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?