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Parents Are People, Too (Even Yours) [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 18]

I once was trying to advocate to a friend that she should experiment with puppy parenting before she tried on a human kidlet. Puppies can be left at home alone, from day one, I argued. They’re generally already walking before you bring them home. Oh! And you can potty train them in a couple of weeks, I went on; my son was almost three before he got it together. 

Parents Are People, Too (Even Yours)

Human children rely upon their parents, with life or death stakes, for a really, really long time, compared with other mammals. Years. 

And maybe it’s precisely because we once relied on them for life and death. Or because in the earliest stages of our nervous systems’ wiring process, if they neglect us (regardless of why), it feels like we’ll die, and if they smother us, it feels like we’ll suffocate. And so those feelings linger and transfer over to other relationships, well into adulthood.

Maybe it’s that. Or some combination. Jung had some ideas. Freud did, too. 

Because of all of these things and some I’ve omitted, we give our parents a very outsized character role in the narrative of our lives. We attribute our traits to them, good and bad, silly and grave. We ascribe our relationship dynamics, bad habits and unhealthy food fetishes to them, too. And even if we’re not the type to blame them for our life’s story arc, per se, we still talk about the things they said to us one time or a million times, the dynamics of their own love relationship(s), and the way they felt and talked about their bodies, our bodies, our smarts and their hopes, dreams and disappointments in us as pivotal moments in defining who we are and how we live.

When we start the work of trying to heal our lives, and resolve unfinished childhood business, we often remark on these things. We spot these moments, and we may realize how our feelings of smothering or abandonment are still playing out, 50 years later, in every relationship. This might all be very fair and true. But also, we often do this analysis thinking of the people who spawned us, raised us or failed us as Our Parents, an archetype that looms so large in our minds that we have collectively assigned completely impossible standards to their behavior. 

A wise man I was talking with a few days ago told me how he, too, had felt so much vicarious pain when he evaluated his parents’ lives and some of what he judged to be their dysfunctional patterns of relating. He was clear that his own approach to relationships had largely been defined by trying to avoid doing what his parents did. He told me how, on the way home from the holidays one year, he had a flash of insight: that his parents were just regular people. 

That they didn’t have any special magic or supernatural ability to somehow be better at relationships than every other person he knows just by virtue of the fact that they were His Parents. 

That they had actually had very understandable, valid to them at the time, reasons for making the choices they’d made, throughout their lifetimes. 

Somehow, recasting his parents from that role into the roles of regular person #1 and regular person #2—flawed and beautiful and wounded like all of the rest of us—made him feel much more ease, softness and compassion toward his parents, from that moment on. 

When they weren’t being held to a mythical, capital P “Parent” standard, they were just people, doing the best they could with what they had and where they’d been. What he said reminded me of something I read once which I interpreted to this effect: if we are able to do personal growth work, read self-help books, attend workshops and be conscious livers of life, our parents were good-enough. Full-stop. Is every parent good enough? No. Plenty of people had parenting or other traumas that prevent them from being able to live what we think of as a conscious life. 

But most of ours were. Even a lot of the really bad ones. Seriously, even some of the abusive ones, including parents like mine who operated out of fear and love, giving my brother and I some incredible opportunities, making extraordinary sacrifices, and also inflicting all sorts of damage. They were good enough.

When I learned about the concept of the Good Enough Parent was when I realized that our parents are people, too. And they have their own emotional wounds. And their parents did, too. And that all human beings leave childhood with wounds from their parents, as a result. And most importantly, that it’s possible and even probably healthy to hold in the same space a compassion for my younger self and her wounds and hurts and the sense that my parents were actually doing the best they could with what they had, wounds included. 

To think of your parents, flaws and all, abuses and all, irresponsibilities and all, as Good Enough does not mean you ignore, deny, repress, sublimate or otherwise sweep your very real history under the rug or submerge it below a happy-all-the-time veneer. It doesn’t mean you forget or revise history. 

It doesn’t mean they never hurt us, and it certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend some time healing and integrating historical hurts. It doesn’t mean you don’t get to stop cycles, stop bad behavior or draw boundaries with them now. It doesn’t even mean that you shouldn’t or can’t talk things through with your parents. Or flat-out confront them, in some cases. Whether and when to do this is an individual decision. For me confrontation and rehashing has mostly been helpful when self-expression (vs. expecting an apology, or changing your parents) is the sole objective of the conversation. 

But the concept of the Good Enough Parent does suggest one very powerful takeaway: that nothing in our parentage is indelibly harming. I know this is a very difficult concept for some of us. It was once for me. But at some point I realized that in holding onto this belief or habitual thought that I’d been broken in some way by my parents, I was really just arguing for my limitations, holding fast to the belief that my life had to be hard in some way, no matter how joyful and delightful it was actually inclined to be.

So, now, I stand behind this statement, even if you disagree. If you can read this—if you are reading this—then your parents were Good Enough. And if you had Good Enough Parents, there’s no emotional wound beyond healing, no trigger we can’t pull out, or dissolve. Acknowledging the hurts of the past. And seek, aggressively, to heal them. But at the same time, acknowledge that enough went right in your upbringing that your childhood challenges were preparations, possibly painful ones, but preparation nonetheless, for your greatness at whatever you were put here to do.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. But I wrote this post on Day 18 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

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Why Challenges Work to Trigger Breakthroughs, Spark Growth and Build Habits aka How Challenges Change Lives, Part II [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 17]

Here are my thoughts on why Challenges work:

Why Challenges Work to Trigger Breakthroughs, Spark Growth and Build Habits aka How Challenges Change Lives, Part II

1.They hold space for new things in your otherwise-crowded world/life/calendar/day/mind. Life is very, very full before you try to add in a new habit or project. Formulating your aspirations into Challenges holds a new space in your mind and your calendar for the things you want to do. It also forces you to prioritize, and decide what you won’t be doing for that time frame. That allows for decathexis to happen, where you recoup the time, energy or money you were spending on something less important so you can flow that toward your new habit or project or way of being.  

Challenges also usually involve some level of tracking and accountability, and are often also (naturally or formally) social, all of which increase the probability of your actually doing the activity at hand compared with the likelihood you’d do it without the Challenge.

2. They build momentum and habits by focusing your energy on actions you can control, vs. outcomes that are outsized or out of your control. Challenges set you up to experience significant momentum and progress toward a project or change that matters to you. If you want to write a book, setting a Challenge that says you’ll write for 2 hours a day will automatically trigger some progress and mental momentum, because you know that if you just do that over and over again, for six months, chances are very good you’ll have at least a rough draft in place when you’re done.

3. They chunk big transformations down into doable daily practices. I love to make lots of big life changes at once, but the data shows that massive behavior changes just don’t stick for most people. A Challenge to cut out sugar and alcohol for 30 days is vastly more likely to create lasting change than a nebulous “Lose 50 pounds” goal. Instead of “write a book,” Challenge yourself to write something—anything—every day for 30 days, and watch what happens.

4. They create a standard and provide structure. Without the rules of a Challenge, your goals can be structureless and just hard to put a mental frame around. It’s the difference between “start doing kettlebell swings” and “do 10,000 swings in the month of June.” Having some standard to get to, whether it’s a word count you’ll write or just a number of days for which you’ll do a thing, sparks that tiniest bit of competitiveness and energy.

5. But that standard is personal. You are the boss of yourself in a Challenge. Whether you create it yourself or you take on a Challenge someone else is running, you decided to take it on. And you have infinite authority to tweak the terms of a Challenge in order to make it work for you. You can start it a week later than everyone else. You can do it for 10 days instead of 30. You can do 3 days/week instead of 7. Or you can do 7 instead of 3. A Challenge is a competition, but it’s only between you and you.

If you experience fear at the prospect of certain Challenges, I would give you two pieces of advice. One: You should do it. That fear is a sign you’re onto something. Things will get very interesting if you proceed. Two: Take the Challenge, but be gentle and easy with yourself. There’s no extra credit for perfection. You already did yourself a big mazel by taking the first step. Don’t turn the tone of this experience from growth to self-critique, harshness or perfectionism.

6. The flexibility of the standards makes Challenges fun.  From philosopher James Carse:

“There are at least two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game is a game that has fixed rules and boundaries, that is played for the purpose of winning and thereby ending the game.

An infinite game has no fixed rules or boundaries. In an infinite game you play with the boundaries and the purpose is to continue the game.

Finite players are serious; infinite gamers are playful.” 

In a Challenge, you get to choose whether to be finite or infinite. (Hint: choose infinite.)

7. They are hard, fast and fun. Have you ever taken a Bikram yoga class? They’re fond of pushing people to hold hard postures with the encouragement that “you can do anything for 30 seconds!” I feel that way about Challenges. Even when they’re super hard, they are also generally fast. You can do anything for 30 days. Or 90 days. Or even 6 months.

The fact that you go into a Challenge knowing the time frame is finite often allows you to tap into those deep stores of energy and discipline that are hard to access when you’re more vaguely trying to build a new habit or practice. And the fact that you know you’ll have made significant progress by the end of the Challenge, if you go hard enough, allows you to tap into even deeper internal resources.

And you always have the option of continuing the practice, or some portion of it, after the Challenge is over. But having an upfront start and stop date just makes it easier to wrap your head around doing something hard for that time frame, versus telling yourself you have to start a new thing and do it For All The Days Of Your Life.

8. Challenges leave successful transformation in their wake, regardless of whether you have a technically “perfect score” . The first time I did a writing Challenge, I wrote for maybe 12 of the 30 days. And honestly, I was happy I did that much, and saw it as 12 days more than I’d written the month before. During that 12 days, I also made a ton of progress in getting clear on a book project I wanted to work on, and some big business decisions I needed to make.

Two months later, I came back around and wrote every day for 6 months. And I still have a near-religious daily writing practice, plus the confidence to tap into the creative flow I know I have access to anytime I have a major book project or writing project I want to bust out.

To my mind, that initial writing Challenge was an extremely successful Challenge, even though I did less than half of what I’d signed on to do.

When you do what you committed to do during a Challenge, you’ll leave the Challenge feeling tired, and stretched but also expanded, because you’ve proven to yourself that you can do things harder or more consistently than you ever have before. But even when you don’t have a “perfect” Challenge, you’ll often find success in the form of personal breakthroughs, a-ha moments, momentum, new habits, mindset shifts, emotional healing or even just lots of words on the Page you didn’t have on the Page before.

More from James Carse: “You can do what you do seriously, because you must do it, because you must survive to the end, and you are afraid of dying or failing or other consequences. Or, you can do everything you do playfully, always knowing you have a choice, having no need to survive the way you are, allowing every element of the play to transform you, taking pleasure in every surprise you meet. Those are the differences between finite and infinite players.” Challenges position your personal growth, habits and your life, really, as infinite play; they position you as the infinite player, and real healing and progress as the prize. Game on.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. But I wrote this post on Day 17 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

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Notes From My DIY Dating Challenge, aka How Challenges Changed My Life, Part I [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 16]

Once upon a time, there was a brown girl with twisty windy hair, and her name was Tara. Tara had no patience for board games. But she did like to play mind games and the real-life Game of Life with herself, against herself. (Eventually, she learned how to play it for herself.) And in the Game of Life she somehow aced school, got married when she was really young, had a kid, got divorced, and got married and divorced again. By the time she was single for the first time in her adult life, at 36, Tara had been married over 20 years of her lifetime!

Notes From My DIY Dating Challenge, aka How Challenges Changed My Life, Part I

So, she cooled her jets for awhile. It seemed prudent. It was prudent. She went to lots of therapy, changed a lot of her worldview, wrote a lot, prayed a lot, meditated a lot, walked a lot, danced a lot, sang a lot, played a lot. But at some point, Tara decided it was time to learn how to date. Remember, she’d actually never been on a real date to someone she didn’t marry, ever.

So, she made a game out of it. Tara downloaded a dating app, made a profile and proceeded to go on 3 dates per week for ten weeks. Rule #1: Go on 30 dates in ten weeks. Rule #2: Do not get married during this ten weeks.

Tara does not recommend you do this at home.

At the end of the ten weeks, Tara took her profile down. It was dang near a full-time job, this talking with and vetting of and seeing people, at this pace. And a couple of years later, she now finds dating to be growth-provoking and fun. She has not gotten married again yet, by design.

Tara (that’s me, FYI) also took away all sorts of lessons and insights and mind-changes from the experience:

Tara’s DIY Dating Challenge Takeaways:

  1. There is someone out there for everyone. No seriously, everyone.
  2. There are actually abundant people, and we’re mostly all wired for connection.
  3. I do not have to be afraid of marrying everyone I date.
  4. I do actually make good decisions regarding relationships, contrary to the story I was telling myself.
  5. I am clearer now, for having met a lot of people, on what does and doesn’t work for me and how I want to feel around a person I choose to spend time with. I also know red flags and stay far, far away from them.
  6. We all *think* we are clear on what we want in another person. But when we meet someone who is ‘perfect on paper,’ we may or may not be attracted to them. And other times, we might surprise ourselves at who we meet and really, really like.

In the end, I didn’t love the way most people treat online dating, almost like a job interview where you sit down, trade lists of qualifications and requirements with each other, and see whether the lists fit. It was too outcome oriented for me, too artificial.

But I also came away with a lot more ease and less anxiety about dating and relationships in general, which allowed her to feel more comfortable in the world in general. I ultimately focused on showing up in the world, all over the world, doing completely awesome stuff, and living an incredible life, as much as possible. And as a result, I started meeting lots more smart, engaged, caring gentlemen, all around the world, online and off. And then one day, a strange thing happened. Meeting people became fun. Learning about myself, in relationship to other people, and specifically in relationship to men, also became fun. 

This was just one of literally hundreds of Challenges I’ve issued to myself over the years. It probably started with health and fitness, way back in the day. My friend and I would meal prep in our little cottages, and we’d kind of challenge ourselves to eat clean all week, until cheat day. I did a Whole 30 that snowballed into a Whole 90. One time, my trainer issued—and I accepted—the challenge of doing 10,000 kettlebell swings in a month. Trust me when I say that my derrière has never been the same.

I guess before I go too far into why I find Challenges to be so shift-sparking and growth provoking, and the growth I’ve seen in my life in the course of taking on Challenges, we need to agree on some things. Or one thing. Namely, what I mean by “challenges”.  I’m not talking generically about things that are a little hard to do, or a lot hard, though I like them, too.

When I use the word challenges with a capital ‘C’ I’m talking about something very particular:

  • A program of doing a certain activity (or, I suppose, not doing a certain activity)
  • That I don’t currently do
  • At a certain frequency
  • For a certain number of days.

I think of Challenges as self-directed projects to change my behavior or spark some personal growth or development I’m clear that I’d like to have. Sometimes I want a mindset shift or want to make (or break) a habit, or I just have a sort of big project I want to sprint to finish, and Challenges are a container I’ve found that often works for me to get there.

And I mean they work in every area of my life. I’ve done a church search challenge, in which I attended a new church every week for a year (but I only made it 12 weeks before I fell in love with one). I did a very playful travel challenge of sorts, for my 40th birthday, to go to nine places in the world I’d never been in 18 months (though I made it in 12). This year, I wrote a book in 6 months, and I treated that as a challenge, too.

Right this moment I’m learning French on a self-imposed Challenge, I’m doing this Writing Challenge with ya’ll, and I’m in also doing a Vulnerability Challenge in the way I carry out the Writing Challenge.

Some Challenges I just take on, over time, as a part of my life. Travel is now that for me. I now take care to structure my career and my life in a way that allows for great swathes of time in which I can globe trot. But this goes for more specific, tactical behaviors, too. I have a one item in, one item out rule on buying new clothes and home goods, after issuing myself a Challenge along these lines, once upon a time.

Challenges perform the valuable function of holding the mental and spiritual space for a new habit, a new project or a breakthrough way of thinking or being.  They have rules or guidelines. They are voluntary, and finite in time. They are also fun, or I’ve learned how to make sure they stay fun, rather. If you do them right, they harness everything great about competition, with none of the nasty, perfectionistic aftertaste. And they build an incredible amount of momentum. They help you try on practices or

I cannot convey with words, not in this post anyway, the levels of interior and exterior and career and life and spiritual transformation I’ve experienced from issuing Challenges to myself, small and large. Since we’re all here, working on a Challenge together right now, I think I’ll make this a series, and share how Challenges have changed my life and why I think they are so powerful, in the next couple of posts.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. But I wrote this post on Day 16 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

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How to Break Bad Cycles and Make Regret-Free Life Decisions [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 15]

Marianne Williamson tells this great parable which she says is about recovering from “attraction to dangerous men.”

How to Break Bad Cycles and Make Regret-Free Life Decisions

When you’re really ill, you don’t even know a snake when you see one. Once recovery begins, you see a snake and you know it’s a snake, but you still play with it. Once you’ve landed in true recovery zone, you see a snake, you know it’s a snake, and you cross to the other side of the road.

To my mind, this story actually applies to most personal growth, not just to love relationships. In particular, it applies to breaking dysfunctional patterns or cycles. It comes in handy when it comes to making the daily decisions we face as conscious leaders, of businesses, of teams and of our lives, which often includes facing similar forks in the road or fact patterns as we have before.

It is not an easy thing, to try to evolve in your personal consciousness, and to represent consciousness in the workplace and the business marketplace. To do so is to opt out of the universally assumed and accepted priorities and decision rules. This is what I love about Conscious Capitalism; that its pillars propose and argue for a new set of business decision rules, oriented around business that is profitable, but does not prioritize profit over people or planet.

The career and personal life of a Conscious Leader are also riddled with decision points. When we’re presented with different options in terms of career paths we could take, those that rank highest in title, power, position or profit might not be the most conscious ones. The decision that weighs in favor of balance or family might not be the “best” one for your career. The company with the elevated mission might not pay as much as the one that wants to sell more, sell more, sell more.

And we know this in our gut. Or, at the very least, we have the power to. The trouble is that other voices overshadow this sense we feel in our gut, sometimes internal voices, sometimes external or societal ones.

Nearly every week, I have at least one conversation with a Conscious Leader who has had a series of troubled career moves, and who also says at various points along their storyline that they knew or strongly suspected several of their past job situations would be doomed when they first met the company, met the CEO, learned about the business, or were offered the job. And they took it anyway. And they did it again. And they knew better then, too. But the money was incredible. Or the options were amazing. Or the career development was negligible, but the hours were great. And then they faced a similar choice, made it in the same way, and again, regretted it.

Over time, I’ve grown to be grateful that, like the woman in the parable, we get repeat opportunities to evolve and grow in our decision-making. As a Conscious Leaders and a conscious live-er of life, I’ve learned to count it as finding a treasure when I discover the pattern and have the thrill of releasing it.

But this line of thinking prompts one question, over and over again, as many times as you are presented with a career choice, a partner choice, a work-life balance conundrum, a hire or fire decision, or even a choice of romantic partners: what is the right decision rule? How do you make choices, if you opt out of using money or power as your guides? What are those guiding principles?

Some say to list out the pros and cons. That’s helpful, sometimes. But many times, the pros and cons just provide a vehicle for your brain’s spinning to make it onto the page. And other times, the strong gut sense of ‘no’ doesn’t show up in lists of quantifiable ‘cons’ in a large enough number to outrank the ‘pros’. But your gut is still correct.

How many times have your pros and cons list outcomes been wrong, and your gut been right? For me, many, many times. So, I no longer make my decisions based on lists of facts. I gather the facts, as a starting point. And then I add in my experience, my wisdom, life lessons learned and, most importantly, the soul-and-spirit level “hit” I get off of a person, place or project. Then, and only then, do I move forward.

Some people would call all of this, collectively, their “gut”.

Long ago, I’d have said I didn’t trust my gut. That my gut was largely ego, or my deep-seated emotional triggers being flicked, remnants of old trauma being sparked by things that had not. Or that my gut was coded for fear. And that’s sometimes true.

But lots of therapy, years of meditation, and even daily practices like Morning Pages have cultivated enough emotional groundedness that I now no longer suspect my gut. I operate in the free and clear, emotionally, for the most part. I’m tuned in. And I’m no longer operating based on  triggerd. This leaves me with the superpower of being able to tell the difference between “this situation is stirring up some old shit, and I am not bringing that old shit into this new day so I’mma let this burn out” and “gut says no, something is off here.”

And this superpower is extraordinarily helpful. I’d say it’s better than flying, because it allows me to flow and to soar with the creative power that comes with the alignment of intention, purpose, strategy and excellence. It also allows me to make decisions that are highly counterintuitive and seem crazy to other people, but have been proven time and time again to be right for me.

This superpower emboldens me to move forward in my life with ease and flow, even into kind of scary situations I don’t exactly know how I’ll handle, in advance. I can do this because I know that I’m tuned in, and I don’t operate in the fear that I’ll make a misstep. The other thing is, I know things are always working out for me, so even if the next thing isn’t “the” thing, it’s still a step toward whatever my thing is supposed to be. It’s all progress. It’s all preparation.

Even with my healed-up soul and my tuned-in gut, I still find it helpful to have a few different rubrics for making big life and leadership and career and love decisions, and there are a handful that have been both directive and possibility-unlocking for me over the past few years. I thought I’d share. Here are a few:

  1. I believe the path of our deep desires is often the path closest to our calling. So I ask myself:
    • Which option puts me on a path to what I really want?
    • Do I really, deeply want to do this? Or do I think other people think I should do it?
    • Do I have a pattern of wanting to do this sort of thing, over years and years, but never indulging that desire, because I’m afraid or I don’t think it’s “respectable”?
    • Do I dread doing this, but think it’s the smart or responsible thing to do, so I often choose to do it anyway? Is the dread misalignment or is it Resistance?
  2. One of my favorite teachers reminds me that it’s easy to know when a radio is tuned in and when it’s not, because of all that static and interference when it’s not tuned in. If we practice mindfulness and alignment, our emotions and feelings can be that same sort of tuner for our decisions. So I ask myself:
    • Does thinking about this option make me feel clear and tuned in, in my chest and my body?
    • When I visualize myself doing that project or in that job, do I like the way it looks on me?
    • Or does it, before I even decide to do it, make me feel confused, angry or resentful?
    • Do I envision scenes of disappointment?
  3. Do I feel expanded and breathe more easily when I think about this option?
    • Does it open or shut down possibilities?
    • Would taking the option make me feel like I’m coming into myself more, or does it feel like playing small?
    • Or do I feel constricted and tight when I think about it?
    • Do I feel like I need to tense up, armor my heart or hold my breath when I think about it?
  4. Does this affiliation or relationship move me in the direction of love, warmth and connection, or division and disconnection from others?
  5. Does not taking this option remind me of any other times I’ve played small because I was afraid?
    • Do I think I’ll regret it?
    • Does this job feel like a shadow of what I really should be doing?
    • Does taking this option feel like giving in to Resistance to my higher calling or higher self?

In The Science of Being Great, Wallace Wattles gives greatness seekers this advice: “most important, you must have absolutely faith in your own perceptions of truth. Never act in haste or hurry; be deliberate in everything; wait until you feel that you know the true way. And when you do feel that you know the true way, be guided by your own faith though the entire world shall disagree with you.” These decision rules and questions help me be deliberate and act confidently, often against the tide of what others think I should do (or would think I should do, if I asked them!). I hope you find them to be of value as you journey toward what’s right for you.

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On Self-Help and Spiritual Matters: Eat the Meat and Leave the Bones [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 14]

One day, a brilliant, beautiful friend of mine dropped a wisdom-bomb that I think applies to all matters of spiritual growth, religious belief and even self help when she said, “sometimes, you’ve gotta eat the meat and leave the bones.”

On Self-Help and Spiritual Matters: Eat the Meat and Leave the Bones

This saying comes to mind a lot when I’m talking to people about God and church. I think very often, people who believe there’s something more out there than what science and culture can offer them get hung up and miss out on a relationship with God, because they want to fact check a church’s set of beliefs the way you might fact check a political debate.

But faith doesn’t work like that. The literal definition of faith is the belief in things you can’t detect with your physical senses. My relationship with God is the single most valuable, most precious thing in my life, by far. But it’s not something I can or even want to try to prove, factually, the way you’d prove the law of gravity or that global warming is a thing.

Matters of the spirit are, by definition, supernatural. They are outside the laws of nature. They operate on principles and laws, but spiritual ones. Churches, religions and spiritual communities are places where humanity and spirit connect, but they are ultimately made of people. And people, well, it is a rare thing that a group of people will come together and put together a list of beliefs or philosophies they stand for, by consensus, and have every single member of that community agree wholeheartedly with every single line item of that philosophy.

To deprive yourself of the soul-filling, life-giving, spirit-recharging experience that belonging to a spiritual community can be because you don’t agree with 100% of what they believe can, in some cases, be the spiritual equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I’m not suggesting a Buddhist should join up with a Southern Baptist congregation for the music, by any means. But I am suggesting that, if you’re curious about God and spirit, you seek out a spiritual community which fits you in spirit and in broad stroke beliefs, and that you not deprive yourself of that or of a relationship with God because you think religion is bad or religious people or crazy, or because the church you love takes communion and you don’t understand that.

Eat the meat and leave the bones.

I have a similar line of thinking when it comes to self-help books and teaching, which these days I like to call WizLit (Wisdom Literature). There’s one very well-known teacher/speaker/author who I won’t name here, because, well, you’ll see why in just a sec. For years, I heard about him, including a truly spooky, borderline nonsensical story about how he came to receive the wisdom he shares. And every time I heard his name, my eyes nearly rolled back to the whites.

And then someone I know, trust and respect mentioned a lesson she’d read by this guy. And it was really profound, really a fresh reframe of a tired, old thought habit of my own. And so I decided to listen to this teaching my friend shared with me. And it blew my mind. It actually blew my mind wide open. Changed my perspective, entirely. And I thought, you know what? I don’t care what his weird-ass story of channeling this stuff or conjuring it up is. I just know this material is very valuable for me, and is helping me release old limits, so I’m gonna roll with it. Period.

Eat meat. Leave bones.

I suppose you have to have some sort of rubric for determining which spiritual and wisdom teachings are meat and which are bones. And on this matter, I think the rules must be very personal, simple and general. For me, I seek things out that expand my capacity, that bring me into integrity, and that make my life feel expanded, enlarged and empowered, not contracted or disconnected from power. I seek things out that make me feel more and more tuned in to who I am. I seek out wisdom with a core message of love and inclusion, not hate and division.

I had an experience recently that showcases this point pretty perfectly. I’ve long been a reader of Louise Hay. Her 1984 book You Can Heal Your Life (YCHYL) contains some of the practices that have been the most transformational in my life’s path. Some of them also struck me as intensely ridiculous—and by that, I mean worthy of ridicule—when I first encountered them. She’s a proponent of mirror work, literally, standing in the mirror and saying lovely, sweet things—”affirmations”— to yourself in the morning.

Kind of like this.

Silly, right? This is how I felt about mirror work the first time I read YCHYL.

nahkitty

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except for one thing. Except for the fact that many of us do actually have a critical inner voice. Some of us have said negative things to ourselves, about ourselves, for years. For decades. And in the book, she makes a wonderful case for just trying it. And so I did.

And it turns out that this whole mirror work thing works. It gradually replaces your critical inner voice with a voice that sounds more like this:

Louise Hay for the win.

The other thing YCHYL is well-known for is the mind-body symptom chart at the back of the book. It is based on Hay’s philosophy that all illness is an indicator of our emotional beliefs, thoughts and focus. Her “Causes of Symptoms” table is just a long list of physical symptoms, illnesses and body parts, each with a corresponding spiritual or emotional cause, and a prescription. Plot twist is, the prescriptions are all affirmations.

So, for example, if you have diabetes, the chart suggests the following emotional causes:
*Longing for what might have been.
*A great need to control.
*Deep sorrow.
*No sweetness left.

And the prescribed affirmation is: This moment is filled with joy. I now choose to experience the sweetness of today.

Seems farfetched, right? But I’ve also had times in my life where I looked up a physical symptom and actually got something out of the explanation or the affirmation prescribed. So I got in the habit of looking up any physical symptoms I was having, and then eating the meat and leaving the bones of her recommended affirmations.

A few months ago, I had a couple of freak accidents at home, one of which resulted in deep stitches and glue and wound care, the other just crutches and wound care. Very bizarre, very intense, but very healable and ultimately minor things. As is now my habit, I consulted Hay’s Causes of Symptoms chart. And it had a lot to say. According to the chart, I was having problems with my feminine side or family line, I was struggling to receive nurturing, and having a hard time moving forward with life.

I considered these things. And I could find a smidge of truth in some of them. But others just didn’t feel true for me, to be totally honest. I had no twinge of “oh, that’s so me!” I felt more like this:
nahkitty

That said, I did think these injuries could symbolize something or be manifestations of something that was going on in my head or my heart. I just didn’t think it was what she’d said in the chart. Not this time. This time, all of the explanation was bones. I did eventually find the meat, but it was something I found only down deep, within myself.

Both of these injuries happened when I was just going about my daily at-home puttering, but inadvertently exerted an extraordinary amount of physical force with my body—much more than I even realized until I looked down and saw the blood dripping (in one case) and spurting (in the other) from my freshly, self-inflicted wounds.

I wanted and needed to understand a narrative around these events. But the Hay storyline felt lame and just frankly, not true for me. What did feel true was this: that these injuries indicated I have superpowers. That I literally and figuratively have worked and trained and cultivated an inner power so intense I don’t even quite realize just how strong I am. So, in the same way a teenager learns how to drive, my job is to gradually, in my own time, learn to appreciate just how powerful I am, and to learn to wield that power with wisdom and grace, so as not to hurt myself.

That’s what felt right to me. I recreated the story. I ate the meat. I left the bones. But I also left the bones with gratitude for the way they had shown me, the way of finding my own meat anytime I need to.

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What I Shed This Year [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 13]

Today is my birthday. My forty-first birthday. I am so intensely grateful right now. I have talked a lot about how this season in my life has been one of unfurling, releasing, and stripping back to the pure power and brilliance at my center. (It’s really at all of our center.) This has been a season of transcendence, of rising above all sort of historical limitations and past dramas and just even recent levels.

I usually have a sort of high-minded, spirit-filled imagery and vocabulary around this work and play and journey, but I recently saw a quote that does an extraordinary job of articulating what I’ve been experiencing. It’s a quote from a character from the Toni Morrison book, Song of Solomon. The character, Guitar, explains to another character, Milkman, why a peacock can’t fly any better than a chicken.

“Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can’t nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

This. This perfectly conveys how I came to be able to do so much flying in my life and my work this year. I started shedding the shit that weighed me down. I didn’t slam it down or wrench it off. At 41, I’ve learned to release and to shed. Here are some of the things I shed this year.

I shed a lot of polish. I shed invulnerability. I shed persona. I slowly started to show up as 100% of who I am in more and more and more areas of my life. I revealed a lot of my journey, not just the endpoint. I opened up my soul in a big, big way.

I shed perfectionism. I shed a lot of comparison. I realized not just logically, but deep in my spirit, I had a shift

I shed a lot of hesitation about doing this. I realized that another thing Anne Lamott

I shed a lot of hesitation, period. I shed hesitation around fully, completely adoring myself, and my beautiful world and life. I shed hesitation about acknowledging how much mastery I’ve developed over my experience of this world. I shed the hesitation to fully appreciate my own magnificence and worthiness. I received these things. Fully. Without hesitation. Regardless of circumstances. I practice this every single day.

I shed “apologetic”. I more and more, every day, am able to receive the privileges of my divine inheritance, of my divine intelligence, of my beautiful life and time, without apology, without resistance.

I shed a few tears, and that was beautiful, because I’ve always been afraid of feeling sad. This year I was not. And what freedom that is, to be able to let all sorts of emotions come up, flow through, and flow out, without creating new spiritual sticking points or touchiness or triggers.

I shed even more conformity than I already had. I shed the need to participate in a bunch of cultural and societal nonsense.

I shed a lot of what my therapist would call outdated operating systems. It was work, but I released some stuff that had served me, had served my family, even, for generations, but was no longer serving me now. I shed grievance after grievance after grievance. I shed unlove. I shed some beliefs that were holding me apart from what I want and deserve. I shed some things I’d been holding to, literally since childhood.

I shed the habit of occasionally, but grandly, getting in my own way, in a big way. I shed the need to delude myself that it’s even possible to know 100% how things would come out before I do them. (Ha!) I shed the need to have any reason to do things other than that I love them, and enjoy them and find them spiritually rewarding.

I shed fogginess. I received so much clarity.

I shed layers. SO many layers. Layers of “should”. Layers of encumbrance. I realized what I’m here to do, and then I contradicted myself for awhile, trying to do things I thought were smart or more legitimate. But I’ve shed a lot of that, and I’m now in a space of attunement and alignment with what I want to do, what I’m great at doing, what people receive great value from. What I receive great joy from doing.

This year, I shed the need to figure everything out, to force things to happen, to make things happen, to do nose to grindstone, to try so so hard. To do machinations, to use a friend’s favorite word. I realized that the best things in my life were certainly effortful, but effortful in an easeful, expansive way. In a way of allowing things to happen.

I shed a lot of impatience.

I had a lot of fun.

And I’m about to have way more. Way. Join me!

XO
~T

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What is Your Real Limiting Factor? [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 12]

Working out is a core part of who I am and what I do. I’ve done some version of almost every workout you can imagine, and I’ve worked out all over the world. I recently spent an evening boxing with a bunch of teenagers in Belgium, and I’m delighted to say I was pulled to the front of the class! (That showed them. Actually, I’m pretty sure they didn’t care, but I was extremely impressed with myself.)

So when I was asked recently to recall my favorite workout ever, I took the question very, very seriously. But it didn’t take long for me to come up with the answer.

I could actually visualize the day, the performance boot camp, at a training studio near my home.

I could see in my mind’s eye the instructor, a physical therapist with a buzz cut, military straight posture, and a mischievous grin that spread across his face as he stood before the ten of us participants and announced the theme of the day’s workout:

“The Construction and Destruction of Civilization.”

“Oh boy,” I whispered under my breath, with equal parts excitement and concern.

The instructor, Brian, briefed us on each station of the circuit as he walked around the former bank parking lot that had been retrofitted with monkey bars, 30 pound sandbags, kettlebells and a tractor tire. “At station one,” he said, “you’ll haul each of these sandbags up this set of stairs. At station two, you’ll continue ‘construction’ by doing the Turkish getup with the kettlebell,” he went on, referring to a crowd-pleasing exercise in which a single repetition involves 13 or 14 steps, depending on who you ask.

“Then, you’ll cross the timeline of history on the monkey bars, at the next station. And at station four, you’ll continue that journey by doing walking lunges with the kettlebell weight of your choice. You following me, guys? Great! The next station will be a run from here to the rainbow sherbet colored house at the end of the block and back. And then the final two stations will destroy civilization, with sledgehammer swings to the tire, first on the right side, then on the left.”

“Hey Brian,” I shouted out, trying to figure out which mental strategy I’d need to use to do my best on this drill, “how long will we spend at each station?”

“That’s the best part!” he replied, eyes gleaming. “These stations are not for time. The person who runs to the rainbow sherbet house is your time limiting factor. Everyone else will keep doing what they’re doing until that person runs down and back.”

At this, a murmur passed through our ranks – a former college track star, a current pro basketball player, two zero bodyfat soccer Mom types, a couple recovering Crossfitters and me, a marketing consultant – as we gave each other looks of encouragement and, well, threat.

The Power of Understanding Your Limiting Factor

Now, you might not be familiar with the concept of a “limiting factor”, so let’s pause here for just a moment. In any scientific discipline, the limiting factor is the single variable that most limits, slows or constrains an organism’s growth or a system’s other activities. For example, until the Agricultural Revolution, food was the limiting factor on human population growth.

You can think of the limiting factor as that thing which most constrains or slows something down. So in our boot camp, the rate of that one person’s run would keep everyone else climbing the stairs, lunging, or swinging the sledgehammer until they made it to the sherbet house and back. The runner’s pace, then, would be the limiting factor for the time each station would last, for all of us.

At a glance, it seems like the limiting factor of any system would be its weakness, its most vulnerable point. But the truth is that there is great strength hidden within the knowledge of any system’s limiting factor. If you can pinpoint the limiting factor of any system, then you can focus on understanding and solving for that constraint, unlocking or expanding it.

If you want to increase the capacity of any organism, system, business or even person to grow, you must find its limiting factor and unconstrain it. Therein lies the key to unlimiting anything.

The challenge is that the more moving parts there are to a system, the less obvious it is which of them is the true limiting factor. The easier it is to get distracted and focus on the wrong thing.

For example, on that Construction/Destruction boot camp course, most people assumed that the speed of the runner was the limiting factor, and that there’s not much any of us could change about that. But I’d worked out with Brian many times, and I knew better. Just the preceding week, in fact, we non-runners had worked ourselves to exhaustion waiting on a newbie boot camper who, it turned out, had run to the wrong house: a house a mile away, vs. the quarter-mile distance to and from the legitimate sherbet house.

So that day, I pulled out my secret weapon and shared it with my colleagues: the street number of the house we were supposed to be running to and from.

Understand the true limiting factor of a system, and you can un-limit anything.

The more I grow and experience in this life, the more I choose to invest my time, money and energy into things that remove limiting factors off my life, myself as a person, my companies, my finances, my skills and my relationships. Find the limitation, remove it. Find it, remove it.

Doing this systematically, over and over again, increases our capacity for life, for living, for fulfillment and for joy. It creates growth and expands possibilities. If and when you do it right, this becomes a game. It’s still hard, but this is a fun way to grow, because you’re not so fixated on a specific factual outcome. Building capacity and removing limits becomes the sport of the day. It’s not hard and cranky and struggle and grindy. The name of the game is remove limits, increase capacity and see what’s next, then make that the sport of the day.

The thing is, you have to make sure you’re focused on the true limiting factors. A lot of times we think our limitations are our circumstances: the boss that won’t pay us what we deserve, our bills, our lack of savings, our medical condition, or the fact that we have kids or an underwater house that keeps us in a place we’d rather not be. I’ve found that our circumstances are almost never our true limiting factors. Our real limitations are most often our outlook, skills,  mindset, or inability to tune in, with clarity, to what we’re really here to do.

At times I’ve focused on healing my emotional wounds, because I saw the fact that I was often triggered and tended to isolate myself as my biggest limits. Once, I had to focus on my claustrophobia, as it was stopping me from doing things in my life I wanted and needed to do. At other times, I’ve focused on consistency as the limiting factor I needed to remove. I’ve working on eliminating relationship patterns like not asking for what I need, being overly self-reliant or trying to save the world, when they were limiting my love and ease and joy.

Other times, my limiting factor has been much more concrete: my foot speed, my ability to get a full night’s sleep, or my acid reflux. Focus on it, remove and release it. Move right on along.

Sometimes I’ve worked on my strategy skills, or on the way I communicate or on thickening my skin to some things and becoming more transparent about others. I find that the limiting factors tend to show up in the form of themes in the feedback that I hear from others or the things I want to do or build that don’t work, over and over again, until I opt-out of that limiting factor. And sometimes that opt-out is instant. Other times, it takes years.

You know by now that I see my two dogs as my teachers. I’ll close with a lesson I learned from them years ago, when they were tiny baby puppies, small enough to hold them both in my two palms. I got the girls when they were six weeks old and had them potty trained in another two weeks, after an intense program I’d cobbled together from my online research. As soon as they ate, they went outside, and didn’t come back in until I’d counted two #1s and two #2s.

I noticed that when the girls started walking about in little manic circles, it was a sign they needed to and were about to go #2. This was a life lesson to me: when you get stuck or feel like you’re going around in circles, it might be time to eliminate something. In my experience, what you’re ready to eliminate in those stuck-circling times is often your limiting factor. Have fun!

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Raise Your Hand if You’ve Ever Thought About Quitting Facebook [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 11]

Over the years, I’ve achieved a state of effortful ease about curating what I allow to come into my headspace and impact the quantity and quality of my energy, my lifeblood. I take care about the songs I listen to, the films I watch, the people I spend time with, the places I go, the work I do, the things I read, the conversations I have, the things I eat and drink and even my home and physical surroundings.

I even have brilliantly colored art on my walls, in part, because it creates a big boost to the state of my energy every time I walk through the living room, or simply glance up.

But there’s one wall that has the power to deactivate my normally well-curated, high energy state: my Facebook wall.

I realized this way before the Election. Over a year ago, I became acutely aware that 30 minutes on Facebook was an incredible emotional rollercoaster. From the highs of my friends’ incredibly, almost unnaturally adorable babies and dogs and videos of hyperactive baby goats in pajamas to the lows of ISIS and the (bizarrely named) Tea Party. The fever pitch of the pre-Election media cycle only intensified both the highs (oh, Michelle) and the lows (let’s just leave them nameless, kinda like we do Voldemort).

So, as the tenor and tension increased, I redoubled my efforts to manage what entered my consciousness. I told my friends I’d opted out of Election Anxiety—not the Election itself, I would and did vote. Just the anxiety around the Election. And trust me when I say that this took mighty and mightier efforts, as things played out. I didn’t watch a single debate. I didn’t read the books my friends were reading. I didn’t click on those links. I even went to Europe for a few weeks near the end of things.

I told people I wasn’t voting to give the reins of my country to Mr. Trump, and I wouldn’t be giving him or my well-meaning, distraught and afraid friends the reins to my peace, calm or sanity, either. I saw it as my responsibility to guard my heart and manage my energy so I can do the work and be the person I was put here to do and to be. That meant a lot of days away from Facebook, and still does.

And yes, I was caught off guard by the results of the Election. But we all were, not just those of us who chose to follow it only as closely as it took to stay responsibly informed. My aim was to be informed, but not conformed, not upset and not overwhelmed. I know a lot about content strategy, marketing and a lot about media, and I know that many businesses profit from the emotional upheaval of the masses. There are whole industries built around how to build website and media that people can’t stop clicking on. Because this is my job, I know enough to guard against getting hooked.

Some people flat-out disagreed that my way was the right way, but the truth is that none of my Election-fixated friends were any less surprised at the outcome than I was.

Since this “upset”, there’s been a ton of talk about how Facebook might have played a role in the surprising nature of the election outcome to so many of us, all around the world. The Wall Street Journal reported: “scholars worry that the social network can create “echo chambers,” where users see posts only from like-minded friends and media sources.”

Here’s my two cents: yes, the algorithms create echo chambers. And no, most of us aren’t doing the work it takes to seek out dissenting opinions. But Facebook is not the problem. We create these echo-chambers in real life, anyway, left to our own devices.

  • Exhibit A: Many, many people I know have mentioned having to unfollow or unfriend people on the other side of this election from them, a move that definitely creates a more one-sided view.
  • Exhibit B: I live in the Bay Area, where people were crying in the streets the day after the election.
  • Exhibit C: My parents in Bakersfield had the opposite reality – the whole election, they thought I was bonkers to expect a HIllary win because all their neighbors were vocally pro-Trump.

In real life, many people don’t have the privilege I realize I have, of having been able to move to a place where the zeitgeist aligns to my personal beliefs, so they probably are exposed to differing opinions in real life more than they are online, which is not my personal experience.

But even then, Facebook isn’t the problem. That people are emotionally wounded is the problem. Deep-seated, heart-level pain and that feeling of being utterly unloved that festers into anger, hatred and violence. Human disconnection. These are the problems that need solving, not the Facebook algorithm.

Here’s the other problem: we have to be the bosses of our technology and use it for our purposes, versus letting it use us. We need to use it to study and learn and heal divides, but also to bring our souls fully up on deck and mend what’s within our reach. Technology, even Facebook, is very, very well-designed for this use. Here’s how I know.

Last year, I was on Facebook, right during one of those times where there was so much upheaval: church shootings, police shootings, and ISIS were inescapable. One of my Facebook Friends posted this video:

The video was shot at the Paris Marathon. As the mostly white, muscled, male runners swooped past, an anomalous participant came into view: a stout, Black woman, wearing traditional African garb, bearing a plastic container I’d soon learn is called a jerry can atop her head. She wore a sandwich board sign that read “En afrique les femmes parcourent chaque jour cette distance pour l’eau potable.”

Translation: “In Africa women walk this distance each day for drinking water.”

A marathon’s distance is 26.2 miles. Let that sink in. As we sit in front of Facebook, stressing out about subjects both worthy and unworthy of our attention, there are hundreds of thousands of school-aged girls who can’t even go to school because they have to walk 10 miles each day to get often dirty water for their families.

Part of what’s so worrisome about what we read on Facebook is the helplessness factor. We care about these things, but can’t do anything about them. When I watched that video, I had this epiphany that there actually are problems we can fix or contribute to the fixes for. There are things we can help do something about, with our time and money and care.

So I looked to learn who was working on real, long-term fixes for the water problem, and found charity: water.

I looked to learn who was helping refugees and disaster victims and found Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, Doctors without Borders and one of my favorite organizations of all time, New Story.

Someone is out there working really, really hard to fix the things that upset you the most. Black Lives Matter. The ACLU. Planned Parenthood. Your local food justice organization (that’s a plug for City Slicker Farms, btw). Your church.

Curate your newsfeed aggressively, but just make sure you curate in the work that so many are doing to heal and fix and fight the good fight. And don’t just learn about it, support it. Engage in it. The cure to anxiety is not always, or often, action. But when it comes to Facebook Anxiety, that might be just what the doctor ordered.

P.S.: I’ve just pledged my birthday to raise the money for 166 people around the world to have access to clean water. Can you help?

P.P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. I wrote this post on Day 11 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

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Fiat Lux: Let there be light [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 10]

I was on the UC Berkeley website today, looking for something or other. I noticed a lovely couple of words at the bottom of the site: Fiat Lux. I thought I knew what it meant, and a quick Google proved me right. Fiat Lux is the simplified Latin for “Let there be light.” Fiat lux is the motto of the entire University of California system, and it has been since 1883.

I went down the rabbit hole, and realized that many institutions of higher education, secular and religious alike, use this phrase or some version of it as a credo, or organizing principle. The
phrase originally comes from Genesis 1:3. But the light the mottos refer to is not sunlight; it’s the light of knowledge.

The online brand guide for the University of California system reads, in part:

“The Seal of The Regents contains the words “The Seal of The University of California, 1868” displayed in an arc on the inner rim of the design. In the center, a book is open to a page marked with the letter “A”. The book symbolizes the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, and the letter “A” signifies the beginning of wisdom. A streamer carrying the words of the University motto, “Fiat Lux,” flows across the lower portion of the book. “Fiat Lux” is translated from the Latin as “Let There Be Light.” Above the book, a five-pointed star with rays of light streaming downward symbolizes the discovery and dissemination of knowledge.”

Back in the 1800s, your seal and motto served the same purpose as vision and mission statements do today. They communicated to your audiences, internally and externally, what you wanted to create, what impact you wanted to have on the world. And they also helped you clearly convey what activities you would do over and over again to create that impact, to bring about the “after” state of the world you envision.

This motto and seal reflected the original vision of the Regents who created the UC system. Their message was that they wanted to create generation after generation of fledgling, wise humans. If they were successful doing what they wanted to do, the result would be “the beginning of wisdom.” Not full-blown, full-fledged wisdom itself. They envisioned being the launchpad for wisdom, not the endpoint for it. I wonder whether this sort of vision statement would ever fly in today’s world, where every organization claims to aim to have the fix for All That Ails the World.

If “the beginning of wisdom” was the vision of the Regents, what was their mission? What were the activities they were planning to do over and over again to create little baby wisdom in the students they served? The accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, which I think means teaching, instruction, education of students. And the discovery and dissemination of knowledge, which probably refers to research and sharing of the results of that research.

I loved learning this, taking this few moments today to stash away a few more facts in my mental Rolodex for my someday plans to appear on Jeopardy. But I couldn’t help but wonder whether the thinking that engaging teaching and research would place students in the starting blocks for the path to wisdom was actually correct.

Of course, knowledge sheds light. Knowledge has value. But knowledge can also create its own form of darkness. This is especially true when the knowledge transmitted seeks to settle, shape or form who we are in some direction other than who we are meant to be. Think of all the writers and inventors who have been tamed into functionaries and day job holders. And it’s also true when our knowledge seeks to tamp us down or otherwise dial down the level of our spiritual shine. Think of Hillary Clinton saying she was taught not to wave her hands when she spoke, because it made men nervous. Think of all of us who have been told we’re too much, and to settle down or simmer down and think this way, speak this way, and whatever you ever do, don’t ask questions, don’t take up space and don’t be so LOUD.

In some traditions, human knowledge itself symbolizes darkness, though that might sound backwards to us. In the story of the Garden of Eden, the forbidden fruit was the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Because it brought knowledge of evil along with the knowledge of good, and it sparked Adam and Eve’s first experience of shame at their pure, beautiful, natural state. And it made them susceptible to the lies and division wrought by that nasty serpent.

In the same vein, writer and teacher don Miguel Ruiz says that our entire lives are our own, individual dreams we build based on Agreements: Beliefs or “knowledge” we are taught by our parents, teachers and culture from the time we are very young. Unfortunately, many of those beliefs are lies, starting with the lie that we are only “good” if we obey, and that we are “bad” if we do things our minders don’t want us to do. He encourages us to experiment with unlearning the false knowledge, unseating ourselves the false Agreements, and then starting over with four core Agreements, aspirations that do lead to wise living:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Never make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a fan of education. I have a passel of degrees myself. Maybe it’s preciselyy because I have them, and because of the life I’ve lived since I earned them, that I agree wholeheartedly with the Regents that knowledge is only the precursor to wisdom. It can put you on the path, but it takes experience to move you forward.

I also agree with don Miguel that sometimes we have to unlearn what we know, or think we know, about the world and about ourselves before we can even get in the waiting room of the house in which wisdom dwells. The irony is that only when experience inspires us to un-teach and unlearn the false knowledge can we find what was there all along: our innate goodness, and an internal wisdom far deeper and more beautiful than anything we can study. Fiat lux.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. I wrote this post on Day 10 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.

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How to Create Space for a Miracle [30 Day Writing Challenge, Day 8]

I love the way my old Pastor used to tell the story of Jesus turning water into wine. He really unpacked it. First off, Jesus hadn’t done a single miracle before then, which meant that for his Mom, Mary, to expect one was pretty bold. But when they were at a wedding and the wine ran out, Mary told Jesus to do something. And Jesus pushed back.

How to Create Space for a Miracle

I imagine Jesus was like “MOM. Why are you putting my business in the street? Ugh.” I’m sure the way I imagine this has a lot to do with my relationship with my own son. 😀 But I fact-checked my memory of this story as I wrote this, and Jesus actually said “Woman, why do you involve me?” So, it’s not all in my mind. He really did push back. I just added the “ugh”.

Even after His resistance, Mary was like “Servants. Don’t even trip. Just do whatever He says.”

And the servants did that. And they had a bunch of large, empty stone water jars at the ready. Jesus told them to fill the vessels with water, which then became wine, which was so good that the wedding guests marveled at how the hosts had saved the best for last. (Note that usually the hosts would serve the best first, counting on the increasingly drunken state of guests to cover up the increasingly inferior wine they normally served as the night went on.) This became Jesus’ first known miracle. 

There’s one under-appreciated principle this story surfaces beautifully, the idea that you must create space for miracles to happen. Without the empty vessels, and the servants on standby, just waiting for Jesus’ word, there would have been no miracle.

I’ve found this principle to be true over and over again in my life. The more space I create for miracles to happen, and the more intently I watch for them, the more and more and more I spot and receive. And just like eating a bite of delicious bread begets the desire for more, delectable carbs, miracles beget miracles, in my experience.

Here’s what I mean. I’ve written about how I quit the best job I’ve ever had, and not because the job had grown terrible. I quit that job because (a) circumstances had changed so that the company and I were no longer aligned as to purpose, and (b) I needed to create space for miracles to happen in my life.

When you’re constantly overloaded in your calendar and overextended in your budget, the stress and pressure makes it easy to miss your miracle. When you have the practice of saying yes when you really mean no, you don’t allow space for those happenstance conversations, surprise opportunities, synergistic relationships and chance encounters that so often kickstart a miracle story.  When you chronically run on spiritual fumes and anxiety or are in a constant state of low-grade blahs, it can be hard to zoom out and stay clear on your true purpose.

In that myopia, it’s easy to miss the specific paths to the general reason you were placed on this planet, because they might not be where you are looking. And the miraculous ones are almost never where you are looking.   

I won’t belabor the point, because I think the principle is relatively simple. The practices that unlock the power of the principle just take practice, and a lot of it, because they definitely buck the trends of culture, and of the way most busy leaders operate.

But you’re not an ordinary leader. You are a conscious leader. So take that consciousness and use it to create some margins, some cushions, and some space in your life and your spirit. Let me be a little more specific.

Create little margins where you can of time and money. Get out of the practice of allowing or creating mini-melodramas of calendar or cash. Live more lightly than your income would allow. This might take years, but it positions you to not have to take jobs for money, which in turn creates a pause in which miraculous opportunities can burst.

Cultivate margins of wellness and joy, too. Practice mindfulness and build in joy-inducing experiences, intentionally, to your everyday routines and rituals. With this margin, you’ll be able to flex more powerfully around incoming challenges and circumstances and spot miracles instead of shifting into shut-down, fight or flight.

Do the work of healing traumas and emotional wounds, pulling out the triggers and spiritual thorns that outsource your peace and power to a memory or a trigger. Once you’ve cultivated this deep, unconditional state, you will have the superpower of being able to tune into what’s right and what’s wrong about relationships, projects and opportunities. Once your internal chaos is calmed, you’ll know that internal agitation is a sign that a project might not be the right thing, and that peace is a green light. You’ll be able to operate on a pure signal, and to trust that signal with your life and your life’s work.  

To be clear, each of the “create space” recommendations in the last three paragraphs is, in itself, a lifelong journey and can involve a great deal of inner and outer work. But the work bears fruit almost immediately. You’ll learn to detect and trust that signal, all along. And my experience is that your signal will often point you right in the direction of your miracle. But it can only point you there if you’ve created the space.

P.S.: I issued a 30 Day Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders a few weeks back, and over 150 brilliant souls signed up! I decided to take the Challenge right along with them, and it’s been a profound journey for many of us. Most people are journaling or free-writing every day, privately. But I wrote this post on Day 8 of the Challenge. I’ll be doing another writing Challenge in January; click here to get on the list for the January Challenge.