How often do you feel filled with inner peace, joy, and love – apparently for no reason? There is a reason, but it's not about anything external that's happening. For me, I have this wonderful experience when I am very connected with spirit and in deep surrender to my guidance. This wonderful, blissful energy of love, inner peace, and joy fills my being to overflowing. At these times, I can't stop smiling. Love pours out unendingly, and everything makes me giggle. Things that are not particularly funny to others strike me as hysterical and I laugh until my stomach aches. It is the very best feeling in the world! Sometimes I’m laughing and I have no idea what I am laughing at! I feel so blissful, joyful, and peaceful at these times!

This is causeless love, causeless joy, causeless inner peace – causeless bliss.

Many people who have been on a path of personal and spiritual growth have spent a lot of time talking. Talking with friends about what is wrong and what they want. Talking with therapists about their past and their beliefs. Talking with a mate about what needs changing. They have explored and explored and talked and talked - and not much has changed.

Perhaps it's time for less talk and more action - loving action.

Loving actions are those actions that support our highest good and the highest good of others. Loving actions are those actions that are motivated by love rather than by fear.

Exploring your limiting beliefs and where you got them is essential for opening the door to loving action. However, you can explore forever and nothing will change without loving action. You can talk and talk and learn and learn, but until you are willing to take loving action, nothing will change. It’s not that it is time to stop learning about our fears and beliefs, but it is time for all this learning to result in loving action. 

In my work with couples, I am often asked, "Shouldn't I communicate with my partner about this? Shouldn't we talk this over?"

For example, Ginger told me that when her husband, Ron, became demanding sexually or started to complain about not having enough sex, she was sexually turned off. She would become defensive, explaining her feelings to Ron repeatedly, in hopes of getting him to stop. She hoped that if she explained herself enough, he would understand that his demanding and complaining turned her off. Sometimes Ginger thought there was something wrong with her sexually when she was not turned on, and other times she thought that if only Ron would stop demanding and complaining, everything would be okay. Yet nothing changed. No amount of talking or explaining helped.

Self-Improvement is a mainstream concept, but what does it really mean to "Self-Improve?" What are we really improving when we self-improve? And what "self" are we improving?

As many of you know, we each have numerous "selves" - our wounded self, our soul self, and our loving adult self. Our soul self is our true self, our core self, and our essence - our inner child. Our soul self is our passion, our joy, our gifts and talents, our ability to love, and our creativity. We come into this life as our soul self, and when this self is loved and valued by our parents, we continue to naturally grow our God-given gifts and talents and manifest the fullness of our beings. This self wants to improve by learning the skills necessary to fully express itself.

Weight loss - such a "big" topic! Every month another book is out by another expert on weight loss. Everyone wants to know the secret to losing weight.

I certainly don't have THE secret, but I do have some secrets, and I want to share them with you in the hope you find them helpful.

Weight used to be a major issue for me. Losing weight was never out of my thoughts, and I can't tell you how many different diets, pills, and programs I tried until I discovered some "secrets" that have worked for me for many years.

So here they are. I hope they work as well for you as they have for me.

Gretta is very devoted to her spiritual path. It is extremely important to her to move through her life as a loving and compassionate person. She has a big heart and is always doing nice things for other people. It was, therefore, deeply upsetting to her when she would find herself suddenly irritated, angry, or blaming toward someone. Yet as hard as she tried to be consistently loving and compassionate, the anger and blame continued to surface.

As we worked together, Gretta discovered that, as important as it was to her to be loving and compassionate with others, she was rarely loving and compassionate with herself.

In the last few decades, partners have spent countless hours trying to "work out problems." Yet frequently they come up against a major roadblock: they just don't see things the same way. No matter how long they talk and how hard they try, neither ends up feeling heard and understood.

Tiffany consulted with me because she was unable to control her anger. Anytime someone told her what to do - someone she was in a close relationship with like her mother, her husband, or her best friend - she would instantly respond with anger. She was struggling with serious marital problems when she first consulted with me.

Inner Bonding is a powerful process for healing the fear and false beliefs that cause our pain, and it's also a process for developing and enhancing our passion, productivity, and creativity.

A loving parent does not just attend to a child when he or she is crying or angry. Loving moms and dads enjoy holding and playing with their children when they are peaceful, laughing, and learning.

All of us have a dysfunctional part, a part that operates from fears and false beliefs. This part – our lower left-brain ego wounded self - was deeply programmed from the time we were born to think and behave in ways that, today, create much of our fear and pain.

The purpose of the wounded self is to attempt to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. While the wounded self might profess a belief in a higher power, it doesn't have a personal connection with a loving source of truth, strength, and wisdom, and so it often feels alone in the world. It tries to fill the inner emptiness, which results from being spiritually disconnected, with various addictions - to people, processes, things, and substances.

All of us are born connected with our spiritual guidance. Young children whose parents value them as individuals and foster their inner knowing, grow up trusting their inner authority. But many of us grew up with parents who, in their desire to have control over us, consistently undermined our inner knowing.

When we were young, our parents were naturally the authorities on what was good or bad, right or wrong. They were big and we were little, so we naturally assumed that they knew much more than we did. When they discounted our inner knowing, we may have learned to discount it as well.

Many people experience confusion regarding the difference between setting goals and letting go of their attachment to outcomes. A recent question from a client addresses this issue regarding some online advice to be in the moment and not worry about the future. "If that's so, how can you set goals for yourself? Everyone sets goals based on the outcome. Why else would you even set goals or try to accomplish anything?" she asked me.

Central to our wellbeing is knowing that we are okay - that we are worthy, adequate, and lovable. Feeling that we are okay can come from two different sources:

• Others' attention and approval
• Our own loving adult connected with our spiritual guidance.

Codependency is the term used to describe the addiction to feeling okay through others.
 

"I'm such a jerk. How could I have said that?"

"I'm a loser. I'll never get anywhere."

"I'm so stupid. I should have learned this by now."

"I don't fit in because there is something wrong with me."

"I'll never be good enough. I'll never do it right."

"I'm permanently emotionally damaged. I'll never be okay."

"No one could love me. I'm not lovable."

...and on and on.

Are you aware of how often you judge yourself and how you feel as a result of your self-judgments?

Melanie grew up with a narcissistic mother who demanded that Melanie conform to her mother’s concept of how a child should behave. To protect herself from her mother's anger, blame and disapproval, Melanie tried to be the "perfect child". She got excellent grades in school, was obedient at home, and never did anything to cause her parents to worry about her. She would listen for hours to her mother's complaints, becoming a mother to her mother by the time she was twelve years old. Melanie was parentified and learned to be a caretaker, always trying to prove to her mother that she loved her.

Yet no matter what Melanie did to please her mother, it was never enough.

Her mother would always find something to scream at her about, something to blame her for, something which, in her mother's mind, justified her intense disapproval. Not only did her mother not feel loved by Melanie, but her mother would also accuse Melanie of being selfish. This crazy-making situation created much confusion for Melanie, and she absorbed the belief that there was something wrong with her.

In Melanie's mind, the only way she could feel like she was a good person was to prove to others who were important to her that she loved them. This pattern continued in her marriage. Melanie married a man much like her mother - a narcissist who constantly demanded her time and attention. Again, no matter how much time and attention she gave to her husband, and no matter how much sex she had with him, it was never enough. Like her mother, her husband was never happy with her and was frequently angry, blaming and disapproving of her.

No matter how gently I offer it, sometimes the information is very difficult for the person to hear, such as, "Right now, you are pulling on everyone for love and approval. You have handed your inner child to everyone around you to take care of you. There must be a good reason you are doing this. Are you open to exploring this?" or "There must be a very good reason that there is no loving adult present here. There is just a wounded child. Are you willing to open to learning about this?" or "I cannot feel you when you cry like this. This pain is the pain of a victim, trying to get someone to take care of you. This is pain that you are causing by your own self-judgment and self-abandonment. This crying is a pull on others to take care of you. You hope others will feel sorry for you and have compassion for you because you have no compassion for yourself. There must be some very good reasons that you are abandoning yourself right now. Are you willing to open to learning about this?"
 

When I say these things to people, they are often furious with me.

They think I am judging them rather than offering them a truth. They do not get that truth is love - authentic radical love. Without knowing the truth about their intention and their behavior, they cannot heal. The truth opens the door for them to start loving themselves instead of spending all their energy trying to get others to love them.

We are often told that it's important to speak up for ourselves, but we have few role models for what this looks like.

Gwendolyn asked the following question about this topic:

Is it possible to feel great being single? Yes, of course it is! There are many people who love being single. However, not everyone likes it.

Lorna is struggling with this issue with her wounded self:

Before I had my first child, I was a very sound sleeper. The phone could ring without waking me up. However, from the moment I came home from the hospital with my first son, that changed. I now heard every little whimper from the bassinet that was next to our bed. My mothering instincts had seemingly automatically clicked on, and I became totally tuned into my baby's feelings and needs.

On the inner level, it was a completely different story. Since my feelings and needs were unimportant to my parents, I had learned to make my own feelings and needs unimportant to me as well. I had learned to tune them out and instead be very tuned into others’ feelings and needs.