Blog – Page 6 – Debra Joy

Start Strong and Finish Strong.

So many things in your life are out of your control. The weather, the traffic, the sh*t that comes out of politicians mouths. If you get caught up in it all you could start to feel helpless. But here’s something I’ve learned from living in LA

There’s always someone next to me in the coffee shop writing a screen play.
I”m willing to spend hours in hellacious traffic to watch my friends perform.

If you go to enough comedy, poetry or story-telling shows, because your friends like to stand up in front of strangers and expose their most embarrassing neuroses with surprising insight, you’ll notice something:

Good shows begin strong and end strong.

Smart producers put their best acts at the begin and end of shows. This is a great gift to you, the audience. Especially with amateur shows, when you never know what you’re going to get.

A Strong Beginning sets the tone. You relax, feel hopeful, and engaged. It primes the pump. When you start laughing it’s easier to keep laughing.

A Strong Ending leaves you feeling great. It’s that last delicious bite of a meal. The taste lingers in your mouth. You remember it and talk about it on the way home.

It’s important to have high points sprinkled throughout the show of course. But nothing matters more than starting and finishing strong.

You can create a good day the same way.

Create a morning ritual to begin your day, and make it the first thing you do. The moment you jump on line, check email, the news or your social media feed, you’ve handed your morning over to someone else. You’re at the mercy of what’s coming at you and you have no control over what that will be.

Your morning ritual is something you do just for yourself. We all have a deep longing for connection. This can be a sacred time when you connect with yourself before the world tells you who you should be, and how you should act.

Would meditation give you more peace, a run make you feel energized, would journaling clear your head and help you focus, would dancing make you happy?

Simplifying it is a critical step. You’re not looking for the greatest morning ritual of all time, you’re looking for the most doable. What could you do even on the mornings when you’ve got a big presentation at work, house guests, and hungry kids?

Start with a ritual so simple you could do it no matter what.

Your meditation starts with simply sitting on the edge of your bed, feeling your feet touch the floor and taking 5 deep breaths as soon as you wake up. Or you begin by journaling one sentence a day. You dance while brushing your teeth or stuffing lunch bags. Start with that. So many well intentioned folks dropped their practices because they tried to do too much.

Make it a practice that is so easy you can do it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

And then do it. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Once it’s done ~ check your phone, get online, or do whatever you want to do next.

Create an evening ritual to end your day. Watching TV, or scrolling online just before you go to bed can stimulate your brain, override your sleep signals, and mess with your circadian rhythms. A simple ritual can help you transition from revved up to calmed down and prepare you for a restful sleep. If you’ve got kids, you know how your evening routine helps them get ready for bed, but it’s easy to forget to do this for yourself.

An evening ritual can be a time you let go of all the roles you play throughout the day, and reconnect with yourself. If you want to relax, a yoga routine could be simplified down to a few restorative asanas. You could listen to a 10 minute guided meditation. Journal about something that made you feel grateful. If you find yourself working late into the night to get a jump on the next day, your ritual could be writing out your top three priorities for tomorrow.

Which do you think would have the best impact on your life right now ~ A morning or evening ritual?

Start with that one. Experiment. Tweak it until you find the sweet spot. Make it a habit. When you’re doing it automatically and feeling the benefits, add the other (If you started with morning, you’ll now add evening).

Over time your rituals may grow. My morning rituals usually take me about an hour, but if I’m in a rush I can simplify them to their bare bones in just a few minutes. It’s more enjoyable to do it daily than do it perfectly.

I’d love to hear what rituals you have, and how they support your day. If you don’t have any, what would you like to try and why? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Start strong. End strong. Your day is like a great performance.

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Oh, and if you happen to be in LA check out my friend Nancy Murphy. She’s a poet and spoken word performer who’ll probably be opening or closing the show.

How to Accelerate your Success

When I worked for Renewal Partners, a private fund, entrepreneurs would pitch me on their businesses. I’d determine if their product or service matched our mission, if there was a viable market for it, and most importantly if I believed in the leadership. Was this a person (or team) that could do the job? Did we want them in our portfolio? Could we work beside them and support them to achieve their goals?

One day I met with two entrepreneurs who presented a great pitch. I liked the guys but something bothered me, so I went directly to my boss. Joel Solomon, the President of the fund, has taught me so much over the years, but this lesson struck me like a slap across the face that I needed to wake up.

I told Joel I was concerned that both these men had business failures in their past. He responded, “Just because a man has failed, it doesn’t make him a failure”.

That simple statement shocked me. Though I felt the truth of it in my bones, I’d lived quite differently. I had seen all my own failures as reflections of my tragic flaws. Each one a small death. They were signs of weakness in the survival of the fittest. They were parts of me I wanted to hide.

Constantly facing the bright light of goals and achievements, I had tucked my failures behind me, where they’d stayed in the shadow of shame, weighing me down and holding me back. Though I’d often been a risk-taker, the fear of failure had stopped me at times, made me anxious, and killed my joy. My inability to truly embrace each failure and integrate it into my experience squelched my opportunity to really learn from them, laugh about them, and lighten up.

Joel’s statement turned failure upside down for me. If they weren’t failures because they’d failed, then neither was I.

I was successful because I’d failed. I’d failed because I’d tried something new. I’d followed the impulses inside me. I was successful because I was willing to try, and therefore willing to fail, again. This buoyed me to risk, experiment, and fail some more.

Failure doesn’t define you. It informs you.

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Then Joel added, “My mentor taught me to never trust anyone who hasn’t been through a bankruptcy.”

That was a hard one for me to swallow at the time. Seriously, dude, my mind is imploding from your first slap, and now you add that! Bankruptcy is the ultimate business failure. But Joel saw it differently. It meant truth-telling, learning, slate-clearing, and humbling.

Frequently, Success + Success + Success = Hubris. Often folks who haven’t failed and learned are less open to collaboration, less compassionate, and less fun. And that limits their future success.

Not everyone who’s failed has learned from it, but people who take responsibility for their life and strive to do great things see each failure as an opportunity to re-examine their beliefs and behaviours, and experiment some more.

So I encourage you to Embrace Failure to Accelerate your Success.

When you embrace failure it becomes just one experience among many. It’s simply what happens when the result of your actions doesn’t match your expectations. It loses its power over you… and you become truly powerful.

You don’t have to take my word for it, or even Joel’s. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, said “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.“

Stop fearing failure. Don’t shun it, hope to avoid it, or even reluctantly accept it. Get to know it. Open your door and welcome it in like a long-lost friend. Wrap your arms around it and give it a hug.

When fear of failure loses its power over you, you become truly powerful.

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I’d love to hear how failure has shaped you:

Have you learned and grown from it?
How has it contributed to your success?
What tips do you have for overcoming fear of it?

If you know someone who is definitely not a failure, and may need some encouragement to try again, please share this post with them.

How to Rock Your New Year’s Resolution.

Fresh Start. Blank Page. New Beginning.

Do you love the possibilities each New Year brings?

If so, it’s because it resonates with your limitless self. That expansive essence of you that is the source of all possibilities. Yippeee 🙂

If not, it’s because you’ve experienced enough unfulfilled resolutions already. Meh 🙁

The positive potential inspires many of us to create a New Year’s resolution. But how many times have you resolved to make a profound change January 1, only to find that you’ve forgotten what it was, come June?

If that’s been your experience, don’t feel bad. That’s how it is for most of us.

92% of people who make a New Year’s resolution fail to stick with it. They begin full of anticipation and expectation that this year will be better than the last. They commit to creating the change they want in their lives. But the odds of them sticking with their resolution are about the same as beating the house in Vegas.

In many cases your chances of winning in Vegas are better. I’m not exaggerating.

With these Seven Steps you’ll join the RARE 8% and ROCK YOUR RESOLUTION:

1. DECIDE what you want, by FEELING what it will give you.

Knowledge doesn’t motivate change. You already know that eating healthy, staying hydrating, getting enough sleep and exercise would exponentially improve your life, but do you always do it?
Feelings motivate change. Everything you do is consciously or unconsciously motivated by how you want to feel. Imagine you’re successfully living out this resolution and notice how it feels.
Forget about what you should do. Focus on what you want to do.

2. CHOOSE A DAILY ACTION that would give you the results you want.

Resolutions often focus on the result: I’m going to lose 5 lbs. Get in Shape. Start my own business. Be more peaceful. These are great goals, but they won’t direct your daily actions.
Determine ONE ACTION, that if done daily, would give you the result you want.
You may already know what that is. Most of us do. But we bury it under an ever-growing list of other things we need to do first.
If the answer doesn’t come to you right away, spend a bit of quiet time asking what the one thing is. It will come to you.

3. MAKE IT SIMPLE AND SPECIFIC

You’ll know it’s specific and simple enough if you can do it every day NO MATTER WHAT.
Example: Rather than committing to doing yoga every day, the simple and specific version could be: “I will do at least 4 asanas every day” or “I will do at least 3 minutes of yoga every day”.
It’s tempting to make a bold commitment, but you’re setting yourself up for success if you under-commit and over-deliver.
You can always do more than you’ve committed to, but you’ve made it easy to do what you said you’d do.

4. COMMIT 100% TO DOING IT EVERY SINGLE DAY.

This is why you’re making it as simple as possible. You have to be able to do it every day. No matter what.
You can do more than you’ve committed to any time you want.
If you’re commitment isn’t for every day, commit solidly to the days you’re going to do it.

5. FIND A CUE

We are all creatures of habit, and our habits are cued by things that come before them.
That’s why people who give up smoking find it harder when they have a coffee or a drink. The drink cues the habit to light up a cigarette.
Create a cue for your habit so you’ll be reminded of it every day.
In the example of yoga, you could roll out your yoga mat every night so you’ll see it when you wake up.

6. RECORD YOUR PROGRESS.

Make it a simple process of recording that you did the action you committed to.
You’re more likely to stick with it when you track your progress.
It can be as simple as checking a box on your calendar. Or writing a sentence in a journal.
You may want to report your progress to a friend, or group of friends, and stay accountable to each other.

7. CLIMB BACK ON AS SOON AS YOU FALL OFF.

Even with commitment, cues, and a buddy system, you may find that you just blow it one day.
As soon as that happens, get back at it the very next day.
As a girl who fell off a horse at a young age, I can tell you I wish someone had made me get right back on.

Most of your life is lived by habits. You’d go crazy if you had to decide everything every day: should I eat breakfast at home or out? what should I eat? should I brush my teeth? should I flush the toilet? should I wash my hands? should I dry them? what route should I take to work? what should I wear to bed? which side should I sleep on? Your brain goes on automatic for most tasks, to free up your energy for more creative endeavors.

Your habits determine the quality of your life.

By consciously repeating new activities that will become unconscious habits over time, you’re creating the life you want. Research shows that when you master one new healthy habit, it leads to more and more healthy habits.

So choose one new simple habit as a resolution, follow the seven steps, and enjoy your life in the 8%.

Have a great holiday and a wonderful new year.

Love Debra.

Always Follow A Generous Impulse

Each and every day generous impulses rise with in you. Follow them.

They’re immediate, pure, and unconcerned about results. They are expressions of life wanting to live, love wanting to love. You feel them before you think them. They evaporate if they are not acted upon.

They are the smile, the laugh, the kind word or act without any question about what’s in it for you. In fact they have no thought of you at all. The generous impulse is not a humble “selfless act”, but an act that is totally lacking of “self”.

You’ll recognize them by the goodness you feel when you follow them. You may be expansive and calm, or giddy like a kid at play. There’s an innocence and bold vulnerability to the generous impulse that is hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it, and you recognize it when you see it.

It acts and it moves on.

It doesn’t wait around to be noticed or thanked. But its goodness lingers in your cells.

The essence of you, the very core of who you are, is constant, eternal and limitless. It’s unafraid of opinions, and doesn’t care about results. It is the source of life and love and gives itself without regard. This is the birth place of the generous impulse.

When you dance for no reason, laugh out loud, hug a stranger, help an injured animal, smile at a baby, cry at a sunset, give up your seat on the bus, or tuck a fiver into the cup of a homeless man when he’s looking the other way, you’re following the impulse that comes up from the deepest part of you.

If you breathe for just a moment right now you’ll probably remember several generous impulses you’ve followed, and how true they made you feel.

The generous impulse doesn’t rise up out of guilt or duty or a belief that you should. There is no “you” in the impulse to be dutiful or guilty. There is no “you” that should. These heavy obligations don’t begin in the constant truth of who you are. They spin round and round the ever changing flux of thoughts, ideas, judgments and beliefs that flow through you a thousand times a day. They are quick to brake the flow of the generous impulse, and stop you from living your most joyful life.

The impulse to dance moves you. The weight of “I’ll look stupid” holds you down.

A hug rushes from your heart to your arms. The straight-jacket of “what will he think?” keeps you bound.

If you pay attention you’ll notice the impulses just before your mind rushes in. If you catch it you’ll feel the expansive joy of the movement inside you and the quick contraction of your mind’s response.

I feel the impulse inside me every day, and I override it much of the time … to fit in, play it safe, and not be “too much”. But when I let these bubblings up to do what they will, it puts a spring in my step every time. It wakens me back up to who I really am.

Several weeks ago I made a deposit at my bank. The teller, a man I’d never met before, tried several times to suppress a big yawn. “Need a coffee?” I asked. “A big latte”, he answered, “but I don’t have a break for two hours.” I left the bank and two blocks later passed a coffee shop. “Buy him a latte.” the impulse giggled. I felt the rush of joy. With my hand on the door knob of the coffee shop my smarty-pants voice chirped, “Don’t be ridiculous.” I felt the joy-crushing energy of that voice and opened the door anyway. “You don’t even know what he wants”, it chided, while I inched my way through the line. With the latte in hand, I headed back to the bank, when scaredy-cat voice freaked out, “What if he thinks you’re hitting on him?” “Stop” “It’s not to late to turn back”.

Like a mad-woman, I laughed at the voices in my head and kept walking. I got back to the bank and delivered the coffee to the sleepy teller. He was shocked and pleased and we both laughed. I don’t know his name and will probably never see him again, but that impulse more than made my day. Even remembering it now, quickens the joy within me.

Not all impulses are so involved. They are usually short and sweet and ever so simple – letting a car cut in, opening a door, telling her she looks pretty, putting the worm back in the dirt. And they always make you feel good.

Each and every day generous impulses rise with in you. Follow them.

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If you feel the generous impulse to share this with someone, please follow it now!

Peace And Where to Find It.

I’ve just finished reading Peace and Were To Find It, by Chris Papadopoulos. It’s a straightforward directive for accessing your true nature.

I loved that he gets right to the heart of the matter. Peace is your natural state and getting to it is simple. It’s the first book I’ve read that really matched my own experience, and he explains it in a much more direct way than I’ve been able to.

Chris was kind enough to take some time from his book tour to answer some questions. I’m hoping it will inspire you to buy a copy for yourself and people you love.

Our brief interview went like this:

Chris I’m so glad you wrote this book. You’ve clearly articulated the simple path. You wrote, “…the more we know something, the less we are able to describe it.” but all through the book I was saying, “Yes, that’s it. You’re saying it so well”. I’m really impressed with what you’ve done.

What inspired you to write this book it?

Thank you for your kind words Deb and I am glad you are out there on the front lines of body awareness with me! There were recurring themes in my work with students who would say: How do I awaken to end my dissatisfaction and suffering? I do yoga and/or meditation and go to retreats etc., why isn’t it working? Focusing on my self awareness seems a little self indulgent, what about all the suffering in the world?

I realized I needed to lay out some basic principles that have been consistently overlooked or minimized and finally give them the attention they deserved. Many people were talking more about self awareness than feeling it in the body. Specifically, the depth of their body awareness was limited and they had not made the link between body awareness and their level of present moment awareness. But given that what we call awareness/consciousness, the Now or presence are words not easily associated with felt experiences, I began to emphasize that presence feels like a vibrant stillness or peace — it has been called the “peace of God” or as Eckhart Tolle mentions in the introduction to my book, “the peace that passeth all understanding”.

We are all looking for inner peace and world peace and the world needs to know that peace is already here looking for us, waiting for us to notice it. Peace is a fundamental characteristic of our deepest being which also happens to be the source of all existence–we are the water drop as well as the ocean. The feeling of deep peace is one of the hallmarks of consciousness, which is the stuff that makes up the universe. And since consciousness—and therefore peace–is everywhere and in everything, what is lacking is our attending to it. This also means world peace is already here, saturating every place and molecule, waiting to be ‘activated’ by our awareness of it. We bring peace to life, manifesting it, by noticing it and experiencing it.

You wrote about the moment when seeking stopped for you and your mom said, “That’s good.” What is it you were seeking, and how did you know it had stopped?

I was seeking for the answer to who I was beyond the egoic “me”–the mental self-image we have of ourselves with which we identify. By that time I knew that my true nature could never be thought, only felt, and that morning in 2003 when I woke from bed I also woke up to the experience of a permanent peace. Peace is not some vague inert feeling in the body. Peace is vibrant and intelligent.There is ultimately no difference between peace and its Source. It emerges with the information that it has always been here and that it is the essence of your being and can be found in all things. Since that day peace has remained as the bedrock of my experience. Even on the most upsetting days I can feel it in the background. This permanence is simply the nature of the peace-filled Source finally being revealed–and it is an immense relief.

You do a great job of clarifying the similarities and difference between our natural state and emotions. I was wondering if a reader would understand that if they’d not already experienced it. How has the response been to that?

For those that have had moments of clarity where a peaceful presence emerged, it is possible to take note of the difference between what within us is permanent and what is transient. Some people nod in agreement or with an “A-ha” realization that they in fact already knew this truth, at least intellectually. There are also some people who find this subject uncomfortable as if, in some way, I am invalidating their emotional experiences. I make a distinction between what is “normal” i.e commonplace and what is “natural”. Of course, it is natural to experience emotions, just not so much that they dominate us, perpetuate our suffering and contribute to the mental activity that blocks the experience of our peaceful, joyful, fulfilled eternal nature. Peace and Joy, for example, are uncaused: they do not rely on external events for them to be present. And they may elicit delightful emotions because they are present but the latter like happiness, pleasure, or relief are temporary while the former are permanent and fundamental characteristics of who you are.

How is this book different from a “self-help” book?

I am not trying to help the “me”–who you think you are–feel better about itself. I am not trying to get you what you want, not trying to make a better you–a ‘you’ which is only temporary and is actually the source of your suffering and dissatisfaction. I am trying to reveal who you really are. Interestingly, by helping you have your own direct experience of your true self you will feel better and fulfilled…and life will finally make sense.

What can readers expect to get from it?

Public response has been very positive–and emotional too! Readers are discovering how to finally feel for themselves the peace that is always within us and around us. There will be breakthroughs on a spiritual path to awakening that has plateaued for many. They will learn about addictions, their root cause, and the way to dissolve them. And they will understand why the world has never created peace and what we can do to finally experience global peace.

Thanks for taking the time with me today Chris, and thanks for writing this book. The message is so direct and clear.

Thank you Deb for all that you do. ~ Chris

I encourage you to pick up Peace and Where to Find It.

Read it. Practice it. Give it to someone you love.

You can also work directly with Chris one on one or in groups. Email him at chris@youarepeace.org .

How to get more done when you’re already overwhelmed.

Over the years I’ve worked with clients who want to do more. The only problem is, they’re already overwhelmed by what they’re doing. Sound familiar?

Adding more to do would never help them get where they want to go.

My strategy is this:

#1 Eliminate.

#2 Delegate.

#3 Dominate.

While you can do this with any area of your life, let’s assume you want to grow your business but don’t know how you could possibly do one more thing. I invite you to adopt this strategy for yourself.

Before you can implement #1, you have to get clear about #3.

FIRST: Take time to figure out what you really want to do. If you were living the way you want, what would dominate your life? Don’t think about the result you hope it will create, but how you actually want to spend your time, and use your life.

So often people move up the corporate ladder, or build a bigger business, hoping for more security or freedom, only to find they’re doing less of the things they’re really good at and love, and more of the things that bog them down. They feel caged and overwhelmed instead of happy and free.

NEXT: List all the things that you do in your business. Get clear on which tasks enliven you. Know what you’re good at and want to improve. Understand what impacts your clients and bottom line, and most of all, your own happiness.

I have a client who we’ll call Jane. She has a business teaching art to elementary school kids. She leads after school programs and summer camps, and hires other artists to deliver classes as well. She had an idea for a new online program that could take her business to a whole new level, and give her more free time. But she was already so busy with running the business she had, there was no time or energy for implementing her new idea.

One of Jane’s gifts as an art teacher was being able to access her intuition and creatively guide her students to new depths of discovery, in a calm and loving way. Working with students to bring out their talents and help them shine was pure delight for her. Jane knew that time in nature fed her soul, slowed her down, stirred her creative juices and got her in touch with her true self. It did for her, what she wanted to do for her students. When she was in that state she was inspired to paint. It flowed out of her easily. Through a simple exercise, she got clear that living in that nourished state, that connected her with her artistic nature and let creativity flow, was her top priority.

Once her priority was clear, I took her through a process to examine every task involved in running her business, and assess which ones fueled her priorities, enhanced her customer’s experience, or impacted her bottom line.

Once you know this for yourself you can begin. It may seem like a lot of work, but it’s a lot more work to be constantly overwhelmed. Tim Ferris says, “Busyness is a form of laziness”. If you won’t use the time to figure out what’s important, you’ll stay busy.

1. Eliminate: Once you know your priorities you can then eliminate anything that doesn’t support them. These are things that keep you busy and hinder you from living the life you want most.

When you don’t know what to eliminate, consider this: What is the one thing that if you gave it up, would free you up more than anything else? In business, eliminate one thing you’re doing that doesn’t enliven you, impact your customer’s experience, or your bottom line.

Jane was spending a lot of time online. It could often suck up hours of her day. When we looked into it she could see that it was serving a few purposes. A) It felt like she was working: She could look at her teacher’s posts, send encouraging words, share inspiring quotes and pictures, and create and post ads. B) She felt connected: Looking at people’s creative projects, commenting and sharing made her feel like she was part of something.

When we looked at what it was accomplishing she could see that she really wasn’t getting valuable work done, nor feeling truly connected. She didn’t know of any students or parents who’d found out about her classes through social media. Though it might be happening, she wasn’t tracking it. Time online kept her indoors and isolated, feeling like she was missing out on life, rather than in nature where she felt deeply connected. And it had been months since she’d picked up a paintbrush for pleasure.

Jane first eliminated technology from her mornings, and started her day in nature instead. She then limited her time on social media, except for 15 minutes a day to read and comment on her teachers’ posts, and half an hour on the weekend for personal use. She then eliminated (unfriended and unsubscribed from) every site or person that didn’t make her feel connected or inspired through their interactions. She was surprised to discover how free she felt.

2. Delegate: There are aspects of your business that you can’t eliminate, but doing them yourself doesn’t serve your priorities. They need to get done for the business to function properly.

Before you delegate anything ask yourself – why am I doing this? Maybe it should actually be in the eliminate pile. If you know for certain that it positively impacts your customer’s experience, the environment, or your bottom line, but it doesn’t enliven you to do it, delegate it.

The person taking on the job may have a different way of doing things. Be open. You can easily get stuck in doing something a certain way, just because you’ve always done it that way.

Jane hired a student to manage her business’s social media. The student created ads with a call to action so Jane could track which promotions worked and which didn’t. The young woman she hired was more efficient, and happy to have the work. Jane was relieved to be free of it.

3. Dominate: When you eliminate the things you don’t need to do, and you delegate things that must be done, you dominate your life with the best of you.

Once Jane was spending more time on her true priorities, it became easier for her to see even more things she could eliminate and delegate. She began making simple but dramatic changes. She stopped answering her phone if she didn’t recognize the number, and let all calls go to voicemail to deal with them during her office hours. She got a program for clients to book their lessons on an online calendar and pay in advance. This way she no longer had to deal with accounts payable, and was guaranteed payment if they cancelled w/o noticed. These and other little changes made a big difference in Jane’s focus and energy throughout the day.

Her early mornings were spent in nature, followed by time in her studio with paint, music and a cup of coffee. After nourishing herself she checked emails and voicemails before her day of teaching began. She found time most days to work on the new program to scale her business. In less than five months she implemented her online idea, and it’s been growing steadily for over a year.

When you thoughtfully Eliminate and Delegate, you Dominate your life with what you really want.

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If you know someone who wants to make changes in their life, but is already “full”, please share this strategy with them.

The other way to overcome your resistance.

There are two ways we usually deal with resistance:

1. Push through it.

2. Succumb to it.

There are times when pushing through resistance is exactly the right thing to do. Until this summer when the ocean where I live became very warm, every time I’d go in I’d think “It’s too cold”. I’d want to rush back to shore and watch from the beach. But then I’d miss the fun of diving into waves and being pummeled by the surf.

So instead I’d focus on the fun and let it pull me through my resistance, running into the ocean as fast as I could. My body always adjusts to the temperature, and I have a great time.

Then there are times when it makes sense to just succumb to resistance. For some time I’d been wanting to write some of the practices I’ve developed over the years for myself and my clients, and offer them as a sort of manual. I tried to force myself to sit down and write at the same time each day as real writers advised. But I couldn’t find the juice. My internal voices said succumbing to my resistance was based in fear or laziness. I tried to push through my resistance and keep my bum in the chair as I was advised to do, but there was no pleasure it in. (how ironic would it be to write about pleasure while feeling none?)

So I succumbed to my resistance, and did other things. Pleasurable things. It took some experimenting for me to effectively describe these practices in words on a page. Now the words seem to be flowing out of me with greater ease, in my own rhythm and pace. (You can subscribe below to get yourself a free chapter)

These two approaches will work in different circumstances, but if you only operate with these two you’ll miss much of the wisdom your resistance wants to teach you.

There’s a third and less known way of dealing with resistance, and it’s this:

3. Honor it.

A client of mine has developed a successful program that other people purchase and teach to their clients. Over the past year she’s been refining it based on the teachers’ feedback. As she was implementing the feedback she noticed that there was one change she kept avoiding. She would distract herself with other things, and kept missing her own deadlines for making the change. She knew she had to do it but she was procrastinating, and feeling bad about herself for procrastinating. So I recommended we examine her resistance to getting it done.

What we discovered underneath the resistance was her wisdom that this change would alter the integrity of the program, which was built on honesty, intimacy, and face to face support. She wasn’t consciously aware that this was at the core of her procrastination, but this wisdom was lurking under her resistance all along. Once she said it out loud she knew it was true. Once she understood why she wasn’t making this change, even though some teachers had requested it, her confidence in herself, the program, and its power soared. Examining her resistance made her revisit the core values of the program.

She wrote to me: I’ve never really thought of it in this way before but I honestly LOVE exploring resistance! I love my instincts. My resistance to something is kind of like my instincts saying, “DON’T Do this.” Since it’s a stopping/slowing/reversing motion it doesn’t feel as good as “Do this.”

I really didn’t know why I had this resistance. It didn’t become clear until you and I talked about it the other day. It makes sense to me now why I don’t like the idea – because, it breaks the human connection, and the key to [this program] is the human connection. But it became crystal clear when we talked it through.

The beauty-part of this is that now, with a clear understanding of my resistance, I can take proper action. Instead of just [making the changes] because people have asked for them, yet not feeling good about it, I can really explore if there is a way to keep the human connection while utilizing these modalities. I’m totally open to seeing if I can. I would actually love it if it could work. That would be win-wins all around. And, if it truly doesn’t work, I can then say clearly and with integrity that that will not be part of the program, explain clearly why, and then let the instructors figure out how to deal with that on their own.

~ Coaching Client

(printed with client’s permission)

Can’t you just hear the enthusiasm and confidence in her voice? I promise you it was a big change from how she’d been feeling before examining her resistance.

1. She could have pushed through her resistance and done what she thought she should have done to make the teachers happy. She could have continued feeling bad about it, not really knowing why.

2. She could have continued succumbing to her resistance, worrying about what she thought she should be doing, procrastinating and zapping her confidence and creative energy.

3. By honoring it she discovered the underlying wisdom, made clearer decisions, felt empowered and created a kick-a** program, the teachers love.

Honoring your resistance will reveal the underlying wisdom in it.

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How do you honor your own resistance?

There are many ways: You can speak with it, write to it, draw or dance with with it. Whatever modality suits you best, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Treat it like a wise friend or teacher with something valuable to share.
Respect it, ask questions of it, listen closely, get intimate.
You can ask it whatever you like.
Then get quiet. Breathe. Listen for an answer.
Know that it’s an ally in your evolution. Not the enemy.

And if you really want to understand your resistance, become it.

Embody it. How would it sit, stand, move? Do that.
What would it think, how would it speak? Do that.
Experience yourself as the resistance, and feel what motivates your actions.

By becoming the resistance you are no longer separate from it, in reaction to it, nor the victim of it. This can be a very empowering exercise.

If you know someone stuck in their own resistance, please share this with them as a potential way through.

August in LA is Silent

August in LA is silent.

Like a Midwestern morning after a long night of snow.

My windows are open, but no breezes blow.

Everything is perfectly still.

Dry heat presses down on us like an insulation blanket.
Protecting us from the sound of one another.

Dogs don’t bark. Birds don’t sing. Children are taking long naps.

Surely, people walk by our house on the way to the beach.
Perhaps they tiptoe and whisper their words.

Cars don’t start, alarms don’t sound.
Where has the ice cream truck gone?

Ice cubes in my tea avoid each other, afraid of breaking the spell.

Somewhere close by a wildfire is raging, sucking the landscape into its maw.
Still I don’t hear a thing.

This city of millions is silent, and I am completely alone.

Five ideal conditions for growth.

My girlfriends and I went dancing. The theme at dance was outgrowing the shells that contain us. While our facilitator, Michael Skelton, took us through a process of feeling the shells we are living in that are too tight for us, and pushing through the boundaries to expand ourselves, he read David Whyte’s Sweet Darkness. Whenever I read or hear this poem, the lines that touch me most are:

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

After dancing we went for lunch and talked about the class. We shared our different experiences of what it felt like to be contained in a shell we’d outgrown, the calling of something more expansive, and the courage to move into that bigger shell.

Being a cancer, I took the whole shell analogy quite literally and couldn’t stop thinking about hermit crabs and their complex movements to bigger shells that must happen for their growth.

Our human requirements for growth are not nearly as complicated, but in the comfort of these friends who love me and support my growth, I felt the ideal conditions for slipping into a bigger shell.

Here are Five Ideal Conditions for Growth:

Create them for yourself. Offer them to your clients. Share them with your loved ones.

1. Awareness: It takes a level of awareness to even notice you’ve out grown the shell. You must be awake enough to notice that what use to enliven you is now too small for you. The tight fit can feel comfortable for a long time, and before you know it, it’s squeezing you in, so that what once suited you, now confines you. This happens subtly over time, like gaining a pound or two every year. It sneaks up on you, until you’re busting out of your jeans. Paying attention to your own life and how you feel is critical.

2. Aloneness: When you are daring enough to grow and change it can frighten people. Even the ones who love you most may want to hold you back. Because when you change, the relationship changes. And change scares people. Sometimes you need to pull back from the world, drop all the distraction of the other voices and listen to the one that matters. There’s a nascent period of growth that is for you alone.

3. Courage: It takes courage admit you’re living in a shell too small – whether it’s a relationship, a career, or a way of getting along, holding your tongue and playing it safe. It takes even more courage to step out of it, unsure of where it will lead you.

4. Vulnerability. Stepping out of the too small shell and into the next size up can leave you naked for a while. It’s exploration and experimentation and a willingness to fail, that leads to the bigger shell. Vulnerability is powerful and it takes great courage.

5. Support. You can grown on your own, but it sure is easier with support, especially from others who’ve been where you are. In the video of the hermit crabs you see that the growth of one crab supports the other. As one crab moves to a bigger shell it makes room for others to move up in size. When we grow we lift others who are willing, to grow with us.

Like my girlfriends at lunch who wanted to hear about my “too small shell” and supported my desire and willingness to live in a bigger shell, we need people who cheer on our growth, inspire us to take risks and love us when we try and fail.

I’d love to hear in the comments section, if you’re feeling the calling of a bigger shell, and which conditions would support you most right now.

Here’s to your growth, and the growth of those you love,

Debra

When you are daring enough to grow and change it can frighten people.

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If you’d like to support someone’s growth, please share this with them. We all grow together!