One Day Self-Love Challenge

Yes, I do believe that one of the single most effective and powerful things we can do to participate in the Divine’s transformation of our own lives is to learn to love ourselves more.  Time and time again, as I work with people, when we get to the core of the problem, be it limiting belief, addiction, etc., it is a lack of self-love.  The thing that’s behind the thing that’s behind the thing is that they have placed a very low value on their life and don’t believe they deserve to be happy.    It is the most messed up thing of all and most people are barely aware of it. I genuinely think people want to be happy.  Yet deep down in places they haven’t explored often, they don’t believe they deserve to be happy or are worth it.  It’s the most devious trick in humanity.  Somewhere in our life we were told that we aren’t worth it.  We either were treated that way by those who were supposed to love and protect us when we were young and vulnerable, or because of decisions we made in the past, mistakes, we buy into the lie that we don’t have value and we aren’t worth being loved.  And yet we can spend our whole lives trying to prove that we are worth being loved and go to incredible lengths to try to show everyone that we are of value.

But you don’t have to prove anything.  Let me say it again.  You have nothing to prove.  The fact that God created you is enough.  That oxygen flows in and out of your lungs, bringing life to your blood cells, is enough.  What if instead of constantly trying to prove ourselves to ourselves and everyone around us, we just acknowledged that because we are alive and loved by the Divine, that we are enough.

Tomorrow is the one day self-love challenge.  Now if you just read that sentence and rolled your eyes a little, I understand.  I used to respond in the same manner.  And then I realized that being a control freak and a perfectionist, and being harder on myself than anyone else hadn’t really gotten me the things in life I want… peace, happiness, self-control, etc.  Has the way you’ve been living your life taken you to the heights of your dreams?  So why not take one day and commit to loving yourself?  Why not take one day to be completely and utterly gracious with yourself?  Why not take one day and instead of criticizing yourself for making a mistake, simply affirm that you love yourself anyways, just the way you are?  Here are a few places to start...

1.  Make the commitment to love yourself for 1 day:  Make the commitment and choose love for yourself.  Do it now.  If love is the greatest gift we have to give, what could be possibly wrong with loving yourself for one day in all your thoughts and actions?  Go ahead and literally write it out right now or type it in an email to yourself or send it as a text to yourself.  "Tomorrow I will commit my entire day to practicing self love."

2.  Affirm yourself verbally throughout the day:  Think of the most loving thing you could say to yourself, and repeat regularly throughout the day.  Get up and repeat it OUT LOUD to yourself first thing.  Write it on a post it note and stick it on your bathroom mirror before you go to bed tonight.  If you are having trouble coming up with something loving to say to yourself, try starting here.

3.  Forgive yourself immediately after any intentional or unintentional mistake:  So you just screwed up and maybe no one else knows it, but you do.  Immediately forgive yourself.  If it helps, you can allow yourself to feel your remorse and then say... "I totally and completely forgive myself for ____________________ and I release myself of all my anger and all my disappointment."  Try it.  Forgiveness is incredibly powerful and it is the one of the most freeing things to experience.  In fact, maybe you want to start your day by forgiving yourself for everything you've done that you have yet to forgive yourself for.

4.  Give yourself a gift:  Choose one thing to do for yourself that you know brings you life and you know cares for your soul and heart.  Maybe you love going for a run but haven't had time lately.  Maybe there is a good book you just haven't allowed yourself to read lately because you haven't had time.  Read it.  Maybe there is a friend that always brings you life that you haven't spent time with or talk to lately.  Ask them to hang out or simply call them and just talk.

Taking the one day self-love challenge is a gift that you can give to yourself with no strings attached.  It's only one day.  How bad could it possibly be?  A better question and motivation is, how incredible might it be?  What if you discover some things about yourself?  Wouldn't it be worth it?

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me via the website and I will be glad to get back to you before you wake up tomorrow.  What do you say?  ARE YOU WORTH IT?

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“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”  - C.G. Jung

"Loving yourself…does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion. "- Margo Anand

"Well-ordered self-love is right and natural." - Thomas Aquinas

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Stop comparing, Start Loving

A couple of months ago I mentioned a trip to Laguna Beach with several forward thinking, open hearted, inspirational people.  50 of them to be exact.  It was such an incredible time and space for connecting with humanity, conversing about social and theological dynamics, and exploring futurist topics and trends. The people that showed up there were highly intellectual and creatively charged folks.  Or as we say in Boston, “these peeps are wicked smaht”.  I remember spending most of my time dealing with a running inner dialogue.  That guy is so much smarter than me.  That girl is so much more creative than me.  He writes so much better than I do.  She is such a better orator than I am.  I’m not as wealthy as that guy.  She is such a better organizational person than I am.  He is so much more deep than me.  And on and on.  My inner dialogue quickly lead me to one conclusion… “I don’t belong with these people.”  Fortunately the love I felt from them destroyed that conclusion.

You know this inner dialogue don’t you?  I wish I was as good looking as that guy.  I wish my body was as toned and petite as hers.  I wish my bank account looked like theirs.  I could never be as smart as them.  I wasn’t blessed with his charm.  This inner dialogue is one of the most ungrateful and limiting dialogues you can participate in.  These kind of negative, limiting beliefs can send us into a holding pattern for months, years, even decades.  If we don’t process our way out of it, we will literally never grow past it.

But during one of our sessions, our leader made a profound statement.  He said… “Who you aren’t, isn’t interesting”.  No one is interested in hearing about who I am not.  So why would I be interested in it?  I decided right then that of critical importance to my growth was to stop listening to this inner dialogue.  How did I do that?  It’s taken some time.  I’ve read many books.  I’ve noticed right away when that dialogue starts and try to identify the triggers that cause it.  Then I stop listening.  But one more thing has worked extremely well for me.  I’d like to share that with you.

I’ve stayed in contact with those remarkable people and I just spent the last few days in Denver with them.  We’ve conversed together, eaten together, laughed together,  opened our hearts to each other, listened to each other, cried together, and had our minds blown apart by some pretty heavy conversations and ideas.  We’ve welcomed some new people into our family and we’ve loved together.  And not one time did I even hear the beginning of that inner dialogue.  Not one time did I begin to think that I wasn’t smart enough, creative enough, interesting enough,  __________ enough, or that I didn't belong.

Do you know why? First, many months ago I decided that I wanted to rid myself of that inner dialogue and limiting beliefs and I sought out how to do that.  Secondly, and more powerfully, I was too busy loving with these people.  I literally shared and received so much love over the last few days that I had no room for comparing myself to them.  Or comparing myself with anyone for that matter.  The love came in all forms.  Particularly being transferred through all the ways I spoke of in the previous paragraph.

I am convinced that love is saving the world and will continue to.  That’s a whole other post.  But for now I am glad to say that love has saved me.  Love for myself to decide to make changes, Love for the people that I spent my time with, and Love from those people who aren’t looking to get anything out of me.  They just are loving people.  I type these words with tears in my eyes because of the great depths that love has moved me.

Are you constantly comparing yourself to others?  Are you way to interested in who you aren’t?  When was the last time you stopped and were grateful for who you are?  You are a wonderful, unique, inspirational person.  You are filled with so much of the Divine that you can change the world.  You can Love.  Get loving.

How being Present changes the World

The other day I had a random conversation with someone that turned pretty deep rather quickly.  It was one of those bump into each other kind of instances where a passing ‘hello, how are you’ would have sufficed, but the person stopped and began a longer conversation.  And it wasn’t just that they felt like chatting.  I could tell this person legitimately cared about connecting with me and wanted to know how things in life were.  I walked away from that brief encounter feeling changed.  But why?  Was it something they said?  I didn’t remember words particularly insightful being spoken.  But the whole time we were talking I felt good… no, I felt great.  I felt fulfilled and I felt cared for and those things matter to me.  It was completely unexpected.  I thought about that conversation for quite some time.  And then it dawned on me… that person was 100% present with me the entire time we were talking.  They looked me in the eyes.  They never checked their phone.  They never tried to speed things up or exit the conversation.  They were just giving me their full attention. That is so powerful.  My day literally was better from that point on.  The remarkable thing about this gift is that it goes both ways.  Because that person was completely present, not allowing anything else to hijack the moment, they are better for it as well.

Can you imagine living a life where you are constantly focused on the thing your doing or the person you’re with?  Can you imagine taking an afternoon for yourself and instead of getting caught up in the next ‘pressing’ thing, you actually enjoyed yourself?  If this is a difficult thing to imagine, then it just might be what your heart and soul needs.

This isn’t something I can write with great experience about because I’m only learning to be dialed in myself.  Recently I had the opportunity to meet with one of my mentors.  This man is a giant in my line of work and someone I’ve looked up to for such a long time.  Do you know what I recognized was different about him when we were talking?  It wasn’t that he is insanely brilliant or charismatic.  It was that the entire time we were sharing, he was present and in the moment.  I’m not the smartest guy.  In fact I’m not the one millionth guy down the list of smart people.  And I’m not too charismatic either.  But one thing I can do is make the choice to be present in my life.

This is a gift that I can give to others and that I can also give to myself.  Being in the moment not only lets others know that I care and that I am offering value to them, but it also tells me that I care and that I have value to give.  For the sake of brevity I won’t go into detail about all the ways that we aren’t present or ‘alive’ in each moment.  You already know the ways in which you ‘escape’ throughout the day.  But what if it wasn’t about escaping?  What would it look like for you to decide that for the rest of the moments of the day you were going to be present in them?  What are ways you can be even more present than you already are?  If you have some thoughts on this I’d love to hear them.  I really would.

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Today I will be entirely present in my life.  I won't settle for escaping when the urge to distract myself from the present moment arises.  I will add value to the world and to my own life, simply by facing everything that comes my way with my full attention.  This will foster a deeper connection with myself, my God, my purpose, and others.

Breaking through Limiting Beliefs

For the longest time in my life I had lived with limiting beliefs.  Beliefs like, I don’t have enough money.  I don’t know how to handle money if I did have enough.  I could never sustain success.  I don’t deserve great things.  I’m not very smart.  I’m not very capable.  I don’t have what it takes.  I will fail at everything.  Other people succeed because they are born with something that I just don’t have. Etc. It feels embarrassing even to write those limiting beliefs out and share them with others.  But its true.  These are some of the paradigms I lived in for such a long time.  The wild part is that I can’t even tell you where all of these limiting beliefs orginated in my life.  Some of them I can see clearly where and how they developed, but others, I have no idea.

Do you know the problem with limiting beliefs?  As long as you have them, you will NEVER get past them.  You can’t sustainably ignore a belief that is continually running in your head, like a looped song.

The other interesting part is that these things aren’t based in any truth.  We tell ourselves these lies everyday and most of the time we aren’t aware that we’re lying to ourselves.  “I’m just not disciplined enough to eat right and exercise.”  “I’ve never been good at connecting with people.”  “I’m not lucky enough to get a break.”  These lies are based in our heads.  That’s where beliefs reside. So how do we move forward?  How do we begin to destroy or limiting beliefs?  How do we begin to dismantle the many ways that we limit ourselves?  By asking questions that begin to smash the foundation of these beliefs.

For example, If your limiting belief is that you don’t have enough money, you could simply ask yourself… Have other people not had enough money and then found a way to make more money?

If your limiting belief is that you couldn’t sustain success, you could ask yourself… Have other people learned how to sustain success and been happy about it?

If your limiting belief is that you don’t deserve great things, you could ask yourself… Have great things happened to other people who didn’t deserve it?

If your limiting belief is that you aren’t smart  enough, you could ask yourself… Have other people who weren’t brilliant succeeded?

The answers to these questions not only chip away at the foundation of limiting beliefs, but often can completely change the lenses with which we see the world.  Have you identified and recognized your limiting beliefs?  How long have you been living with them?  In what ways have they effected you?  Finally, what questions could you ask that would begin to destroy the limiting beliefs in your life?

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Today I will be aware of my beliefs and point out any that may be limiting.  I will actively state the limiting beliefs that I have found and I will ask the right questions to begin dismantling them.

The Last Person We Forgive, needs it the most

We’ve all been wronged.  We’ve all been taken advantage of and hurt.  We all know that we will have to forgive that person that hurt us at some point.  Most of us are self aware enough to know that if we don’t learn to forgive those who wrong us, it will eventually eat us up inside and cause more harm.  So, often we make the decision to forgive someone before we actually ‘feel’ like forgiving them.  Then, eventually, after we continue to choose forgiveness for that person over and over again, we begin to feel like forgiving them. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.  But what I have found is that there is almost always one person we don’t forgive.  In most cases we don’t forgive this person because we don’t even think about forgiving them.  We may not even be aware that we are angry with, disappointed with, or disgusted with that person.  But we usually are, and that person needs forgiveness too.  I’m talking about forgiving ourselves.

When we’ve done wrong or we feel like we are responsible for harm or pain, emotionally or physically, that has come to someone else, we rarely extend ourselves the grace we would extend to others.  We feel like everyone else deserves a second chance or forgiveness but us.  We feel somehow like the things we’ve done just don’t deserve forgiveness.  But you do deserve it.  You deserve it for all the reasons why everyone else deserves it.  Because there is no healthy way to move forward from hurt and pain or wrong doing until forgiveness is extended.

It’s amazing to me the amount of grace we are willing to extend to other people, yet we aren’t willing to extend it to ourselves.  We don’t like to talk about it in those terms.  So instead we say things like, “I’m just a perfectionist” or “there are just some things I can’t accept from myself, like failure”.  Some of us even wear the term ‘perfectionist’ like a badge of honor, not realizing the perfectionism isn’t possible and only leads to a downward spiral of the psyche and our emotions.

Maybe you’ve made some mistakes.  Maybe people have even been emotionally or physically hurt by your mistakes.  Maybe you meant to or maybe it was completely unintentional.  Maybe you believe that what you’ve done is beyond forgiveness and that you don’t deserve a second chance.  Maybe you’re just becoming aware yourself that you have strong negative feelings toward yourself.  Whatever the case may be, I know a way forward.  Choose to forgive yourself.  You don’t have to feel like it.  You don’t have even have to want to do it.  Simply choose that you’re going to forgive yourself.  And maybe as you choose to forgive yourself over and over again, you’ll one day FEEL like forgiving yourself.  It’s a start down a wonderful path.

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Today I choose to forgive myself for anyone I may have intentionally or unintentionally hurt.  I release myself of any and all anger or disappointment that I have with myself.  I deserve forgiveness.

The Pleasure and the Pain

There is so much to be said and written about concerning having the courage to be honest with ourselves.  Navigating the path of being present with our own feelings and owning them.  There is so much more to be explored on the topic of staring fear and pain directly in the eye of our own soul and not flinching or closing off to it.  For some this is much easier than for others.  Some of us have been formed and trained from the time we were tiny babies to face reality and to be present with all emotions.  But most of us, if we are honest, would rather not face our fears and pain head on. We have learned over time to close ourselves off from pain and fear.  We text, we skype, we chat, we drink, we smoke, we enter relationships, we exit relationships, we shop, we consume, we eat, we facebook, we do anything we can do in order to stop feeling pain as soon as we recognize it in our life (yes I recognize a run-on sentence when I see one too).  This is what addiction is all about.  Avoiding pain and fear.  Unfortunately, when we minimize the pain in our lives we also minimize the joy and elation as well.  As researcher Brene Brown has so eloquently and poignantly expressed in ‘The Gift of Imperfection’, we cannot mitigate some emotions and stay open to others.  We are either suppressing all of our emotions/feelings or we are embracing all of emotions/feelings.

It is not possible to hide from pain and fear and yet at the same time embrace Joy and Love.  It cannot be done because it doesn’t work that way.  If we want to be filled with Joy and Love, we must be willing to go to our pain and to our fears.  We must beg for the courage to look our pains and fears directly in the eye and not blink.  We must be willing to sit with that pain and fear and grow comfortable with it.

This is not easy.  If you try this and you aren’t used to it, you will quickly feel overwhelmed and have the sensation of a hot white fire rising up deep from within your chest.  You will probably believe that you’re going to have a meltdown.  Maybe you should back off at that point… just for a little while.  Maybe you need to find a good friend or professional to help you through this process.  But we must return to those things that we have shut ourselves off from for so long or they will forever be embedded in us.  We’ll wonder why we do the things that we don’t want to do.  Why we hurt the people we don’t want to hurt.

Acknowledging our pain, sitting with it, and then working through and past the pain is the only way to move forward.  And if this thought makes you sick to your stomach or seems ridiculous to you… you probably have some pain to acknowledge.

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“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”

Brene Brown

"Owning our story can be hard, but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.  Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy--the experiences that make us the most vulnerable.  Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

Brene Brown

Now is the time for this lesson

I have spent a good portion of my life trying to control the world around me in order for me to feel better about myself and safe and secure.  The problem with living my life that way is that I spent so much energy trying to control the ‘world’ around me that I didn’t have the energy to actually enjoy and live my life.  I had set the conditions of my life so that I could only be happy if certain things in my life were a certain way.  This meant I spent my energy trying to control friends, co-workers, strangers, housing, family, environment, food, etc. (like I said, pretty much anything in the world around me).  What I have recently learned is that if I let go of trying to control the comfort level of my life and trust that the Divine will provide what I need, I have a vast amount of energy because I’m not spending it trying to re-arrange the world!  As I look back, I believe God has been trying to teach this lesson of trust and letting go for many years now. As I recognize that the Divine has been trying to teach me this for years, it is easy for me to begin to feel shame and regret for not learning this lesson earlier.  I can easily get down on myself for not being smart enough or disciplined enough or aware enough or ______________ enough.  You fill in the blank, I’m sure you’re as adept at criticizing yourself as I am at myself.

But this is the beauty of lessons the Divine is trying to teach us and wants us to learn.  It doesn’t matter if this is the first time you’ve come across the lesson (the one the God has for you) or if you have come across it 1,000 times… now is the time to receive it.  It is here before you now so that you can learn from the lesson and grow.

Sometimes we learn these lessons only to realize that we already knew this, deep within ourselves.  We say, “oh yeah, I knew that.  I can’t believe I forgot such a valuable principle.”  It’s like finding an old toy in the attic and remembering how fond of it you were and its new all over again with that same sense of awe and fascination.  Or, we learn the lesson and it blows our mind and we wonder, how have I never been confronted with this truth before?  How has this never been revealed to me until now?

But whatever the circumstance, don’t play the shame game.  Don’t regret that you haven’t learned it before.  Just remember that the only truly important thing about the lesson is that regardless of how many times its been laid before you, now is the time to pick it up.  Now is the time to learn the lesson.

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What are the lessons before you these days?  What is the Divine bringing up within your heart?  What life experiences have brought you to this place at this time to learn this lesson?

Don't Engage... Be Present

Full disclosure... I am unmistakably a believer.  In this space I often use the term 'The Divine' to refer to the Higher Power.  Please allow yourself to replace 'The Divine' with how you've come to know and understand God. ______________________________________________________________________________________

The world has a funny way of bumping into us and completely changing our inner state of being.  One moment we’re happy and content, going through our day, and then BAM!  Someone that we really don’t feel good being around runs into us with the kind of passing comment that can immediately derail us.  We end up having 4 or 5 different conversations with that person in our head for the rest of the day.  Maybe we tell them off.  Maybe we logically box them into a corner and then knock them out with the tremendously practiced words we’ve worked so hard to come up with.  All in our head of course, but knock them out none the less.  The problem with this is that it takes up a tremendous amount of energy and time throughout the day!  Also, we rarely end up having a conversation with the person, let alone along the vein of what we’ve rehearsed in our minds.  There is another way, a way that doesn’t take our entire day hostage.

As painful and uncomfortable moments arise during our day, and they most certainly will, we must be aware that we are experiencing those feelings.  Don’t engage them or try to change the world around you in order to make yourself feel more comfortable.  Don’t spend your energy immediately, trying to do whatever it takes to make those feelings and pain go away.  Instead, sit in rest and relaxation, being fully present with those feelings and allowing the old, hidden, suppressed pain that rises up to come up fully and release itself.  This will take a tremendous amount of faith in the Divine.  Faith that the Divine won’t allow us to be swallowed up by that pain.  Faith that the Divine will provide for us emotionally what we need at that time.

When someone or some circumstance bumps into you and makes you extraordinarily uncomfortable, ask yourself… What is it I’m feeling?  Inadequacy? Insecurity? Fear? What is behind that feeling?  More of the same?  Or something different.  Let yourself be purified and healed as you allow yourself to go through the uncomfortable moments of fully recognizing your pain and discomfort emotionally, instead of suppressing those experiences and hiding from the truth. The Divine will care for you in those moments, even when its painful.  You will come out the other side with great clarity and confidence of the Divine within your heart.  It is only after you have been fully present with your discomfort and pain and that it has passed by without you being wrapped up in it, that you will have the clarity to decide what it is, if anything, that you want to change in your life.  Maybe you just needed to have those emotions come up so that you could be fully present with them and allow those emotions to slip away.  Or maybe when life bumped into me they came up to show me things about myself that I would like to change on a deep level.

One thing is for sure, if you spend your energy trying to keep yourself comfortable all of the time, you will be left with an empty life that is full of busy work and controlling/manipulative behavior… completely unaware of what is truly going on deep within your own heart.  NO THANK YOU!

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Today I will allow myself to have the courage to trust The Divine and relax as problems arise throughout my day.  I won't hide from the discomfort or the pain that bump into me today.  Instead, I will take a deep breathe, sit with my discomfort and ask myself... what is being revealed within me?  Why is this so uncomfortable?  How can I move forward?  I will trust The Divine will provide the way for me.