Our desire to belong is a natural one. It is a desire many of us experience when we get stuck in our heads and feel disconnected.

We live in the mental body or the thinking mind, which perceives that something is missing—that we don’t belong. When we drop underneath the story the thinking mind writes, we realize we already belong. In fact, we cannot not belong.

It is our habits and patterns, the ways we perceive life, that keep us from perceiving our true magnificence.

The activity of the conscious mind is typically steeped in protection and performance. It writes stories to fill in the blank because it believes something is “missing.”

The mind attempts to do things like—carve a path for ourself, make sure we belong, or get approval and love. Those things start when we land here on earth, we energetically disperse or as I call it, “splat.” We’re not sure what happened, so we turn our attention externally to figure it out and prepare in case it happens again.

When our senses orient externally, we begin to need the external world to constantly give us feedback like, “Am I okay? Do I belong? Am I approved of? Am I enough?” Because of this misperception, that we need the outside for our sense of “okayness,” we focus “out there” instead of “in here,” to know if we belong. We end up with this giant void inside.

Contributing to the new humanity gives me meaning beyond anything I could have possibly imagined. I write books, give events, and create programs to teach about creating authentic power—aligning the personality with the soul so that we can transform ourselves with our own wills instead of trying to change others.

I am filled with meaning when I am giving a gift to Life. Sometimes when a chapter that I am writing comes to an end, or I reread a chapter that I have written, I cry without being able to stop because I am so grateful to be allowed to write these words and share these thoughts.

When asked about how he was able to create lifelike, detailed forms from blocks of marble, Michelangelo answered, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

And so it is with your authentic self. You don’t need to create your personal truth; you simply need to remove everything that is standing in the way of self-expression. And the biggest obstacle is usually fear. 

Rejecting Limits on Your Voice or Your Truth

When your fifth energy, the energy that corresponds to creative self expression, is unbalanced, it’s common to feel that you don’t have a right to express yourself. This lack of harmony can lead to fears about speaking up, for fear you’ll be judged, mocked, censured, or otherwise rejected. 

But we cannot be totally free unless we are committed to telling the absolute truth — to others and to ourselves. And this takes courage! Often, we can be led to believe stories that it is safer to fit in, or that we have to earn our worth before we can speak up. Many people have had to fight to be heard, or maybe you were punished for telling the truth. Maybe you were, like me, taught how to fit in, and that being different was dangerous. 

Are you making the kind of money you want to be making in your current job? Chances are, your answer is no. But when you know how to get a raise, everything can change.

If you feel like you should be making more — but don’t want to have to apply for new positions at different companies and start all over somewhere else — getting a raise can be the answer.

Today I’d like to share my top tips on how to make more money where you are right now and propel your career in the direction you want to go. 

Add More Value

My first tip is to create and add more value to the company. 

What can you do to help the company make or save more money? How can your efforts help to boost the organization’s results or reputation, or fulfill the company’s mission or objectives? What can you do to make your manager’s or coworkers’ lives easier? 

Look for needs that aren’t being met — either within the organization or your clients’ or customers’ needs — and meet those needs to add more value wherever possible. That’s the first, and biggest step you can take to make yourself more deserving of a higher paycheck. 

I've Been Thinking...

Happy Passover! Happy Palm Sunday! I hope you are smiling wherever you are!

This morning, I am smiling as I look ahead to Holy Week. I am looking forward to it because it feels like an opportunity to reset. Regardless of your religion, this is a moment for everyone to reflect and renew. Both feel more important now than ever. 

The other day, I read a quote from Prince Harry that stayed with me all week long. Writing about his mother’s death and how it affected him as a child, he said: “I didn’t want to believe or accept it, and it left a huge hole inside of me.”

Prince Harry wrote those words in a foreword to a new picture book aimed at helping children cope with losing a loved one to COVID-19. His words resonated with me deeply because grief has left a huge hole inside of me, too. It’s a hole that I’ve tried to fill up over the years with going, doing, and accomplishing things. I’ve always been hoping to get ahead of grief so that I didn’t have to deal with it.

Grief is like that. It’s there, and you want to deal with it, but you know you have to carry on so you try to push past it.

Did you know that if you spell stressed backwards the word is dessert? Do you remember when you were a child all that mattered was the fun parts and all the chores and grown up stuff could be saved to last? As a matter of fact we had such a look of dread written all over our faces when we were asked to come in from playing with our friends or we had to wait before we could play. So how did we get to be so important that we do not create the time to still play in our lives. Is the issue that we are more important? What if I told you I believe the issue is we have become non-important. We are so unimportant to ourselves that we have made everything and everyone more significant than we are and we have forgotten the value and necessity of desserts. Often in our society today, too many people are doing things and staying busy without fulfillment and joy. Too many people are on automatic pilot without consciously choosing to participate with decisions which are necessary in order to have a life in which in college we would have written home about. We have forgotten that we are here to enjoy our journey and savor each and every day.

We all know the mantra there is good stress and bad stress and what a brilliant way of making another reason as to why we have forgotten to enjoy our lives. Regardless of whether it is good stress or bad stress…it’s still stress and it accelerates the head chatter, the bad eating habits, the lack of sleep and all the other elements which go with stress. We can intellectualize stress and explain what type it is yet our body still feels it and doesn’t understand why we are so out of balance with it. 

Life passes by slow and fast. We have both good and bad times. Happy and sad experiences. We walk through life and experience joy and loss, as well as happiness and death. There is contrast through it all. As I arrive at my 50th time around the sun, I took the time to sit with SOME of what I have learned. These are in no particular order and are certainly not all I have learned. I am sure I have forgotten some BIGGIES, but it’s a good start; and more importantly, on my birthday day, it is a good reminder to me of this amazing life I have been blessed to experience and all that I have journeyed through … on both sides of the contrast.

Enjoy ~ Sunny Dawn Johnston

Did you know that the personal growth world has a dark side? And that not all the superstars of this world walk their talk?

I have spent more than 30 years attending personal growth workshops, working closely with the teachers of it, and have been in a rare birdseye place to observe what goes on. 90% of my experiences with the teachers and their teachings were very positive but I saw some things… out of control diva behavior, falling on the floor sloppy drunk, profound arrogance, and I’ve read about male yoga teachers taking sexual advantage of their students, etc.

I’ve learned that it’s true, we teach what we need to learn most, and that most of us interested in personal growth deliberately come to it in search of healing, which is why the teachers are teaching it in the first place. They had a core wound, found a solution, and now want to share it with the world. So, we don’t always want to be too quick to judge them (unless their behavior is abhorrent or criminal) and make room for their imperfect humanness.

Somehow, when I face what is mine to face and empty myself of all that is agitating me, I go clear like a lake after a storm. It is then that I can see through to the bottom of what is me, only to see that I share that bottom with all other beings. When I face my heartache and reach its bottom, there is the bottom of all heartache which is both comforting and renewing.

In this brave and tender way, resilience is accepting strength from everything that is not us. When being ourselves to the bottom of our personality, we trip into the well of all personality. When giving all our care to what is before us, we trip into the well of all love. When diving through the depth that some call soul, we swim in the depth of being. Once opened that deeply, summoning and marshalling what is dormant in us to face the situation at hand empowers our fortitude.

When you are in your teens and 20s, life seems to extend into the future like an endless expanse of potential experiences. You can’t imagine not having the opportunity to visit places you love again or see friends and family regularly. As you grow older and encounter both loss and change, life takes on a quality of uncertainty, sweetness tinged with sorrow. A favorite uncle or a parent dies, friends move away, you yourself may move multiple times. The tapestry of life is always shifting, and we too shift with the changes. At a certain point, you may realize that the years ahead are possibly fewer than those behind. It may awaken a deep sense of appreciation for every moment you are given. This is how our lives teach us gratitude. Yet now, at this time on the planet, that lesson is coming up in unexpected ways.