One of my favorite quotes by Light Worker Paxton Robey is, “There is nothing outside of us but a mirror.” And if you’ve ever delved into the study of our minds and something as basic as how we see things via those instruments we call eyeballs that sit in the front of our face and relay messages back to the computer we call our brains, the easier it is to see the point of view that really all that we see, hear and experience outside of ourselves (whatever ourself is) is simply reflections back to ourselves of what we are experiencing.

So, gentle reader, why on Earth would I begin an article entitled, “Our Elderly: The Last Unappreciated Frontier?” with a paragraph about brains and mirror reflections?  Because as my brain sees and interprets how much of humanity–at least the culture in which I live today—views the elderly either not all, or, if at all, in a very shallow insipid low waters of perception along the shoreline of our thinking and feeling minds.  Our elderly really are an untapped gold mine just waiting for us to see beyond the mirror reflections of our beliefs (or disbeliefs).

Let me ask you to consider this, according to www.usgs.gov up to 60% of the human adult body is water.  Can you imagine that we silly humans spend so much time worried, fearful, concerned, fretting, and anxious about how the outside surface (skin) of the vessel we call our body (which is more than half composed of water) looks that we turn away and dismiss that last unappreciated frontier of humanity which is full of wisdom, perspective, humor, stories, love, answers, ideas and more. In fact, for many of us, exploring that frontier could be as simple as having a conversation with the next elderly person who crosses your path and being curious about what you may discover.

Thought for the day:  What prejudices, judgements and beliefs might you harbor way down below that is preventing you from surfacing the overflow of wealth from the elderly in your world?

Helpful Hint for being human: We’re ALL going to be part of the elderly someday (unless we check out before hand). Can you imagine how fulfilling it would/will be too be not only respected, honored and appreciated for living a life well-done but to be asked to give our every last drop of experience to help others coming up behind us on their life path.

It’s a wonder any of us ever actually choose to get married, much less decide that we’re in love with another person and want to have a relationship with them.  Let’s face it, according to a  2011 Pew Research marriage survey, marriage is at an all time low in America at 51% of adults getting married. Pew goes on to say that,   Having a successful marriage is “one of the most important things” in life for 36% of adults, according to a 2011 Pew Research survey. An additional 48% said it is “very important but not the most” important.”

Later this afternoon, I’ll be interviewing Marcia “Naomi” Berger who is known globally as the Marriage Maven, about her latest book, “Marriage Meetings for lasting love: 30 Minutes a Week to the Relationship You’ve Always Wanted” on BTR’s Hope42Day.    When the publicist first sent me Naomi’s book I was at once interested to have a guest who could offer tools to my listeners about having a good marriage but also hesitant because “I’ve already been there and done that…hasn’t everybody?”

But, no, not all of us have created a vehicle that cultivates and supports a loving marriage for the long haul. That’s why many of us are still Googling to find the answers and why my friend and fellow web radio host Psychic Tee has a clamoring of listeners calling in to her shows, especially when she offers advice and readings about love and marriage.

For the record, there should be a special award given to my husband for sticking it out with me as we muddled through the first decade of our marriage.  Along the way we learned to remember not to take each other for granted and not to throw things at each other (physically or verbally).  24 years later, we have found lots of ways to enjoy each other and be grateful for our time.  Thankfully, we’ve always seemed to find ways to make each other laugh. For example, I wish I could secretly take a video of David dancing to the theme song from the TV Show Castle (which he does every time we watch it and makes me laugh every time) but you’ll just have to click on the hyperlinked Castle and imagine it for yourself.

Listen to what Marriage Maven Naomi Berger has to say about Marriage Meetings  and keep in mind, all good things come to those with patience and the willingness to work on themselves!

Okay, sure I’ll admit it. I can be a bit of a drama Queen, but then if you’ve followed me for very long…you know that about me!    But I couldn’t come up with a better way of explaining how I experienced this morning.  My feelings felt like how my tongue experiences the taste of Vietnamese soup.  Sweet and sour.

The morning began with me cuddled up in bed attempting to sleep away another dark and rainy day.  I heard what I thought was the normal morning sounds of David drying his hair.  But the sound kept going on and on and as I was in that state of being half awake and half asleep, rather than waking up, my writer mind began making up stories.  Stories about how much I loved my husband for always getting cleaned up in the morning even if he planned to work all day from home.  Stories about how much I loved his great head of hair.  Stories about how funny it was that he was going on and on with drying it, especially since there really wasn’t that much to dry.  And then my consciousness woke up a little bit more and realized that what I was hearing wasn’t the hair dryer, but rather the wet vac.  That could only mean that because of the heavy rain last night, water had found other ways to seep in through our floorboards.

Our home had flooded again.

I popped up to go investigate forgetting to put my glasses on, hair rumpled, and mouth guard in (being nice also added extra points to my concern for him resolutely vacuuming up the mess, not that there were points to be had but in a good long-term relationship, it’s the little things that count….).   David asked me to rally the cats from the garage into the kitchen so that he could wet vac up the water in there.  And I set about calming the cats and fixing the dogs’ breakfasts.  We both remained amazingly calm even though we knew this latest flooding meant we’d have to replace the Pergo in the dining room at some point soon. Adding to that long line of “things we need to replace soon.”

After breakfast and reading Michael Barnes’ latest Out & About column in the American-Statesman, the back porch beckoned me to sit outside for some quiet time.  Our backyard backs up to the Williamson Creek and the frogs were singing all about the fresh water barreling through so how could I resist them?  All the trees bordering the boundaries of our acre and a half were glistening in the breaking morning sun and the Blue Jays vacillated between angry squawks and happy chirps that sounded like wooden wind chimes blowing in the breeze.  As you can imagine, the hypnotic glory of the morning influenced my heart to open to what was beautiful and to be grateful!

And I continued to feel grateful even when we realized all that rain meant that my convertible had probably flooded again.

I’d forgotten to fix/mend/Gerry-rig where there is a gap between the top of my car and the windshield and so my car had flooded again.  And somehow I was able to keep feeling grateful for having a car, having a car that runs, having a wet vac that works great and having a really clean car.  That and the sun is breaking through the clouds so I can take the top down to let it evaporate out all the humidity.  Plus it looks like the Crepe Myrtles are so ecstatic that new buds are bursting to say hello to the world.

Oh I still have my response to mold allergies which means that even with the sprays and shots the ever present congestion remains. And somewhere between pruning the front yard and loving on the cats I’ve acquired a poison ivy rash that runs from the side of my ear down and around the back of my neck and up the other side.  So I’ll make an appointment with my allergist to get a script and on my way I’ll stop and get a large Americano while listening to The Takeaway on KUT.Org. Why not make the most of it?

I’m grateful that in the midst of the sweet and sour morning that unfolded today, I’m able to keep enjoying the bright spots along the way.  This isn’t always true for me, sometimes I can dip into a melancholy that borders on feeling like a psychotic depression, but I believe what helps inflate the life rafts of serenity that can seemingly come out of nowhere at the most unexpected times, is to be in continuous prayer to all that is good and to ask for the serenity and peace of acceptance.  Even during those times when we don’t think we need it.  There just has to be some kind of cache in the other dimensions outside of our reality that stores up our prayers and thoughts for those times we need to be buoyed through life.

A raft ship of Grace.

May peace be with you and us all!  And not too much water.  No flood water…

Warning! This is another post to encourage you into the practice of meditation.   So, those of you who have no desire to explore this possibility for helping you to find contentment and peace are welcome to click on to the next headline waiting for your attention.

How quiet is your mind?  If your mind is like mine, most of the time it’s not.   I’ve usually got at least three or four streams of thinking going on at the same time (and probably more if I would sit still long enough to have it measured). Most of us already have mind chatter keeping us company from the minute we get up until we go to sleep. Then you add in one, two or several forms of electronic media that many of us have access to and it’s a wonder that any of us get anything done! Which voice do you pay attention to?  Where do you put your focus?

As many of my spiritual elders, sisters and brothers have shared with me through the years, dedicating 20-40 minutes of meditation practice at least once a day can help us to listen beyond the noise.  There are as many forms of meditations as there are unique kinds of people in the world…find the one that your heart (and soul) has an ahhh response to when you practice it.   With that said, here are some basic tips that I’ve picked up over the years to remember about meditation that seem to align with many of the practices that I’ve been exposed which are:

1.) Try to find the same time to meditate everyday. This may vary because after all there is LIFE, but if you’re intention is to meditate every morning having the same time will help you to carry out your meditation.

2.) Find a place where you are comfortable sitting.  I have heard that someone who is deeply disciplined in the practice of meditation can connect with that inner peace anywhere and anytime, but for those of you who may be starting out…..be kind to yourself and give yourself all the help possible so that you can sit still.

3.) Light a candle, incense or if you’re outside, breathe in deep the smell of your surroundings.  I like ritual so for me, lighting an incense tells my mind that we’re going to get quiet.  My dogs even know that and will run to jump in my chair and curl up by my side (I’m sure if we could see their canine thought bubbles they would read, “finally!”)

4.) Follow your breath.  My yoga teacher of many years used to say this after every class as we lay in savasana (yoga meditation pose) and what he meant was to let any thoughts or worries of the day drop off as we paid attention to the act of breathing in and breathing out.  Just paying attention to your breath will help you to let go of much of the chatter in your head. Mostly.

5.) Do not judge your practice. Explore how you can find that deep inner peace more fully, absolutely! But, if you find that it is all you can do to sit for 10 minutes, let that be okay.   You can work up to longer if you choose. I try to make my time thirty minutes, but please know for many of us just the practice of sitting still and learning to let go is enough.  Even sitting outside with the breeze on my face did not stop my ego-mind from wanting to interfere with my meditation when I first began.   Most anything that you think that you need to be doing during your meditation time can be done afterwards.

6.) Meditation is not a competition.  For many of us in the Western World our thoughts have been trained to think of many things that we do as a competition.  Your meditation time is between you and your higher power whatever or whoever that may be.  I remember several years ago talking about my meditation with a friend who had practiced the Kriya meditation techniques passed down through the lineage of gurus in the Self-Realization Fellowship founded by Paramahansa Yogananda.  As we were walking and talking I told her about a profound psychic experience I had during meditation and in her gently way she shared that in her experience, those psychic experiences could be a distraction from the real intent of being able to drop our ego and connect with the God of our understanding.

This sharing is just to remind you that you can drop all the cacophony of voices within and without at anytime if you so choose and giving yourself the gift of a daily meditation practice is a lovely way to do this.

Listen beyond the noise, peace is waiting for you.

Well, of course, there is a lot money can buy.  In most cases, money can put a roof over our head, food in our bellies, clothes on our backs and some mode of transportation or access to it.  If you live in an informational advanced society then money can buy you all kinds of things beyond the bare necessities.  What money can’t buy is love.  Truly, real love.  You know the kind, the friend or loved one who is there by your side with good humor and cheer during both the good and the bad times.  All the money in the world can’t keep you alive if you’ve got an untreatable catastrophic illness.  Money can’t take away a broken heart…although it may be able to mask it for a time.

It’s always fascinated me what we people do with our money.  Just this week a coaching friend told a story of a client he had who was making half a million dollars a year and wanted to expand her business to three times that much over the next year.  During the interview process he discovered that the reason she wanted to make three times as much money was because she was unable to make ends meet with $500, 000 a year.  Further exploration discovered that she spent over $2000 a month on several storage facilities for her shoes.  And no, his client was not Imelda Marcos.  He then told his client that before he could work with her, she would need to sell all her shoes and close her storage accounts. She fired him and then after six months of hemming and hawing around about what he told her she would need to do….she did it and hired him.   Her problem was not that she did not have enough money and her solution was not to make three times as much but rather for her to go to the core of her sick thinking around money and things and get in front of that first.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to work with some wonderful people who own a lovely store which attracts many wealthy and sublime clientele.  What’s been fascinating for me to experience is people buying beautiful (and sometimes) expensive things for themselves and/or their loved ones.  You get a sense of the pleasure they find in being able to spend the favors of their hard-earned rewards.  Of course it is the holiday season with many coming through to spend the most they will all year long.  We witness this kind of thing happening all over the country and world for that matter but I’m getting a very different sense of the season and all it entails in this unique store setting which is set apart from the big box stores and malls.  The money exchanged feels more respected and cared for rather than desperate and impulsive.  I get a sense that this relationship with money is something that can’t be bought.  Oh sure, many of the clients are very wealthy but more than a few have set their sights and goals on specific items they enjoy in the store and look forward to purchasing them for well-thought out reasons this time of year.  The money they spend is not instead of helping out in philanthropic ways but is in addition to.

I’ve lived in all kinds of environments from very wealthy with cooks, gardeners, china and place-settings to having only bags of potatoes to eat, one room and lousy gas heaters.  What I’m re-learning these days is that, that sense of esteem, peace and enjoyment of life is not something that money can buy.  I’ve had the same sense of loss, discouragement and very low-self esteem living in renovated castles and sleeping on hand-made mattresses  as I have sleeping in a very old one-roomed efficiency on a used mattress and box spring and very old sheets.  And, conversely, have had the same kind of joy riding Thoroughbred Polo horses wildly across acres and acres of blowing fields of grasses and flowers at the base of the Grand Tetons in Wyoming as I have walking the rim of the Ft. Davis State Park in Texas.

The joy that comes from inside can’t be bought.

How will you spend your inner beauty today?

In two of the world faiths that I study, Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship and the Bahai Faith the Unity of Mankind is often encouraged as well as the connection between the East and the West (India/Iran and the U.S.).  From both of these traditions, I have “heard” the call for us to reach out to the Divine (God) and really ask for that connection.   It may seem like an easy thing to do for some people who have never questioned or pondered what they believe, but for those of us who question, becoming vulnerable within ourselves to reach towards something/someone when all we have to go on is faith….can be very difficult.

And that’s just for those of us who don’t have all kinds of accessory problems with being human and living such as mental illness, dysfunctional families, addictions, catastrophic illness in ourselves or a loved one etc.   That may leave about two people out of the 7 billion of us on this planet who are able to fully give their attention towards finding the Divine (God) without any distractions.

So what about those of us who remain?  How do we handle big situations that occur in our community such as the shootings recently at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut? What is it that needs to be looked at more closely in order for us to heal the limping elephant in the middle of the United States?  Sure, we can look at gun control and have conversations about what laws can be put into place so that mentally disturbed people can be found out before they are able to purchase weapons of destruction.  But how are “we” going to know who is mentally disturbed and what being mentally disturbed means if we aren’t willing to look within our own lives, at ourselves and the people around us to admit that there just might be a bit of insanity in all of us?   Much less reach for the Divine (God).

For me, admitting I am powerless over addictions, people, places, mental illness is hand-in-hand with coming to believe there is something (the Divine/God) that can restore me to sanity. But first, I have to surrender to the reality of what “is”.   As a nation, I feel the United States is such a long way off from surrendering to the idea that some (many) of the things (overlooking extreme violence in film and videos etc.) are either a symptom of something much more wrong with us as a people than we care to know about or its too painful for us to let go of the curtain that hides the great and powerful Oz.  As in the Wizard of Oz, there is no great wizard that can grant us our wishes, our gifts are inside for us to find and realize.

Trying to reconcile the incredible distrust I have with politicians and big business in general with the belief that, as a group, our nation has the amazing capacity to unite together and leap towards goodness more than any other civilized nation in history,  considering where we come from (prisoners, refugees, etc.) is so complex. Where do we begin? Where do I begin?  How can I best live my values and help the people and community where I live (as well as myself)?

If ever there was a time for us to “wake up” it is now and as the great Sufi poet Rumi said, “do not go back to sleep” instead we’ve been giving another huge wake-up call to surrender our illusions and reach out for the Divine.

You’ve got to laugh a little, cry a little, until the clouds roll by a little cuz that’s the glory of life (no, I know it’s supposed to be love but for the sake of this blog…).  Went out this evening to celebrate with my littlest bro and his wife for her birthday.  After dinner, we drove down the the infamous 37th Street in Austin where our Hyde Park brethren and sisters usually go all out decorating up their homes, yards and even motorcycles with Christmas lights. They haven’t all kicked into the season just yet, but there were some good ones to enjoy.   Then we meandered up 15th Street to Old Enfield and took in some of the sites there.

On the way home, my sister-in-law wanted to share with us the great idea for a job/career that my brother could do and we knew it would be something good by the way he had started trying to get her to quiet down.  As it turned out, there was a happy little jingle that went with it that she sang and then I sang it too, only I got the major point of the jingle all wrong which put us all into laughing fits.  And of course, no laughing fit party is complete unless you keep doing that thing that made the group laugh in the first place, again, only while laughing.  My stomach still hurts, but boy do I feel good.

Last week I was inspired to create a video that could be acted out by me, my husband and a good friend.  The net-net is to make the viewer laugh at whatever monster is in the middle of their life sucking that is all the air out of it. Like in the movie, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” when little 6-year old Hushpuppy faces the mighty Aurochs who have escaped from the melting ice caps.  In the end she faces them and they bow down to her with respect for her courage.  That’s what it takes for us to be able to laugh in spite of the beasts in our lives.  So that maybe then we can make them a kind of friend…sort of.

So just remember in this life, sometimes we do get to cry a lot but we also got to laugh, just a little.

Of course asking for the courage to change the things we can is really asking for the courage to change ourselves. Sure, we can persuade, cajole even try to manipulate, control and worse someone else but in the end its ourselves that we can only change (thought, word, deed).

Coming down to the end of a Leadership and Professional Development class where we’re using the book, “Level Three Leadership: Getting Below the Surface“, Fifth Edition by James G. Clawson.  I’ve been studying for the final exam and breezing through the last chapters that will be on the test but found myself actually getting distracted by the text in the chapter about “Leading Change”.  It talks about stuff that those of us who have been in the business world for awhile know such as that “Over the course of our lives, we become comfortable with a certain set of behaviors….”  And that “In business, many managers, especially Industrial Age managers, ascribe to the maxim “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and see in stable, historically routines a way of generating steady cash flows, building leverage, managing margins and realizing returns of past investments.”

But then the chapter delves into something that takes several pages to explain and that is about “disconfirming data”.  This is first introduced to us when talking about our comfort zone and baseline behavior.  That “if after long periods of receiving confirming data about our baseline behavior, we get some discomfirming data, we face a choice about what to do.” Clawson talks about how “Disconfirming data are a challenge to our self-concept, because they say that what we just did doesn’t work anymore”.   He goes on to expound on the acceptance process of the discomfirning data and that breaking out of our comfort zone and trying to do difficult sometimes painful new things is what M. Scott Peck was talking about in his book, “The Road Less Traveled”. Basically, what he is saying is we humans do not usually want to break out of our comfort zone unless we absolutely have to do so and usually it is because the pain is so great that we are willing to do something different.

Clawson goes on to discussing the building of a Change Team, Designing and Leading Change Experiments as well as Relentlessly Reinforcing Results with the New Vision.   The  net-net is that what businesses do that realize they must embrace the discomfirming data and change is to find lots and lots of support to help them through the change process from the very leaders who will be championing the changes to take place, to hiring outside resources who can come in with an objective eye and compassionate heart to see what is not working and what can work to instigating lots of positive reinforcement for everyone who is trying something new.

You can take a cue from these businesses and realize that asking for and finding the courage to change for yourself is something you do not have to do on your own. Whether it is stretching your belief system to think about faith in something bigger than yourself to finding friends who you can ask (and give) support when needed.  It’s out there when we’re willing to open up our minds (and hearts) and do some footwork to find the support systems we need to make the changes.  Little plug in here for coaching.  This is the kind of thing that I do as a Coach (support people in making a change in their lives) and many other great Coaches do out here in the world for others.

One last tip.  Clawson notes the work of Robert Maurer, “who argues that most change efforts fail because we try to do too much at once.  Maurer argues that in managing individual change, we should begin with tiny, incremental changes that are not threatening or difficult in any way.  When we choose bigger steps, he says, our natural, innate flight-or-fight response system kicks in and we are likely to relapse. On the other hand, when we begin with things that are utterly nonthreatening we can easily get some small wins, and these gradually build to the point where we can do more.”

Now for those of us whose change may be something like putting down the drink, drug, food, nicotine, sex or some other form of addiction that is a big change to make….but….it’s been many of our experiences who have done just that, that when we ask for the courage to change, we are given the courage to change.  Then we cash in on our willingness to change what we can where we can and take the action steps to help us get there.

What would you like the courage to change today?

This morning I had the amazing opportunity to meet with Author, Anna Rosenburg.  We met through a mutual friend, Katherine Moore Cooper (who interviewed Anna for her autobiography), while Anna is on tour here from “across the pond” for her book, “Who Am I Really?“.   Anna’s story is compelling.  Here is a brief description from the back of her book:

Until she was seven years old, Ann Rosenburg was happy. She live a simple life in a two-room flat with her devoted father. In Anna’s world, there was very little to worry about – until a wealthy, high-minded pillar of society’s across the road decided that it really wasn’t right for a little girl to be brought up by a poor father on his own.  Telling Anna that they were going to drive in the country, she took her away to live in a children’s home.

The devastation of this betrayal and the loss of regular contact with her father destroyed Anna’s young world. Her unhappiness was compounded by her confusion over her own identity.  What did her black skin mean? Why wasn’t it the same colour as her father’s? Where did she come from? Who was she really?

As you can imagine, Anna and I had much to talk about over two cups of coffee!   I’ll be interviewing Anna on Hope42Day, next Wednesday, December 5 at 4:30pm CST,  please do join us if not for the “live” show, then for the downloadable podcast.  I know I’ve often asked myself “who am I really?” and I certainly did not have as confusing an difficult a childhood as Anna.

Before meeting Anna, I had not read her book nor knew that she was bi-racial but I knew she would be special because of my respect for Katherine Moore Cooper and another mutual friend, Nettie Reynolds, who first told me about Anna and thought she might be just the sort of person I would enjoy interviewing on my show.  Without any knowledge of Anna’s life story nor that she was bi-racial, one of my first questions to her was if she had received (extreme) prejudice growing up with dark skin in England and what that was like for her.  I soon learned how ignorant I was about the black experience in England.   I’ve black friends in the United States from all kinds of socio and economic vectors and have heard their story, but was humbled to learn how difficult it was for Anna and black and brown-skinned people to grow up in that Anglo society.

Seems I have been reminded once again how important it is for us–you and me—to have as many conversations as we can with all kinds of people so that we can become aware of the blinders we walk around with in our lives, often times without any idea that we do.

Join us next Wednesday for what promises to be a moving interview.

One of my favorite sayings is by the Lakota Sioux which is an acknowledgement of the Universal relations, “mitakuye oyas’in” which means in all my relations.

It’s important for us (me) to remember that we are all in relationship with each other.  Not just those heart throbbing, vein pulsating, middle of the night awakening relationships.  And perhaps therein lays some of the clues we can use to help us in attracting and building those relationships that are of our heart’s desires.  We can pay attention to all of our relationships from our family to our friends to our co-workers to even the person on the other side of the counter who takes in our dry cleaning.  And, of course, paying attention to the most important relationship of all … the one we have within ourselves.  I don’t know about you, but I’m very glad that most people can’t read the thoughts in my head that I sometimes allow to take up space in my brain.

I was recently a guest on the ever popular Psychic Tee show.  When Tee opened up the lines for questions, so many people wanted to know  about their relationships and future relationships.  In my humble (or not so humble opinion) all questions lead back to self.  Who you are is who you are going to attract.  You will keep attracting that person or those people in your life until you’ve gotten the lesson that you’ve agreed to in your lesson plan for this life.  Only until we are ready to let go of creating huge dust clouds of illusions to cover up what we are unwilling to accept, will we be able to receive what the Universe truly does want to bring for our heart’s desire. 

How we experience our life may seem like we have no choice but to be distracted by the huge waves of high and low emotions but really it is just because the highs and lows are what we have allowed our life to be.  We don’t have to ebb and flow like that. It is a choice.  This afternoon I was listening to a radio station on Pandora that I’ve somehow programmed into my phone and can’t change. Uggh. It was interesting because most of the songs that were played were these heart wrenching relationship songs that I so do not have an interest in these days. But oh there would have been a time in my past when I would have totally loved wallowing in the misery that those kind of songs would have conjured for me.  Bring it on baby! Let the crying begin!  Thank g-d I am at a place in my life where so many other things catch my interest other than what drama I can fan to flames.

You can to if you make the conscious choice as well. Within all your relations.  Try it, you just might be surprised what you can create.