When we make ourselves busy, we squeeze out the opportunity to truly connect with ourselves and others.  Furthermore, the adrenaline that is released when we rush around is highly addictive and therefore, we perpetuate the cycle.

Unless we quiet the mind, we run on compulsion: to be rushed, to overeat, to play videos games or browse for hours, in short: to tune out.

I know that being busy is actually my mindfulness bell, or wake up call.  If I am rushing around from one thing to another, I can take a breath and ask, “Is there a feeling I am avoiding? How about something I don’t feel like being real about?”

When the mind and body are always busy, it is hard to penetrate that fortress!  We think: I am too busy to quiet my mind!  I don’t have time to meditate.

Ok, how about 3 minutes?  Can you create a three-minute window in which to quiet your mind?

This three-minute exercise can completely change your day.  Even if you only have 30 seconds right now, just try it so that when you have three minutes, you already have a little experience of it.

1. Stand up with your hands along side the body, palms face the thighs.
2. As you inhale from the belly, raise your hands up with straight arms as if you are making a snow angel.  Raise your straight arms all the way up until the backs of your hands touch above your head.
3. Exhale as you deliberately and gracefully lower your arms down to your thighs again.
4. Repeat, each time stretching the arms away from the body in a deliberate and graceful manner.

This exercise activates the lower third of the lungs, which gives a happy response in the body.  It also activates the nervous system which when strong, is a natural yet permeable protective force field.  When it is firing correctly, it allows for us to go out onto the front lines of love and life with vulnerability without getting trampled.

Food for your Soul:

Are you willing to take a few minutes for yourself so that you can go out into the world and interact in a meaningful and loving way with every life that you touch?

We are trained, either through nature or nurture to react when someone else is in an emotional state.

A common theme with my clients is: “When they get upset, then I get upset.”

This is a very natural state of being but one that creates two problems instead of one.  If someone near me is in a heightened emotional state, it can be contagious.  However, if I can breathe and say to myself, “That is interesting, they are having a tough time.” Then I can be free and also be more of a support, if that is appropriate.

If my friend or loved one is caught in a dance of emotions or drama, I am certainly free to dance along with them.  And I am too familiar with how inviting it is!  I find that when I refrain from the dance and instead, stand back and observe, that we both can benefit.  This can create a space for diffusing the emotional state instead of escalating it.

Now, how do we attain this lofty goal?

1. You must breathe.  There can be no peace unless there is breath.
2. You must make certain that your tanks are full.  What are you doing to take care of yourself? *
3. Keep breathing!
4. Practice saying to yourself, “That’s interesting” when you observe other things in life instead of judging them.
5. Cultivate a heart of compassion for yourself and others.

When we refrain from emotionally responding to other’s emotions, we disengage from being responsible for them.  We can’t possibly be responsible for both their emotional states and our own.  By focusing on what we can manage, we can give others the breathing room to have the experience that they need to have in this time and space.  In that breathing room, healing can occur.

Your Assignment:  Next time someone is emotional in your vicinity, breathe and say to yourself, “That is interesting”.  Try it with something less engaging than your beloved or family member first, like when you see someone drive recklessly or cut in line.  Notice what comes up for you and breathe some more!  As they say: lather, rinse, repeat.

* This can include things like enough sleep, healthy food, spending time with friends, viewing or making art, etc.

What do we do when the illusion of control or security is removed by a tragedy? When chaos strikes, especially human-caused chaos, we can have many responses.

Figuring out “why” is the booby prize.  When we try to analyze why something happened, we often are stuck in an intellectual pursuit of a solution to an emotional problem.  The response to a tragedy is emotional.  Here are a few of the different responses:

1. We can drudge up our own unfinished business and make the drama our own.  For example, I knew someone who was incapacitated for a week after 9/11 and this person knew no one who was involved, or even anyone who lived in New York or Washington DC.  We were all affected by 9/11, but becoming paralyzed only adds gasoline to the drama fire and truly makes it “all about me.”  This is a tool of distraction and prevents true connection.
2. We can deny the impact that it has on us.  When a large-scale event happens, there is a disturbance in the force.  Simply pretending that it didn’t happen is another way of checking out.
3. We can go into it.  We can bear witness to the tragedy, the effect that it had on us, feel it deeply, and move on.  One of the best and easiest ways to move on is to go seek out someway to be helpful to another being.

Sometimes, we employ a cocktail the above responses.  We add a little drama, a little denial, and then finally are able to feel it proportionally, removing judgment, and allowing for our humanity to shine through.

Your Turn:

Can you accurately assess how you respond to tragedy?  Whether it is your own, or a collective turbulence, are you able to face it fully and then move on?  If not, are you able to forgive yourself and ask what would better serve you?

Video here

The secret to joy and bliss

We all have a deep longing to belong to one another and to the community at large. However, at some point we get hurt and in order to feel protected, we create habits to guard ourselves.
I call this putting the clamp on the hose. If we restrict the experience of negative feelings, then we trick ourselves into thinking we are protected from them.

The problem with this is twofold:

1. The clamp cannot discern between “good” feelings and “bad” and therefore, all of our sensations are deadened. In fact, our humanity is deadened and unexpressed.
2. We aren’t truly protected. We live in a painful cave of self-imposed loneliness where the seductive illusion of control and safety keep us imprisoned.

Even when we are in relationship, the risks seem so high that it is tough for us to open up and lean into the moments of fear so that we can expand our capacity for joy.

When we can overcome those excruciating moments that sometimes feel so intense to be life threatening, we broaden our bandwidth to relish true community, partnership, and joy.

It is not easy, but it is worth leaning into.

Your turn: Are you willing to walk through moments of terror in order to have a deeper experience with yourself and others? Can you forgive yourself when you notice you are protecting or numbing yourself? What sweetness can you access so that you can truly connect with your own divinity and others?

I have found that anytime I am upset with my husband, or anyone else for that matter, is when I am in a position of TAKER not GIVER. What that looks like it this: if I am upset with Vj or someone else, it is because I feel like I am not getting my way or what my ego thinks that I “deserve.”

It doesn’t matter how out of bounds someone is acting! If I can be in my integrity, knowing that I am complete and whole regardless of the outcome, I can approach any situation form a higher and neutral plane.

When I am upset, it gives me an indicator that something is out of alignment. When I get really upset, it means that I am CONTINUING to not get what I want and that just fuels the fire. When I can come from a place of service, that is an attitude of: “What can I bring to this situation?” or “What lesson is here for us?”

Two great ways to keep centered no-matter-what are:

1. Give your mate the DIGNITY OF THEIR EXPERIENCE. Allow them to make a mess if necessary. You don’t know the big picture and the lessons that they need to learn.

2. Know that you may be on the “business end” of someone else’s mistake. That means that you may be a bit of collateral damage as they are ungraceful. You may give yourself permission to remove yourself from harm’s way.

Your Turn:

Can you allow someone the dignity of their experience and let them be messy? In every area of your life including: traffic, children, boss, soul mate?  Can you do it without you getting involved or hurt?

Often, in relationships, we try something new like a new way of expressing ourselves or how we approach the art of love and don’t see immediate results
It is easy to get discouraged when we don’t see  instant expected change.

In times like these we can take a breath and assess what is going on inside.
“Am I doing things the same old way and expecting different results?”

If you answer “no,” that you are doing something differently, but haven’t yet yielded the desired results, you may sit back and shower appreciation on yourself for having the courage to do something differently.  in this space it is easier to access the necessary faith to stay the course until you see the new come in.  Many times, we find that we see the change in hindsight, looking back at the way things once were.

If you answer “yes,” then it is time for a shift in approach.  A mentor  who lights the path can be very valuable and offer shortcuts.

It is important to show love and patience during any transitional period.  When we become impatient, critical, or shift into complaining mode, that is like wearing cement galoshes and will ensure that we will stay in an undesirable state.

Your turn:
Can you be patient with yourself and others knowing that we are all doing the best we can with the tools we have? Can you lovingly express gratitude for the courage that you are able to muster in the here and now? Can you be friendly toward yourself as you might be toward a loved one?

A big mistake most of us make is avoiding conflict in relationship. An even bigger problem is when we expect our relationships to be conflict free.  If this is our stance, we lose out on some of the richness of life.

I don’t mean that we want to go start arguments or pick fights.  The suggestion, instead, is that when we avoid conflict, we react from the lizard brain or that amygdala that wishes to keep us in survival mode.

This part of us, also is responsible for separation and viewing others as adversaries when they aren’t.  Our partners and spouses are not our enemy.  However, the amygdala is constantly gathering evidence of how they are wrong and I am right.

Lose/lose

When we have conflict in our marriage or any other relationship, we can take a breath.  In that breathing room, we can begin to see that the conflict is a resource of very valuable information.  We can begin to ask ourselves questions like, “I wonder why I am so upset in this moment?” or  “Is there an old hurt that needs some attention?”

Why we step back, we can release the urgency of our emotional response and begin to invite our partner in on this adventure of curiousity.

It isn’t easy.  It demands diligence, patience, and most of all, love.  It is worth every  moment of deliberate breathing and counting to ten.

Your Turn:

When you get activated by your partner, or someone else, are you willing to take a moment to ask yourself what is truly going on in the conflict?  Can you begin to invite your beloved to be curious with you as you discover together?

One of the biggest blessings that we learn on the path is this: that everything happens for a reason, and the reason is good.

This blessing can also be used as self-inflicted torture.

Too often we make the jump from an emotional event to “it’s all good” without pausing and allowing for our humanity to be expressed.  It can be very distracting and uncomfortable to have to actually feel our feelings, so we force ourselves into a willful “acceptance” that is as phony as it sounds.

When we bypass the actual emotions caused by internal or external stimulus, we deprive ourselves of our humanity and cause more suffering by judging ourselves for being human.

Somewhere along the line, many of us got it into our heads that if we do this growth thing long enough, that we will know better and be absolved from our humanity.

This is an ego-driven situation.  Having unrealistic expectations of our perfection is arrogant and lacks compassion.  When we lack compassion for ourselves, there is no room for compassion for others.

When we can be sweetly accepting of our own humanity, we expand the realm of compassion and offer a more heart-centered experience for all.

Your Turn: Can you allow yourself the dignity of your full human experience?  When an uncomfortable emotion gets activated in you, can your approach be, “Oh, how cute.  He’s having an emotion.”?  Will you allow yourself to be perfectly imperfect today?

Interested or Committed?

Lately, I have been thinking about how we perceive being let down and I have come to realize that there are many facets of hurt and anger that we choose to ignore.
I can now see that a lot of times I have blamed others for letting me down, when it has, in fact, been my own fault.

Every time we act outside of our integrity, we hurt others and ourselves.

For example, when we do things like commit to something but then cancel or reschedule, it erodes trust. This is quite common and is not looked at as a big deal. After all, we’ve all made ourselves so time-sick that being busy has become a sort of a cultural agreement. We let it slide when others flake, because we need to do it too.
A lot of times being busy is in fact nothing than an excuse for our inability to keep a commitment. The real reason often is that we commit to things without being aware of all the facts.

Have you ever made a plan with someone and later felt like you had been tricked into it? Did it make you angry?

In truth we are not mad at someone else, but at ourselves for committing too soon, or saying “yes” without seeking more complete information.

I have done it too. I committed to an event that sounded fun. I showed interest and ended up giving a wishy-washy sort of commitment (which is a non-commitment). It was only later that I found out that the event wasn’t what I thought it was and the financial commitment was considerably more than I was willing to spend. What made it worse; I had also committed to something else that would overlap.

Eventually, it got very complicated, and involved unsolicited tickets and a third party put in the middle. I felt like I had been duped. However, I got quiet and realized that what had actually happened was that I was angry with myself for committing without full information, and then I tried back peddling and made it worse!

This is all very normal. Once I looked at the whole situation objectively, I realized that I wasn’t nearly as aligned with my integrity as I thought! It was a very helpful lesson and helped me get more clear about what words to use and when!

How I handled it in the end was, I showed appreciation. While I do not know the big picture, I know that my acquaintance deserved the benefit of the doubt (hint: we all do). I thanked her and simply explained that I would not be attending. I do admit, the lure of over-explaining in order to make myself look better in her eyes was strong.
However, once I was clear, I was more interested in the highest good of all involved.

Your Turn:
Reflect on the last time you committed to something, reneged on it, or felt that the other person tricked you. A date that you ended up saying yes to, an event invite that you accepted, a favor you agreed to grant, etc. that you really didn’t want to do. What awareness can you bring to it? Were you really duped, or did you fail to gather more information? Can you bring some love to yourself and anyone else involved and then go forward letting your integrity be your guide?

When we think rationally, we would never say out loud that we “need” drama.  In fact, most people would state that they avoid it like the plague.  And yet, we shake our fists at a driver that cuts us off.  Or we roll our eyes at a parent.  Or we pick a fight with our beloved.

We don’t need drama.  We need connection.  We long for the feeling of belonging and loving.  Often, when we don’t meet that need, we make mischief in order to achieve something! If we attempt to connect with our beloved and they are unavailable, it is all too easy to resort to a childish antic to get attention at whatever cost.

As a rehabilitating Drama Mama, the drama gets more and more subtle in my realm.  I know from my experience that as we shine the light of awareness, drama can go underground so that it is harder to detect.

I still must be diligent about “poking the bear” as I put it.  If I am in an emotionally immature state and don’t have the awareness to see that I am not getting my way, I may make some mischief to get a reaction, just to be sure that I still matter.  I do not recommend this method!

Drama is addictive and flammable.  When someone gasps in horror at bad news, that is putting gasoline on the drama-fire. Drama loves to be fed with re-enactments, exaggeration, and company.

This lousy and saccharine substitute for actual connection is dangerous to our well-being and the wellbeing of others.

Here are some signals of drama:

1. Worry or fantasy about things that are unknown/unseen and can’t be acted upon.
2. Taking on someone’s side to the point where you are having the same or larger emotional response as the person who is actually involved.
3. “Poking the bear” or making mischief in a relationship when things were going well.
4. Blaming someone else for our unhappiness.

Drama gets us off the hook for personal responsibility.  If someone else is at fault or there is yet another “emergency,” then always we have an opportunity to shirk any responsibility for our own happiness.

Why would we do that? Because it takes a darn lot of courage to be happy and create a life that continues to grow and expand in that direction.

Your Assignment:

Can you see where drama has been holding you back?  Are there areas where you could substitute vulnerability instead and get a more meaningful result?  When you engage in drama, can you see it a little sooner and clean up any mess that may have been caused?  Can you see where emotional immaturity is simply another form of fear of intimacy?