I had an interesting conversation with a close friend yesterday. While we don’t get to speak all that much there is such a deep connection between the two of us that I often feel like we’re living parallel lives but not necessarily in synch. Our world views and life philosophies are very much the same and thus our interpretations of what happens in our lives and our reactions to things tend to be similar–she totally gets me and I totally get her.

She is in between a business that she started which dissolved very quickly and trying to figure out what she should do next for work. There are a lot of options open to her, she just has to decide what direction she wants to go in. Of course it’s easy for me, being on the outside of the situation to make a pithy assessment of everything but she’s having a rough time of it. I’ve been down the road she’s on–the road of having to reinvent myself and create something from nothing. Anyone who has their own business is often in the business of creating something from nothing and let me tell you, it ‘s exhausting. My friend being the brilliant writer that she is had a great analogy for what she’s been feeling–she said she’s got too much “drag.” Drag is a technical term for one of the aerodyamic forces that acts on an airplane. When there’s too much drag on a plane, it won’t take flight. Right away I had a visceral sensation of being dragged down as she began to name the elements that make up her drag. I’ve been having my own challenges lately and feeling pretty stuck and got me thinking about what my “drag” is… At first I could not think of one single thing but after I gave it some time here’s what I came up with:

The belief that manifesting anything is difficult.

The belief that I don’t have the capability to accomplish the things I need to and I can’t get anyone to help me.

The belief that there is always something in the way of getting what I want.

The belief that there is always something that I have to fix about myself or some life circumstance that I have to overcome before I can be happy.

I cannot tell you what a relief it was to just name these things. Such a simple exercise yet there’s something about calling these things out into the light of day where I can see them that totally deflates them. I really wasn’t aware of the degree that these beliefs were affecting my life. Knowing what they are is the first step to changing them. When I stopped to think about it, I realized that most of these things aren’t even true. They’re something that my psyche has constructed to keep me stressed out and terminally unhappy–states that I had grown accustomed to living in in the past and my brain was just doing its thing to recreate what’s familiar.

Looking at my drag was like that scene in The Wizard Of Oz when Dorothy finally gets the ruby slippers and is told that the thing she’s been most afraid of (the wicked witch of the west) no longer has any power over her.

My plan for next time I get together with my friend is for both of us to put our drag on the table, out in the open. Name it, look at it, let it go and in doing so take away its power. I invite you my dear readers to comment and in those comments, throw your “drag” on the table as a way of letting go of old things that no longer serve you and while you do repeat after Glinda, “You have no power here, now be gone!”

Eat, Pray, Love Movie Trailer

Well, the trailer is finally here. Unfortunately,  the movie doesn’t come out until August.   I can see from the websites that have this video posted there are a myriad of reactions to the movie but more importantly to the story.  Reading this book was life-changing for me but much to my surprise, there are a lot of women out there who hate this book.

It’s hard for me to fathom that a woman could have such a vehement reaction to another woman’s soul searching story.  My psych 101 theory comes into play and tells me that whenever something that doesn’t directly involve or affect you causes a strong reaction, it’s not at all about the other person, it’s all about your stuff.

And what is the nature of this “stuff” you ask?  The stuff is not envy about Elizabeth Gilbert having the resources to take off work and travel the world for a year–it’s about her listening to what she really needed in her life and then following that vision. It’s about her saying yes–to herself.

If you feel stuck; in your relationship, in your job, or in your life, then seeing another woman answer her own longing will be very threatening to you.  You will see this book and her story as self-indulgent and obnoxious and you’ll go right back to your to-do list of things you should and must do, back to the grind that is your life, and back to feeling angry and resentful that you’re not living the life you want.  There is so much that I can say at this point of this post.  But suffice to say that there are so many small ways that we can start saying yes to ourselves and answering our longings–because if you don’t answer the small ones, chances are you won’t answer the big ones unless like Elizabeth Gilbert, you’re driven to do so  through a near-nervous breakdown.
As for myself, I’m looking forward to the movie.

As the creator of the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body workshop, I have done a lot of work on finding ways to feed the soul that don’t involve food. I think it’s really important to know what to do for yourself to feed your soul but there’s also a way to allow food to feed the soul without eating for emotional reasons. For years, I saw food or the enjoyment of food as the enemy. I thought that if I allowed myself to eat something that I enjoyed, I would never stop eating it. I didn’t understand that the enjoyment doesn’t always come from eating fun, fattening foods. It comes from the circumstances around the food that you’re eating. It’s what the Buddhists call “mindful eating”. I had a wonderfully spontaneous example of this when I was in Mexico last year, and I know just like everything else– it works if you work it.

I’ve had a a lot of resistance to bringing more attention to my eating because for years I was hyper obsessed with it. But I was putting the wrong kind of attention on it. I was mainly focused on eating what I thought were the right foods whether I liked them or not. My focus was on eating the lowest calorie foods that I could find and not deviating from my food program–needless to say I didn’t experience a lot of pleasure during meal time. Mindful eating is not about eating fattening foods and getting the pleasure from them, it’s about eating healthy foods and taking the time to sit down, use a plate and proper cutlery and experience the food that you are eating without distracting yourself by reading or watching TV while you are eating. I have to say that this is very hard for me to do most of the time and I’m really not sure why. I think some of it has to do with always being in a hurry and if I’m being totally honest there is still a part of me (and I know there are millions of you out there) who feels guilty about eating in general. Wow, that’s a big realization. I actually had no idea that I still felt that way but it totally makes sense. If it were published I could refer you to my play: Thin Body, Fat Mind: One Woman’s Lifelong Struggle with Dieting, Bingeing, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Fit and you could find out exactly why that is, but I have told that story so many times that I just can’t revisit it now. Maybe in 10 years I’ll do a revival.

In the meantime I’m working on mindful eating. Savoring my food, taking in my surroundings while I eat and just crafting a whole new experience out of the whole thing. You’re not going to find me using my car keys to cut into a frozen Sara Lee cheesecake and wolfing it down while I’m driving home from the supermarket because I don’t want to wait until I get home to eat it. Nope, not me sister.

For those of you who don’t get my newsletter (you can subscribe in a sign-up box on my homepage) I’m reprinting part of the article What Do You Want?that I wrote in the last edition.  I got a lot of response from this so here it is:

What I call the “personal power outage”
Feeling powerless to make changes and take chances is the other big cause of not getting the things you want in your life.  Belief in yourself is the most important part of this equation.  So many of us have personal power outages because we’ve gone through life never acknowledging all of the amazing things that we’ve done.  We’re so busy looking at what we need to accomplish that we ignore everything that we have accomplished. Do you know what I call this?  Emotional Anorexia.  You are starving yourself of your own validation and approval and expecting yourself to move forward in life without the fuel of positive reinforcement.  This is a very insidious form of self sabotage.  Of course you don’t think you can accomplish anything, because you haven’t acknowledged what you have accomplished.  You’re too busy looking ahead that you forget to look back.   You must look back and let yourself feel good about all that you have done.

One of the things I love about Coaching is that it leads people straight to their personal power.  Kind of like the Yellow Brick Road, but a bit more direct.

Did you know there is a coaching scene in The Wizard of Oz?

Toward the end of the film when Dorothy finally gets the ruby slippers back from the wicked witch and she’s desperate to get out of OZ and go back to Kansas she pleads with Glenda;
Can you help me, will you help me?
My dear, you don’t need my help, you’ve always had the power to go back home.
Always? Then why didn’t you tell me before?
Because you never would have believed me, you had to learn it on your own.

You have the power now and you had it all along. You have only chosen not to see it.  Look at everything you’ve done and accomplished in your life.  Let yourself acknowledge that and be proud of it.  That’s the power that will take you where you want to go.

It’s been a very un-fun, tense couple of weeks.  I’ve been writing proposals for my workshops and pitching them to corporate venues, colleges, and continuing ed programs.  You could say that I got caught up in “taking my business to the next level.”

Last night was the first sleepless night I’ve had since I quit my “day job” to do coaching full-time and in the midst of my tossing and turning my business spoke to me. It told me it doesn’t want the pressure of having to make a lot of money.  My business is exhausted by all the affirmations, meditations, and visualizations regarding how much money it can pull in and how big and successful it gets.  My business just wants to be left alone and do its thing.

So I decided to listen to it and let it off the hook.  I told it that it is under no obligation to make money or even provide me with a living wage.  I told it that I love it madly and that I want it to be comfortable and that I will do whatever it takes to insure that.  Immediately, the knot I’ve had in my stomach for the last two  weeks dissolved and it feels like an enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Taking this kind of action seems counter-intuitive I know.  But I want to have the emotional space to do great work and I want to be at peace.  By constantly putting expectations on my business I’m creating tension and all that does is make things more difficult. When we’re tense we don’t do good work, we often miss opportunities, and we’re just not in the flow.  I want to be in the flow–that’s why I chose to do what I do.  And if I’m not in the flow, what chance do I have of helping my clients get there?

So I guess I’m embarking on a little experiment if you will.  This doesn’t mean that I’m not working hard or getting out there and doing what needs to be done for my business.  It’s just that I don’t have a need attached to those actions –I’m doing them because they feel right and because I want to do them. I believe that letting go of the need to make money actually opens up the channels for abundance and allows me to have serenity–and to me that feels like total freedom.  And if you haven’t figured it out yet people, that’s what it’s all about for me.

I’ll report back and let you know how it goes.

I believe in miracles and here’s why: I believe that a thought can change in an instant and as a result, a situation that has existed for years can be healed  in a moment of epiphany without the elements of the situation shifting at all.

I’m in the process of pitching my workshops to corporations and I’m coming up against a lot of resistance which is bringing up a lot of unhappy thoughts about this situation.  The visual that I have is of  this situaton looks like this:

A 50 foot mountain of stinky garbage standing in the way of getting in to these places which in turn leads to the “chain of misery” that goes like this:
This is never going to happen
I’m going to be bankrupt and end up living in a cardboard box in a matter of months
I’m spinning my wheels and it’s leading nowhere
My stuff is no good
my stuff is no good
I’m no good!!!!!!

OK people, let’s back this thing up.
Now, what do I know at the pit of my soul about me and life coaching?
That I was born to do this.
and that I’m damn good at it.
so what does that mean in terms of getting over the heap?
It means that the heap has nothing to do with whether I’m good at what I do or not, or whether it’s valuable.  The heap is just there, it’s part of the landscape.  I can engage with the heap or I can choose not to let it have any effect on me.