You would think after two decades learning about how I’ve been impacted by some of the alcoholic adults in my life that I would remember how to ask for help.  But, as it turns out, I don’t think I could be reminded to ask for help too many times.  One of the hallmarks of an adult child who has been impacted by an alcoholic adult is that we tend to take on some of the characteristics of the alcoholic such as low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear, insecurity and doubt to name a few. How this shows up in many of our lives is that we tend to have an almost irrational fear of not knowing how to do something all by ourselves as well as the belief that we should be able to do it perfectly the first time out!

The conundrum is that although it is difficult for me to ask for help, it has been equally as difficult for me to chart my own journey and to be willing to take action and learn from my mistakes along the way.

Take this weekend for instance.  I’ve known for two weeks about a PowerPoint presentation that our Mass Comm class has required us to create to “pitch” our idea for an hour long show to replace a reality tv series and I just finished creating the presentation tonight. Oh sure, along the way I tossed around my ideas with a couple of trusted friends and worked out my pitch in my mind but I was paralyzed with  fear  of the unknowns of PowerPoint so it wasn’t until the night before the assignment was due that I got it done.    I did end up asking for help, the day before, and received help instantaneously from several friends including my brother who says inserting videos into PPT is his “middle name”!! Who knew?? Definitely not me!   But my fear kept me from calling him until five hours after I received his generous offer to help me.

Over the weekend I diverted myself from not knowing how to ask for help nor where to look for it by re-arranging my dining, living and guest room.  I think God was working on me even then because I had a mini-lesson in asking for help during the process of avoiding help with my PPT when I realized I could not physically move a huge cabinet any further from where I had  it the dining room all the way to the doorway of the guest room by myself. After an hour and a half I was just too tired.  This time I called my other brother who came over within ten minutes of my call and helped me to figure out how to negotiate the doorway and lift the heavy cabinet.

It’s not lost on me that it was both my brothers answered both my calls for help within minutes, God love them.

As a Life Coach, I have coached many people on the virtues of planning out your goals and strategizing for success by asking for help and collaborating when needed.  I am definitely still a work in progress so I hope that what I have shared here with you will inspire you to remember to ask for help when you need it. And for cripes sake, ask for it in plenty of time to get what you need to get done sanely!

Is there something going on in your life or in your work that you could ask for help today?

If you are like me then you’ve probably heard at some point in your life, if not throughout your life, “you think too much”.  Seriously. People have actually said that to me and I’ve actually taken it personally!  What I realize now is:

• at least some of the time they may have meant that I was “obsessing” or worrying too much and didn’t have the language for it or;
• my questions and thinking were moving them out of their comfort zone and they didn’t want to be moved!

Since I returned to school a few years ago, it’s been so interesting to be in a class and actually “know” the subject that is being taught because I’ve lived it!  I really take so much for granted regarding the concepts and beliefs that I have been exposed to in my life from all kinds of people and perspectives.  Last week, for example, in my political science class  the lecture was on narco-terrorism.  Most of what our professor taught us I had been exposed to such as the power and impact of the cartels in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, etc.  but after reading some of the weekly postings of fellow students in our chat room, where we share one thing about a weekly lecture that stood out for us, I was pretty amazed at how much some of the students had not been aware facts such as gun smuggling, illegal immigration, sex trafficking etc.   I think about these things a lot and ponder on how to resolve these issues.  Luckily, I have no one in my life who tells me that I think too much these days.

I love hearing different opinions and perspectives from around the world on various issues.  For example, it wasn’t until I frequented an eclectic group of people from all kinds of faith traditions that I learned in some cultures, such as a friend from Uganda who is Sufi Muslim, there is no word for “I” in their writings.  Somewhere along the way I also realized how being an American from the U.S. has shaped my thinking. Which is not to say it is good or bad but rather it is probably more balanced to recognize how your thoughts, beliefs and opinions are colored, shaded and influenced from your environment.

A coaching friend on LinkedIn posed a question recently that asked us if we were doing what we wanted or had we settled and if not/why not?  For the first time ever as a Coach I had a completely different response to this question because my thinking on the subject has changed. Whereas when I first began coaching in 2001, I came from a very hopeful and enigmatic belief that all of us could be doing what we truly loved to do as our career.  Fast forward a decade later and my position has expanded to consider that not all people may even want to do what they truly love to do as a career.  As hard as it is for those of us raised in an industrialized, techno-sized, capitalized  society, believe it or not, there are some people out there who don’t see what they do (job, career, contribution to their family) as the end all be all of their life.  In other words, they may happily go about doing what they need to do to put a roof over their heads and hopefully, find some level of enjoyment in the process but then when their day is done, they go off and enjoy thoroughly the rest of their life.  The other 8-10 hours of not working.

It’s good to think about your thoughts now and then and to shine a light on them for inspection and even more important than that is to find ways of exposing yourself and your thoughts to other cultures and ways of thinking while keeping an open heart and mind to new ways of thinking.  Who knows, it could lead us to a new way of understanding the world that we didn’t even know was possible.

Please jump in and share you experience and view points on that!  Would love to get the discussion flowing!

Right away I have to admit to you that I am not an artist….at least in the traditional sense.  I mean, I can sketch trees pretty nicely and grasses.  I can even come up with some interesting water color composites but I wouldn’t try to pass myself off as a good sketcher or painter.  And don’t even get me started on things that I am unable to make by hand (although I can still put together a little board with nails and thread strings through to make a dang good bookmark or pot holder!). Even with all of these things that a traditional kind of artist can do very well that I can’t do, I still know when I see something that is beautiful, well-made and has that extra oomph to it and I bet you do as well.

I love watching Project Runway because of the gorgeous and unusual clothes the designers make.  I can barely sew on a button much less hem long pants but I can really appreciate a beautifully designed and well-made outfit.  I’m amazed at the ideas that the designers come up with and make in so little time.  Reminds me of a student in my boarding school who was a year behind me with such a gift for designing and sewing clothes.  For one of our balls, she made the most extraordinary dress.  It’s so many years later I can barely remember the gown I wore, but I can absolutely remember the gown she made because it was unique and it was stunning. Of all the “pictures” in my mind’s records that could have been held on to her dress is permanently ensconced in the archives.

The point of all this is to say if you’re an artist, fantastic, you’re already aware of how to look at everyday things differently.  But if you’re not an “artist”, like me, you can still have an artist’s eye.  I suppose back when our bodies and minds were being put together we somehow did not come with that piece that helps our brains and bodies carry out what we “see”.  Still,  you can use your gift of artist’s site to see the world differently.

Take today for instance.  I’m driving down the highway after class at lunch time so everyone else on the highway seemed to be hungry and agitated or in a rush to get to their next meeting plus on top of that a good portion of the stretch I drive has been in various stages of construction for what seems like f o r e v e r!   I could have gotten myself into a state of impatience and frustration by numb nut drivers, admittedly I was almost there, until I happened to catch a beautiful scene out of the corner of my eye. A flock of pigeons was doing that unison flying thing that they sometimes do weaving  back and forth, in and out of each others’ paths right above a La Quinta Hotel where the sunlight just happened to ricochet off as it peaked in and out of the clouds.  There was such harmony in the colors (gold of the hotel, gold of the sun, gray of the sky, silver and black of the birds) as well as  movement (strong solid object of the hotel, puffy Cumulus clouds, intricate flock pattern of the birds in flight).  It’d probably have made a magnificent short video.

As a result of that one brief moment that I saw  through  an artist’s eye, I forgot to be upset with the guy in front of me driving 55 mph in the fast lane.  Instead,  I spent most of my way home replaying what I had just seen with my mind’s eye and hoping to catch something else equally as beautiful and unexpected.

It really is how we look at things isn’t it?  Do you ever have these experiences of catching the wonder of life?  And more than that, the unexpected beauty?  I suppose many of  us, especially Americans, have been steeped in looking at the negative aspects of our world so that we can be aware in order to keep ourselves safe, that we don’t spend a whole lot of time considering that instead we could look for the beauty that’s happening around us all the time.

Love the discussion that has begun on this blog site and encourage you to jump in with your experience and comments! The water is warm!

Starstruck Milkyway - West Texas

It’s just me and the dogs so I can’t blame anyone else knocking around our house (that I know of)  but I keep hearing music playing around my house coming from different rooms.  It almost sound like a radio alarm that was programmed for the pm instead of the am went off, but no I’ve checked those out and there aren’t any on.  Maybe it’s someone driving by in their car, but we live off a circle in the country. Still, it could be the sound waves floating from a bar two miles down the road but I’ve heard both a man and a woman’s voices from different parts of our house. At least they’re low.  Maybe my gold molars on my back teeth are signing in like satellite radio?

I’m going to choose to believe it’s the angels talking again.

I guess if you ask them for help enough, like I do everyday, you’ve got to expect the unexpected. But still.  I remember several years ago when David and I were living in our first home this kind of thing would happen but I didn’t tell many people because, you know, it’d be easy to assume I was a bit off.  And maybe I am, but when my friend Cynthia spent the night one weekend on our living room coach she was awakened by the sound of a teenage boy’s voice as he leaned over the sofa and said a girl’s name (can’t remember it now).  Maybe we’re both a bat short in our belfry?

I just opened our front door to listen to the quiet for awhile and sure enough, I could hear music coming from the bar two miles away.  Oh well, I like the fact that my creative mind would rather believe that it was possible to hear angel’s talking then musicians singing from a few miles away. But then again, those musicians could be divinely inspired !

Would love to hear some of your stories around things like this……leave a comment!

If you let yourself just take that in for one minute, “everything is alright, everything is okay”, doesn’t it make you feel better? I mean, even if you were already feeling alright, sometimes we’re just not aware of all the stress, tension and control we are wound up in until we hear (or read) a soothing voice telling us that it’s all going to be okay.

Back in the “day” when I used to smoke mary-ju-juana, I was one of those people who partook because I wanted to not feel sad, afraid, hurt, angry, worried (insert issue here).  I spent the whole summer after my freshman year in college, high.  Or as close to it as I could.  And you know I didn’t get a thing done such as going to summer school or finding a job.  But I did discover a whole bunch of really good ways to combine food and eat sugar.  What I didn’t know then, but I do know now, is that I needed to discover that peaceful place inside of me that has a never ending fount of encouragement and feeling peaceful.  Somehow I didn’t make it into an Ashram, church, synagogue, counselor’s office or 12-step meeting then.  I guess I was still living my story and adding chapters of experience for figuring out later down the road.

When I finally did make it into all kinds of spiritual rooms, counselor offices and self-help groups I set down my weapons of rash dysfunction to my brain and walked around feeling pretty exposed for awhile there as learned to understand myself and who I was in the world (see Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning“).  I will be forever grateful for the therapist I saw during this period because of many reasons but most certainly because she had such a soothing way about her from just her disposition to her voice.  I think it was more the way she loved me to health rather than any great psychology that helped me get to the place of feeling that everything was going to be okay—although there was good psychology too!

It may seem disingenuous for me to tell you that even with the state of the Economy around the world, war, disease, and pestilence,  that everything really is fundamentally okay…but it is….really.  I’m thinking of even the worst times in my life when I’ve been hurting physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually (and there’s been a lot of those times) that in the center of each time, I was okay.  The “I” that cannot be measured.  The “I” that has a body and a soul and all kinds of things that we attach to ourselves to say to the world, “this is who I am”. But really that “I” of us is that place you can find, if you have the desire to find it, that is in the center of us but can’t be measured. It can be felt but not seen.   Meditation has definitely helped me find that “I” so that sometimes all I have to do is sit somewhere calming to me (like outside in the swinging chair on our back patio), disengage from all the things that are troubling my mind and soul and allow the “I” to float forward.

Sometimes though I need to run through the countryside or swim in the ocean….move my body till I can let go of what I am holding on to so that I can allow in, me.

No matter what is going on now for you, you too can find that calm within so that you feel the truth that everything is fundamentally well.

The journey may be long and the road may be rocky but the bliss is so worth it.

What are you willing to do today to feel the bliss within?

Paramahansa Yogananda

Energy surfing is a term I coined to explain what it is that we are experiencing when we meet, connect and build friendships and relationships with each other on line.  I’ve written about this a lot because how can you help but not “feel” the energy that is transpiring between you and another person via the simple medium of electronics…whatever electronics you are using to communicate.

It’s hard to explain to someone what that feeling of energy surfing is if they’re not already open to the many ways that we humans experience energy already.  I had quite a back and forth conversation with one of the people who responded to a similar topic I had posted asked on LinkedIn. Where he was coming from, if I understood him correctly, was that the energy that I was talking about feeling was coming from me and my perceptions.  Granted, he had a point because we’re always at the mercy of our own perceptions and feelings but what I was unable to communicate to him was that intangible connection-energy that can happen on-line with two or more people that is a partnership of energies.

Let it be said too, that when I first began heavily using email communication back and forth I stumbled into some not so fun exchanges with family members and close friends because of what was being lost in the written communication.  During one such exchange several years ago, my husband had to tell me over and over again to STOP EMAILING WITH THAT PERSON. Nothing was going to get resolved in our gritty, jerky email exchanges.  What I wonder now is if what I was experiencing was another dimension of feeling the energy of a particular family dynamic that has always been around—in action.  Brrrr, like the little snow man would say when telling the story of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer.

With time, I’ve learned how to catch a wave of the emotions of myself and others as I write back and forth on LinkedIn, FaceBook, blogging and various social media communiques.   One of the fascinating aspects of gaining confidence of the intuitive abilities that I have always known is that with more connections and dare I say, shhh, ….love…., that I feel I am less inclined to need some of the kinds of attention that I used to pine for from others to let me know that I am alright.  Insert major flights of anxiety and low self esteem here.

Sure, lots of therapy and recovery from addictions and all kinds of spiritual spelunking has helped me to mature, there’s no doubt about that. But what I’m talking about is finally feeling like what used to be this bottomless pit inside of unmet needs, is being met.  Last night I went to the Texas Book Festival Authors’ Party with my good friend Nettie Reynolds of the Hartsock Agency which was held at the ab fab home of Eddie Safady.  All I had to drink was sparkling water and I felt so at home among the writers.  I didn’t feel less than because I haven’t published my book yet (which I am writing now!) and so enjoyed mingling and connecting with some of my writer friends who I really have gotten to know better because of chatting back and forth on Facebook.

I have to say though, even with all the great energy surfing that I am experiencing today I still am not at the mercy of my cellphone or the computer. I get on and “mingle in the spheres” when I want to and get off and enjoy my reality on this holodeck that I call my life today.   That’s probably one of the keys to being able to energy surf is to be able to rest up from it and restore your energy between surfs.

Do you notice the energy going on around you today?  If you surf it, how do you catch a good wave?

I’m talking literally!  Here’s just a snippet of some of the words that I look at everyday when I sit down to blog:

1.  Permission to Enjoy The Traffic Around You For you Are There For A Reason.

2. I begin now, today, to open myself to ever increasing prosperity.

3. Each year the woman gathered to renew their spirits, nourish their souls & earn their laugh lines.

4. Angels are just Cairns with wings.

5. “Even or odd, thou shalt win the wager.” The friends of God shall win and profit under all conditions and shall attain true wealth. In fire they remain cold, and from water they emerge dry. Their affairs are at a variance with the affairs of men.  Gain is their lot, whatever the deal. To testifieth every wise one with a discouraging eye, and every fair minded one with a hearing ear. — Baha U llah

6. Nurture Yourself.

7. Begin

8. I’d rather be dumped by a horse than a man!

9. princesses rule

10. This way to a brand new experience

11.  May you be gentle with yourself and others. May you trust the goodness of life. May you appreciate the wonder that you are, May you discover your own special abilities and contribute them toward a better world. May you believe.

12. Surrender to God

13. You are the force that plays with your mind and uses your body as its favorite toy to play and have fun with. That is the reason you are here to play and have fun. You are born with the right to be happy and enjoy life. You are not here to suffer.

14.  My greatest gift to give is my happiness.

15. I now live in limitless love, light and joy. All is well in my world.

16. “It’s kind of funny, really, all these years, everybody has been so busy trying to figure out what life is all about, and all the while, it was just something for us to enjoy.” – Fannie Flagg

17.  The Celestine Prophecy Insights (9 of them but 8 usually pokes out at me first)…8 is “When enough of us enter this evolutionary flow, always giving energy to the higher-self of everyone we meet, we will build a new culture where our bodies evolve to ever higher levels of energy and perception.”

And that’s not counting my all the books I look up to on my book shelves, the degrees and certifications on the wall and a very special poem that a friend wrote for me when I left C&T Consulting  I figure if my brain is going to parrot back to me what I fill it with during the day and if I’m going to spend a good part of my day sitting here writing to you, then might as well surround myself with words that feeds my soul!

How do you surround yourself with words?

When the Eckhart Tolle’s book, “The Power of Now” came out a handful of years ago, I so resisted reading it.  It just seemed to “book du jour” to me.  E V E R Y O N E was talking about it from Oprah to people I sponsor in 12-step programs to random people on the street.  In fact, a couple of friends who I admire from two different areas of my life even gave me the book to read and it still took me 1/2 a year or more to get around to it.

I don’t remember now, but  have probably written about it in previous posts, when I actually picked up the book and read it but HAZZA  almost upon the first few sentences I was struck by the energy that came through the words that Eckhart had written.  I totally related to the example of when an emergency happens how everything slows down and you are so in the moment during that time (ask me about being in the moment as I woke up from a drunken stupor to see my car heading off of an overpass….).

Needless to say, this book and the teachings—or re-teachings of what we already know–have stayed with me.

I’ve been thinking today about how we humans seem to enjoy freaking ourselves out about stuff.  Like the whole pandemonium that is going on around 2012 and OCCUPY Wall Street, etc. etc. etc.  When I contemplate these reactions and how sometimes we only seem to get in the moment when the sky is falling then I realize that really, really what is happening underneath it all is we’re just searching for the NOW. The What IS.  The connection to ????? (insert the G-word here?)

I found out today that someone I knew from way back in high school days had just learned on a seemingly routine annual exam that she has a rare aggressive form of cancer.  This is a gal who had her ups and downs in childhood (as many of us did) but by and large had a whole lot of really great things going on throughout her life and BOOM there it is. The Now factor.  What we’re all searching for sans the cancer.  And I got blown into NOW by my heart because I immediately felt the tears coming up with a love that I hadn’t realized that I felt for this friend. Not that deeply.  It was nice albeit painful.  We played telephone tag today but I felt the connection with her in our voice mails.  Once again I’m being reminded to pause and be alive.  To feel the love that circles in and around and throughout all of our lives that we tend to swat off like an irritating swarm of gnats who dare to bug us in our busy days.

I’m amazed today when I hear someone tell me “I’m bored”.  I totally cannot grok what they are saying and quite frankly I have no interest in pursuing why.  There is just so much to explore and learn and experience that if we spend the rest of our lives being alive in the now of that we will never realize them all.  Being bored is boring?!?! And self-centered. Hello, yes I’ve been this person (a bored person) and I bet I was pretty boring to all around me in my self-absorption.

Being in the now can be scary because you might think about something that you’ve been denying or you might realize something that you don’t want to accept or God forbid you would feel feelings that you’d rather not feel…but here’s the deal…when we allow ourselves to be in the N O W, then we can take down our neurotic staircase to avoidance.  And clean up what we don’t want in our lives so we can allow in what we do want.

How will you allow yourself to be in the N O W, now?

“We’re all in hiding” said my friend Kat this morning when we were talking about retreats and creativity.  We were talking about retreats that we’re leading (hers this weekend and mine in December) that have to do with creativity and then, of course, our conversation dipped and segued into what being creative means.  Because Kat’s retreat is being held at a Presbyterian Church, there are some religious teachings that will be interspersed throughout it.  One of the stories she shared with me comes from the Book of Genesis about Adam and Eve and how after they took the bite out of the apple (and became conscious) they hid and God looked for them saying, “come out, come out wherever you are”.

Now what are the odds that particular story would come to me from two totally different directions (see my post from last week that refered to Ryan Torok’s blog about the same lesson)?! This is when I tend to believe “the Universe” is really listening to me and that I am being “talked” to and it is me that needs to do the listening now.  As this story of hiding pertains to creativity  it is germane to how I’ve felt about my own creativity.  For years, I felt like the black sheep of the family, the outcast, the “different” one (and I was in many ways let me tell you!?) and I was always drawn to very creative people from musicians to writers to artists yet I never felt like I was creative because my ruler stopped at my ability to create things with my hands or at least play a musical instrument (which I cannot do).  Meanwhile, I’ve created all kinds of scenarios of stories in my head for years, which many called daydreaming, and defined that as yet another reason that I was inept at life—a prisoner within the confines of my mind.

Until I began to write.  And when I wrote, I felt that creative part of me engage in an outlet that I saw shine forth on the faces of my musician friends when they would hit the sweet spot of their song and on my artist friends after many false starts when they’d come up with THE picture that was inside of them.   But even with all of this confirmation if the least little bit of attention came to me for my writing or speaking, I would hide away.  I didn’t understand or know how to handle the attention that I thought I wanted so badly.

Today, it is much easier to be who I am with my writing and public speaking and allow people who enjoy my writing and/or speaking to be who they are with how they let me know.  I get it now that it is not about me, but about them.  And I don’t need attention for my writing now (although I love it when people get it and love it!!) because I write because I have to write now.  It’s in my DNA (I bet there’s all kinds of little scrolls rolled up in there) and the synapses have been connected from that part of my brain through to my fingertips to express the ideas that only the clouds knew for many years.

Come out, come out wherever you are and let your creativity free!  It’s a beautiful thing to give wing to that song inside of our hearts that is just waiting for our own unique expression.  How will you let yours out today?

Giving yourself the gift of a retreat can be as simple as stepping away from your home for a night or two. You can stay somewhere that you can afford whether it is a B&B (all kinds of wonderful ones to choose from in the Texas Hill Country such as the Red Corral Ranch which I love), a plush hotel or borrowing a friend’s room for a night or weekend.

There are also numerous retreat leaders, such as myself, who lead all kinds of retreats.  For instance, I’m offering a retreat this coming December 16-18 which will focus around my friend and best-selling author Janet Conner’s book, “Writing Down Your Soul“.  Although my retreats have “themes” to them such as WDYS, there is also the implicit intention of giving each woman the gift of relaxing for 48 hours during what can be one of the busiest seasons of the year as well as connecting with other very special women.  I’m very blessed to know some incredible women so it’s always fun to get a group together to enjoy new found friends.  One thing we women still aren’t very good at doing is finding time to connect with other women.  My guy friends seem to find all kinds of ways to enjoy time with each other from golfing to sailing to hiking and more.  Women tend to make themselves too busy to take time out for themselves much less with each other.

There is a whole group of Certified Retreat Coaches (of which I am one) that you can look through to find the Coach and retreat that is the best fit for you.

Still, there are the retreats where you go off on your own to enjoy time, space and quiet.  I’m very extroverted which means that for the most part I get re-energized around people. However, even I find myself needing time all alone to just regroup after I’ve been around a lot of people.  This past weekend I had a good friend and mentor come stay with me for the evening and invited a group of our mutual friends over for an evening of conversation and fun.  The next day was a conference that my friend spoke at with about 60 or so people attending and then a lunch afterward with about 30 people.  It was all good fun and enjoying interesting people but I did end up coming home in the afternoon and taking at two hour nap!  That’s why on any retreat I lead, two hours down time is always built in to the schedule!

However you choose to give yourself the gift of a retreat, just know that it is a gift that keeps on giving to you and those with whom you share your life.  When we’re stretched to the edge of our breaking point because of all the things that we “have” to do and feel responsible for in our lives, that does no one any good–least of all ourselves!  I bet if we took most any species of animal and studied them for very long we would soon observe that they take a retreat of sorts for themselves on a regular basis to recharge and recoup.  Why do we humans insist on being any different?

Give yourself the gift of relaxing and recouping and if you’re feeling especially frisky and daring (and you’re a woman—sorry guys for this one)  then sign up for my Writing Down Your Soul Retreat this December 16-18, 2011.  It’s $195 for 2 wonderfully comfortable nights at the Red Corral Ranch.  Send a deposit of $75 to hold your space now by November 1.  For more information, you may email me at [email protected]