this to you...and it was wrong." Jackpot, right? In many ways, yes, absolutely.

But it turns out that my soul-devouring shame and fear like to mess with me no matter what anyone else is saying or doing. And it points me again and again to the fact that my feelings have, at most, a tangential relationship to the words and behavior of others. My feelings, my pain, my shame--they're all mine now. They're all part of my process. Childhood is finished. Signed, sealed and delivered. I've got memories and interpretations of it that are different from each one of my family members' memories and interpretations. And none of us have the exact same interpretation of anything. (I find this delightfully ironic since it shows me that there's absolutely NO WAY to know a definitive version of "WHAT REALLY HAPPENED" because we all see things through our own limited human experience.)

So, now what? Now, I get to recognize that there is no action, no word, no apology that anyone can offer that will fix, change or cure me. Yeah, my family members made mistakes but none of them actually caused my pain. None of them could ever control it. None of them can ever cure it. And neither can I. Because it turns out that no one's at fault or to blame for my pain. My pain is just part of my life and my experience the way a stubbed toe is part of my foot. Shit happens. People stub their toes. Families get funky.

When I stub my toe, I shout a swear word or two, maybe get annoyed and then hold my foot till it feels better. When my pain comes up, sometimes I get angry, sometimes I cry, often I call a friend, and then I get to be with myself, hold myself and comfort myself until I feel better. Pain isn't something any of us can cause, control or cure. It's just part of life. And the grace is that when we're willing to lean into it and learn from it, it actually brings us to deeper levels of peace, love and health on the other side.

When I sat with my shame on Sunday afternoon, when I honored the fact that looking good made me feel crappy, the coolest thing happened. The shame slipped away. And instead of the defensive, fearful posture I'd been carrying with me as I walked, I got to feel something else. As the shame ran its course, I began to feel more peaceful, more connected, more available to the other people in the room. When I told people about the shame I was feeling, they were compassionate and generous. When I asked them about themselves, they shared more of themselves with me than they had in the past. I found myself listening intently and gratefully to their stories and feelings.

Who could predict that on the other side of my shame would be peace and connection? My shame is about feeling different, isolated, unworthy. When I share it, I discover that I'm not alone in my *feelings* of isolation, uniqueness and worthlessness. Isn't that crazy-wonderful? We're all alike in that we feel so different! We all belong to the community of people who feel like they don't belong. And that community of people includes just about everybody. When I'm willing to open up about the pain of my nuclear family, I feel like an integral part of the human family. In this paradigm, I can love my nuclear family members as members of my crazy human family, whether they subscribe to that paradigm or now. Eventually, it all comes down to whether or not we use our fear and pain to find common ground with other humans.

You can hide your pain and feel alone. Or you can find loving people to share it with. Hint: these people may seem crazy or strange to you at first since you might be used to interacting with people who have a hard time offering compassion in the face of pain. So, keep listening, keep learning, keep loving and keep honoring your process. You get to take as long as you want to get as healthy as you want. There's no rush, no deadline and no graduation. Welcome to the human family. Glad you're here.

Japan, Katrin and Katrina

I was looking at photos from Japan this morning and attempting to imagine what it's like for the folks over there. I don't think I can even process the magnitude of the issues they're grappling with...whole communities decimated, multifarious public health problems, nuclear risks that call forth our deepest fears of human extinction.

How do we respond to a tragedy of this magnitude?

I'm reminded of a scene towards the end of Bertolt Brecht's *Mother Courage and Her Children.* Mother Courage and her daughter Katrin are staying the night with a peasant family when they discover that a nearby village is about to be attacked in the night. The family begins to pray for the well-being of the villagers, though they know most will probably be dead by morning. Katrin, who is mute, is outraged by the family's choice to pray rather than take action to warn the locals. She climbs to the top of their roof and begins beating a drum to warn the people of the impending assault. Katrin succeeds in waking the villagers in time for them to defend themselves but just as she does so, she is killed by the invading soldiers.

This image of the family praying as Katrin beats her drum furiously, knowing that she takes her life in her hands--it burns my mind. Brecht is a master of expressing his belief in the oppositional relationship between prayer and action, implicating faith as an enabling tool for complacency and denial. But I can't accept his assessment. In fact, I refuse.

In the face of events this devastating, neither our faith nor our actions can ever be “enough.” The pain and grief of losing so many lives, the toll of the nuclear threats visited upon the country and the overwhelming fear of the impacts yet unknown are too irrational, too unfathomable. And yet, if we use faith and action together, perhaps we have a fighting chance.

First, a word about faith. By faith, I refer to the opportunity to release my ego. To humble myself before forces beyond my understanding. To honor the divinity in other beings and relate to other people and the world with love, trust and gentleness. Some people access this experience through religion. Others through This kind of faith helps to direct my action. It keeps me focused on using my abilities to be of service and protects me from being overwhelmed by the all too natural anger and fear we all feel in response to traumatic events.

Faith without action is empty words. But action without the purpose and humility of faith can easily disintegrate into acting out.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans (my hometown), it was a combination of faith, connection, support and action that got me through the months of pain and grief that followed. And as I watched the terrible mishandling of the government response to the tragedy, I saw the ego that made the head of FEMA so ineffective; the fear and prejudice that enabled the horrible neglect of my city’s poorest citizens; the anger and desperation of those who resorted to looting and crime.

The miracle of Hurricane Katrina was the groundswell of support and love that so many people expressed for the city. From that foundation of compassion, financial contributions poured in. Dozens of service organizations set up shop or expanded their operations. Environmental advocacy, political awareness and a passionate commitment to re-building spread throughout the city’s residents.

What’s happening in Japan is a terrifying wake-up call for the world’s energy and environmental systems not to mention the survival of the human race. But how can we move forward with faith and service? How can we come together as a global community to solve our problems with integrity and love?

We live in perilous times. Life is so very short and so very precious. We may not find the answers right away. We may not avoid terrible mistakes. But we’ll always have the choice of kindness rather than dismissal, smiles over smirks. What were the last kind words the casualties of the Japanese earthquake heard? What if you had been the one to say those words to someone who died just minutes after you boarded a plane back to the U.S.?

You never know if you’re the last person someone will see before they die. You never know which of your breaths will be your last. How would you treat people, how would you live, who would you be if you knew that this day was your last?

If you don't love me...

I love chocolate. Love it, love it, love it. But chocolate does not love me. Nope, chocolate actually makes me violently ill. As do a number of other foods that contain various substances my body just can't handle. Let me be clear. I love all these foods. But did I mention they don't love me? So what do I do? I eat the foods that do love me. Vegetables love me. Chicken loves me. Yogurt treats me extremely well. Olive oil is a big fan of mine. So I eat those kind, gentle foods and I stay away from the ones that aren't so nice.

My food allergies are such a great metaphor for the rest of this thing we call life...

I love all of life. I love all of the possible fantasies and catastrophes that I imagine. I love being a a storyteller. But the fantasy and catastrophe stories that I invent most definitely do not love me. My catastrophic imaginings of the future overwhelm me with anxiety. My fantasies make me keep me from recognizing all the amazing gifts that come my way in the present moment.

Both my fantasies and my fictitious catastrophes are attempts to divine the future. Why? Because if I can tell the future, then I can prepare for it, I can *control* it. Or at least I think I can. Just like chocolate, feeling in control is one of my deep loves. And just like chocolate, my desire to control other people, places and situations is a cruel and torturous lover. It makes me fearful, worried and judgmental. It creates paralyzing self-criticism and outrageous expectations of others. Control is not my friend.

So, for the record...oy vey. It does not feel good to admit for the 4 millionth time that I can't control the future.

But now that I have admitted it, what are my options? Well, just like I choose spinach over chocolate, turkey rather than bread, I can choose life strategies that support me. So, what life strategies love me as much as 2 hard-boiled eggs love my digestive tract?

Generosity, compassion, patience, listening, self-care, self-love, surrender, flexibility. These life strategies make me feel terrific. They love and support me. They help me connect to others. They have my best interests at heart.

No offense, control, but you are officially invited to go hang out with pizza and ice cream...over there, away from me.

I love all of life, it's true. But for today, I choose the life that loves me.

Dad says Hi

I don't know if posting 5 blog postings in 3 days is enough to be self-referential, but what can I say, I'm shameless. In my March 12th blog, I wrote:

"Last night, someone I love very much had a very big breakthrough..."

I now have official permission to name that someone as my Dad. How did I get this permission? Well, with a bit of a lump in my throat, I read the posting to my Dad this evening. And what do you think happened? We laughed our asses off. Seriously, we did.

Most of that blog was about how watching my Dad take on deeper levels of growth can be hard because I've still got all these defensive habits and low expectations from a time when our relationship was not as strong.

My favorite moment came when I read him the confessional lines: "I missed his old way of being. It had been a worthy opponent in my set of personal battles. I could cry about it. I could gossip about it. I could grieve all the pain it had caused me in the past. This way of being in my loved one that left me feeling so frustrated gave me purpose, focus and energy. And now, it was gone."

At that moment, my Dad turned to me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "Don't worry, it'll be back." And we both burst out laughing. I gulped air to say, "I know," as I kept giggling. Then he sent me into fits with, "You don't have to worry, I'm still screwed up."

How lucky am I that of all people, I can laugh with my own father at this cosmic joke of human frailty and reactivity. It took me a long time to get here. It took gently shifting my frustrations with his behavior to a compassionate focus on my own. And that took practice. Lots and lots of practice. Man, it was so hard at first. If I'm really as mean and controlling, as arrogant and needy as I've been told that I am, then why would anyone want to talk with me?

It turns out that if I can admit to being these things, I have a fighting chance at vulnerability and humility. I used to think humility was bowing low to a stadium of people and bellowing that I was nothing more than a speck of dust. But I'm not a speck of dust. And I don't know too many stadiums of people who are so eager to see me do much at all, much less proclaim my smallness. But I have noticed that when I catch myself being bitchy and stop and apologize, it feels better than the fantastical applause of 10 stadiums full of people. Copping to my ego, my arrogance and my judgment before I push someone away gives me a fighting chance at connection. I think my Dad may have spent some time with this notion too.

Grateful for connection tonight. Till soon.

It was all his fault, until it wasn't

I had my ear pressed to the crack between the two doors. The man with his ear on the door to my right was so irritating. He giggled nervously once, then twice. I narrowed my eyes at him. After his third giggle, my inner schoolmarm couldn't resist; I hissed, "we're supposed to be sourcing vulnerability, not using humor as a defense." He looked at me stupidly.

Didn't he know we were supporting one of the most important people in my life on the other side of that door? Didn't he know we had to be serious, firm and focused as the people in the workshop we had all taken before got their own taste of transformation? The look on his face was clear. He did not know.

I focused on listening to the people on the other side of the door. My loved one's voice was crystal clear. He was struggling with the exercise. They all were. I clenched harder, willing them relax and open up. They struggled even more. I turned back to the man at my side. He was still annoyingly jovial. "We all have to get more vulnerable. It's our energy that makes it possible for them to have the breakthrough. What are you holding onto? What can you give up that's keeping you defensive and on your guard?"

He smiled at me. "I'm all good," he said with a grin, "I did the exercise they're doing a long time ago. I love listening to it now." Dammit. Maybe he wasn't an idiot. Well, even if he was, a little voice in my head reminded me, my job is to look at my stuff, not his. All right, maybe I could try that. Whatever I was doing didn't seem to be helping anyone.

"OK," I said, "I guess I can look to see if there's anything I'm holding onto." I thought for a minute. "I'm holding onto being right and believing everyone else is doing it wrong. I'm letting go of that right now." As I said the words, I could feel my forehead relax. I looked around. When did the other people standing with us get such friendly, gentle looks on their faces?

But the people inside the room were still stuck. I took a deep breath. "And I'm still holding onto fear and anger about the man in the room, about the way he was with me when I was a child, about the ways I feel like he didn't give me what I needed, doesn't give me what I need now. I...," my voice trembled, "I'm letting go of that now."

My companion took my hands in his. "You're safe now," he said, "you don't have to be afraid. He's here now. You're here now. It's a beautiful thing right now." I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. More words were lining up to be said in the back of my throat. Could I tell this stranger the secret I was holding onto? I closed my eyes and bowed my head. Thoughts of the people on the other side of the door fell away. I looked up at my new friend as he held my hands.

"And, I'm holding onto fear about a man I'm seeing right now. I'm afraid things aren't going to work out. I'm afraid of being rejected. I'm afraid I'll always be rejected. That I'll always be abandoned by men, just the way I was when I was a child." He said nothing. My next words came slowly.

"I'm letting go of that now.

"I'm letting go of being afraid of men.

"I'm letting go of trying to control what happens in dating.

"I'm letting go of worrying that every man will abandon me."

He smiled.

"I'm giving it all to God.

"If it's meant to be for the two of us, it will happen.

"If it doesn't happen, that means God has something better in store for both of us. I'm sending him blessings right now."

My new friend's smile widened. "You're safe now," he said. "You're a beautiful woman and you're safe. You can let go." The music in the room swelled. Tears tugged at the corners of my eyes.

Suddenly, the men on the other side of the door were singing--proudly, openly, vulnerably. Another man who had been talking quietly with two others on our side of the door took a step toward me. "Nora, it worked!" His face beamed with amazement. "They got the breakthrough when I chose to let go!" My cheeks melted into a smile. "Me too," I said, "me too."

Just then, the doors opened. It was time to come together.

When the war ends, where does the warrior go?

Problems. We've all got 'em. We all need 'em.

Need? What are you talking about, Nora, you wacky Breakthrough in Abundance coach?

I invite you to consider:

A problem focuses our attention, our energy, our creativity, our intelligence. We hunger as human beings to put these inner resources to work (in fact, I believe it is our deepest need as humans to do so). When something doesn't go our way, when life feels out of joint, we often focus our best strategies, ideas and solutions on the disruption like a heat-seeking missile. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't. But what we often don't realize is how much we benefit when the problems don't get solved. Wait, what?

Yeah, really. When problems don't get solved, we get to keep messing with them, obsessing about them, strategizing our next move. How do I know?

Last night, someone I love very much had a very big breakthrough. A breakthrough I've been waiting for for a very long time. I was so happy for him, so happy to experience his new capacities for so much more in his life. And yet, something tugged at me as we talked. I wasn't 100% clear what it was.

This morning I awoke at 5am--restless, irritable, discontent. And I knew. I missed his old way of being. It had been a worthy opponent in my set of personal battles. I could cry about it. I could gossip about it. I could grieve all the pain it had caused me in the past. This way of being in my loved one that left me feeling so frustrated gave me purpose, focus and energy. And now, it was gone.

To be fair, the likelihood is it will be back. I believe that we've all got our fire-breathing demons and they never completely go away. They just possess us differently as we grow. But simply knowing that my loved one would be shifting his relationship with his demons brought me to the simple fact that I am now a warrior with no war. The fire-breathing demon has flown away but I'm still flailing in the night, waving a pitchfork. With no fire from the demon's nostrils, it's cold out here in the dark.

The gift of my discontent, of course, is that I get to be reminded that none of the wars I'm fighting in my life are about other people, places or situations. They're about me. They're about my pain, my story, my relationship with myself. And when I stop thinking so much about what other people need to change, it gives me the chance to encounter myself, warts and all. And I've got plenty of warts.

For the record, yes, some messy stuff happened to me when I was young. And some messy stuff has happened to me as an adult. But messy stuff happens to everybody. It's important to feel the feelings and honor the experience when the mess happens. But at the end of the day, the gift is to use the mess as a growth opportunity, not a trap for my defenses.

For the last few weeks, I've been graced with a new level of gratitude for all the really awful stuff that's ever happened to me, specifically because it has given me the ability to connect and empathize with other people when they get hit with hard stuff. Whenever I connect lovingly and vulnerably with another human being, we both get to release fear, shame and judgment. I believe that sharing these moments of healing is one of the most valuable and sacred of human experiences. What a gift that I get to do it on a regular basis.

So here I am: flawed, messy, grateful to let others know that their flaws and mess are beautiful to me. And when I think of my dear loved one walking into his life today with new levels of awareness and power, I realize that I'll never "know" enough about who he is to judge or assess him. No human being can ever know or perceive enough to truly judge another. Rather, whatever conclusions I draw about him are designed to tell me about me--my assumptions, my prejudices, my fears. We can't possibly see the world as it is. We only see it as WE are.

Perhaps all this newly aimless embattled energy tells me that I'm a whole lot more belligerent and defensive than I like to admit. Wow. OK. There it is.

I CAN be really belligerent and defensive. How many people have I pushed away? How many fights have I picked with loved ones? How many times have I totally dismissed people I don't know based on defensive judgments? Deep breath. OK. I see. I see the new information. What a blessing.

What a blessing to see these parts of myself that are hard to face. What a blessing to leave my comfort zone and find growth as I feel the discomfort of admitting my flaws. What a blessing to grow.

Have a terrifically uncomfortable, growth-oriented day!

Explode or Explore?

Explode or Explore?

How do I respond when things don’t go my way? Do I get angry? Do I get super duper fake nice? Do I pretend it doesn’t bother me? Do I explode? Or do I go exploring? Odds are you’ve responded in all of these ways at one time or another.

I invite you to consider that when things don’t turn out the way you expect, there’s at least one lesson (usually many lessons) to be learned from how things did turn out. My intention was to create x. But the concrete outcome was y. What actions did I take between my intentions and my outcomes? How can I gauge the effectiveness of my actions? Those concrete outcomes are actually the strongest feedback available.

When I first understood this idea…I mean like really GOT IT, it made me dizzy. I was sitting in a workshop in Manhattan listening to a friend get chewed out for making a statement that sounded self-righteous to our workshop leaders. “But it wasn’t my intention to sound that way…” she had said tearfully. They replied: “Forget your intention. Look at your impact.”

I went home that night, opened my notebook and started scribbling:

“My intention was to get 15 new clients by September 15^th. My impact: Zero

My intention was to have a peaceful call with my mother. My impact: we had a fight.

My intention was to finish my book by August 31^st. My impact: 30 pages done.

My intention was create a relationship with this really nice guy I dated for a month or so. My impact: he broke it off.

I listed 15 more intentions and impacts that didn’t match. And I cried. I thought I was living my life pretty well. But the evidence pointed me elsewhere.

Now I had a choice: stew in self-pity and blame for others (for past and present actions) OR go exploring. What could I do differently? How could my attitude change? How could I become a woman whose results would be consistent with her intentions?

What’s not working in your life, your career, your vision? Where’s the opportunity to go exploring?

Making Sense of Disaster

Yesterday, I explored our responses to the abuse of another person. But with the Tsunami that just devastated Japan and the Pacific Rim, I can't help thinking about the traumas of disasters.

The people of Japan, at this moment, are in crisis mode. The news comes down to geological data and evacuation instructions. But in time, the human stories will begin to trickle in--the grieving families of the 23 people reported dead (so far), the harrowing tales of survivors thrown off the road, plunged into darkness, water, fear, danger. We'll read these tales with fascination, identification, and disassociation--imagining ourselves in their place while secretly thanking the powers that be that it wasn't us, wasn't our homes, wasn't our lives shaken so badly by that 8.9 magnitude earthquake.

But, in fact, we are shaken. By the randomness of the hit, the precariousness of the lives and worlds swept away by unreasonably furious waters. And it is unreasonable, all of it. Why them, not me? Why there, not here? Most of us won't dwell for too long on those questions. We have deadlines to meet, breakfast to make, appointments to keep. But that quiet persistent question of why--Why this life and not my life?--plays in our minds whenever we check the news or read the latest update.

So, ok, I'll bite. Why not me? Why didn't this tsunami sweep the west side of Manhattan instead of the village of Sendai? Aside from the plate tectonic science of it all, there is no reasonable explanation. No person or animal did this. And I refuse to imagine a God that metes out punishment in the form of natural disasters.

So then what? Then, there's simply grace. Prayer for those in need, comfort to those who are bereaved and gratitude for another day of wet spring weather that is merely and mercifully inconvenient. Not many people die as a result of rainy New York days.

We've all had our share of troubles--death, rejection, disappointment. Not all of them exist at the magnitude of the tsunami or a hurricane (as a native New Orleanian, Katrina haunts me to this day). But these moments of grief, as inexplicable and irrational as they are, do offer us opportunities. Opportunities to connect with one another. Opportunities to ask for support. Opportunities to offer support.

I believe that the deepest human spiritual need is the need to experience themselves as useful to others. Something inside you, something that comes from within, makes a positive difference for another person or group of people. In other words, the opportunity to serve is our deepest heart's desire. And I believe the need to feel relief from shame and pain by connecting with each other's deep vulnerability is a close second.

Today, we have an enormous opportunity for shared vulnerability. Those directly impacted by the Tsunami can certainly use both our financial assistance and our compassion. But what about the millions of people closer than an ocean away? They may not have been hit by a natural disaster but it doesn't mean they're not battling their own demons. Heck, we're all carrying something around. It's the human condition. But how do we use our sadness, our pain to offer identification, connection and love? How often do we say, "Hey, friend, I hear your troubles. And I've been there too. Or someplace not too far from there. I want you to know you're not alone."

I have a friend I call when I'm feeling low. And sometimes, when I'm truly down, he'll say, "wow, that's a tough one. It reminds me of myself. I want you to know I'm kneeling beside you."

Kneeling beside me. Is there any better way to feel connected? Neither one of us is very religious. But the image in my mind's eye of the two of us on our knees, humbled before pain or difficulty with or without reasonable explanations, this image brings me comfort. Whom can you kneel beside today? How can you offer connection over advice? Outreach over instruction? I guarantee you that the opportunity is there for you today. These are human beings we're talking about. As the line from Dreamgirls goes, "Effie, we all got pain!"

So, thank you, terrible tsunami, for reminding me of the opportunity to serve. Thank you, tiny terrors of the human condition, for offering me ways to connect and share with the men and women who cross my path today.

And, to the people of Japan: I kneel beside you today. I have no explanation. No scientific expertise. But I have a heart and it opens to you.

Hidden Levers and Dials

How do we respond to abuse?

Doubt, denial, disbelief, emotion, volition....un momentito, I think that's the list for when to use the Subjunctive in Spanish...wait, it's coming to me....

oh yeah...denial, hiding, people-pleasing, rage, control, obsession, anxiety, guilt, shame, humor and more.

I call these things responses, but we can also think of them as defenses, coping mechanims, strategies for survival. We've all got 'em. In many many areas, they work for us. Learning to laugh at crazy situations when we're young makes us pretty popular at work when we crack jokes that break the tension. A controlling disposition or obsessive tendency can make us highly skilled at devising and executing detailed plans.

Nothing wrong with humor, leadership or attention to detail. The question becomes...where do those responses/defenses/survival mechanisms get in our way? Do we crack jokes instead of connecting with our feelings or with other people? Do we make ourselves nutty by attempting to control outcomes of situations beyond our control?

Figuring out where our internal operating systems don't work gives us access to understanding ourselves and our choices in new ways.

So I ask you:

What's working for you?

What's not working?

And what can you do about it?