I've Been Thinking...

The other day, I went on one of my “walk and talks.” These are socially distant walks that I take in the late afternoon, either alone or with friends who also like to walk, talk, dream, ponder, and wonder about life. 

I often walk with my friend Simon, an optimist and an astute student of leadership. 

The other day, we were walking and talking about Simon’s online courses (you can learn more here and follow him on Instagram, too) and his upcoming podcast, when we came upon two other guys we both know. We stopped to chit chat, and just as we were about to leave, one of the guys said: “I’d like to ask you both a question. What are your three wishes for our country and the world right now? They don’t have to be achievable, but what are they?” 

“Wow!” I thought to myself. I figured he was just going to ask which restaurants had good takeout service or something, but hey, okay. I knew I’d need a few minutes to think about how to answer. 

Simon’s three wishes popped out immediately.

May is International Masturbation Month.⁠ All month we celebrate the beauty and art of self-pleasure (also known as sacred masturbation). ⁠Do you allow yourself to enjoy pleasure? Pleasure nourishes your body and lights up your soul. 
Your body LOVES to be touched - by YOU.⁠ ⁠Are you lavishing your body with LOVE? ⁠

Self-pleasure is normal, natural, and one of the best ways to light your sexual fire. It boosts your self-love, happiness, health, and vitality.

Waiting on a partner to satisfy you is so out-of-style. You have the power to satisfy yourself! You can bring yourself earth-shattering pleasure and mind-blowing sex through solo self-pleasure. When you exercise that power, it will work magic in your life, including your confidence, health, happiness, career, and romantic relationship.
 

...... Setting your boundaries with people in your life is never an easy task.

However, in order to do so, you must know who you are and what your needs are.

In my new video, I share some simple ideas that will help you honor yourself and your needs more authentically.

You know what it means to get in your own way, don't you? It is a true phenomenon.

Try to picture this: I'm walking down the street and then I run into myself… how can I run into myself unless I'm divided in such a way that in any given moment I’m on my way to do what something in me says is going to make the moment right, then I run into what the moment says will make it right… and I have a crash?

Here’s a little story to illustrate this idea of getting in our own way:

Wabi Sabi is the ancient Japanese aesthetic of seeking to discover beauty and perfection in imperfection. It seeks to find the beauty in things that are old, worn, imperfect or impermanent.

When we are in a situation beyond our control, and are finding ourselves highly annoyed or frustrated with someone’s behavior, that is the time to practice Wabi Sabi Love: this is about having a shift in perception and making up a new and empowering story about whatever you are perceiving as broken, wrong, or just not right.

For those of us that are stressed out, frustrated or are experiencing extreme cabin fever from the quarantine, finding the beauty and perfection in the imperfection can be a challenge.

I could make a long list of all the things I don’t like about being quarantined, but now that we are in week seven, I think for me, the good things are beginning to outweigh the bad.

By digging deep into my spiritual toolkit I have been practicing things I’ve often talked about but never really had to deal with….like turning fear into love and transforming judgement into compassion. The latter being the most difficult.

As I have watched many people filling social media with wild conspiracy theories, I find myself pinging back and forth between outrage and wanting to fix them.

Do you ever find yourself thinking if only…

If only I were thinner 

If only I had been born into wealth

If only life weren’t so hard, then I could be happy.

Dear ones, let me tell you…

That isn’t how happiness works.

In fact, they are low frequency codes that destroy your ability to shift your state in order to feel happy. 

We’ve known wealthy people who were cloaked in depression.

We’ve known beautiful people who couldn’t stand to look at themselves in the mirror. 

For me and many of the people I’ve spoken to who are part of the stay-at-home population, it feels like one day is rolling right into the next with not that much changing in any given 24-hour period.

Of course, if we’re working from home or home-schooling our children or are caregivers for our loved ones, the details of each day are numerous and ever-changing.

But it’s the general tone of the day that I’m speaking about... 

I’m wondering about that question mark that’s hanging over the planet.

What is this shaking up of the world as we know it ushering in? 

What will our personal and collective lives look like in a few months…

And in a few years?

Though there have been a few other pandemics over the last hundred years or so, never before have we experienced the repercussions of a pandemic like the one enfolding the whole of the planet today. 

“My father was a very strong man. It was his way or the highway.”
“My mother is a very strong person. She is the matriarch of the family and controls everyone. I never see her cry.”

These descriptions of strength do not fall under my definition of ‘strong.’

Strength and Weakness

Strength is reaching a place in your growth where you have the courage to feel and lovingly manage your painful core feelings of sorrow, loneliness, heartache, heartbreak, grief and helplessness over others—rather than avoiding them with various addictions and controlling behavior.

Weakness is when you are too afraid to feel and learn from your feelings, so you avoid them with substance and process addictions, and with controlling behavior toward others to get them to take responsibility for your feelings. Given these definitions, the above statements made by my clients about their parents are describing weakness, not strength.

Strong people are able to cry—to be moved by things and to cry as a way to release the energy of that strong emotion. Unfortunately, many people were programmed as children to not cry, since their parents didn’t know how to handle painful feelings – their own and their children’s. Many people were even teased, at home or at school, for crying, further programming them to avoid tears.

Creating authentic power requires distinguishing love from fear in yourself and choosing love no matter what is happening inside you or what is happening outside. Our evolution now requires us to create authentic power. The coronavirus is teaching us how to do that. The reality of the coronavirus is often lost in the fear of it (including denial). The reality of the coronavirus is that no one is immune to it, and it is extremely contagious. The mortality rate of the coronavirus is much lower than small pox or bubonic plague, yet it is a deadly threat. That reality demands that we bring our fears into our awareness so that we can choose responsibly between our fears on the one hand and love on the other. This is important because not only your health depends upon your choices, but also the health of others.

In other words, the coronavirus is the perfect teacher of responsibility. The coronavirus is contagious days before its symptoms appear in you. You do not know when you become infected! During that time you can infect others without knowing it and without them knowing it (because they do not know when they become infected, either), and they can (will) very quickly infect others and on and on and on and on. These are the things that make the coronavirus very dangerous. It is extremely contagious, everyone can unknowingly infect anyone else, and it can kill you. In other words, if you mindlessly endanger yourself, you mindlessly endanger others. If others recklessly endanger themselves, they recklessly endanger you. To echo Lakota wisdom, the health of one is the health of all, and the illness of one is the illness of all.

Do you ever feel as though life is a three ring circus? 

So many demands from everywhere for your time and energy… 

constantly juggling life’s responsibilities while trying to balance family, self care and career…?

This balancing act can leave even the strongest person feeling like they are walking a tightrope. It leads to stress upon stress that compromises the immune system and triggers unconscious stories that can sabotage your health and ability to have fun manifesting the life you want.

Take a moment to answer each question below honestly:

1. Are you eating healthy and exercising regularly?
2. Do you spend time learning to master your thoughts, set aside personal and quiet time just for you and meditate or use guided visualizations to train your brain?
3. Do you feel close to family and friends?
4. Do you love what you do and how you show up in your career?
5. Do you feel in touch with your True Self and take time to notice and heed the emotional signals that tell you if you’re out of balance?
6. Do you regularly experience well-being, contentment, love and joy?

Now you’ve done that, you have an idea of where you’re at right now…

Your past is responsible for how you’ve been feeling up till this moment!

Beliefs are tricky, especially in times of uncertainty. They can be a source of inspiration or a heavy chain around your neck. They can uplift you into possibility or weigh you down, keeping you from open-hearted expansion. Historically, beliefs have been the cause of cycles of planetary polarization: renaissances and wars, connection and separation, coming together and tearing apart, hope and despair. Humans have yet to reach the evolutionary tipping point of being present in experience without filters of any kind. Maybe now is the time to let go and see everything as light, including ourselves and our beliefs.