Well Within, Elese's Blog

Underestimating yourself?

11/13/2013

Do you underestimate yourself? It's kinda sneaky how that happens.

We underestimate ourselves when we accept limitations and don't notice. Our assumptions go invisible on us. They stop looking like assumptions and simply look like the truth. We then act accordingly.

Personally I know that I have at times hugely underestimated myself. I only saw how invisible this was when kind friends pointed it out to me. But it's not easy to hear. Ever witnessed someone defending their limitations? Maybe you even tried to talk them out of it when they asserted they aren't "the kind of person who..." or "tried but can't..."

I don't have any trouble calling to mind someone I know who can't quite see for themselves just how attractive, strong, capable, loving or giving they are.

A quote attributed to Henry Ford is

Whether you think you can
or whether you think you can't
either way
you are right

A nice way of saying we LIVE what we think and we do not realize that we are the thinker. This is why we become blind to our constructs, assume whatever we think is true and why we hate being challenged about it.

The whole package that makes up what I call "myself" is only a mystery to one person: Me. And it's amazing how wrong we can be about our own base assumptions of who we are.

Underestimating yourself always arises from who you assume you are.

The question "who am I?" deserves more airplay than we give it. Not only are we not entertaining the question, we seem to be moving away from contemplative traditions in which these kinds of questions mattered. We no longer engage in pure inquiry. Are we so intolerant of mystery that we would rather be wrong than not know something.

The price we pay for this is to be overly-engaged in our assumptions. And from the assumption that there is something fundamentally limited about us arises the desire to improve who we are.

Why improve who you think you are when you can simply look to see who you really are "before" the personality arrived that you call YOU.

"Who am I" or better said, "What is I?" are invitations to peek underneath the construct of ourselves, beyond the false self that we made up and just see. What came before the thoughts of "I."

I have come to appreciate these contemplations, and to enjoy following where they lead.

Are you the limited person you think you are? What if you are not?

This self I call me seems nothing more than a bouquet of thoughts, rather than facts. I call them me, but really they are air. They are concepts -- ideas that have nothing to do with who I am or what I am capable of -- if I weren't so interested in what I think about myself.

Transcend Trauma

10/14/2013

Many of us are troubled by things that have happened to us. In some cases we hold deep secrets about these things, so awful that even our close loved ones are unaware of our pain.

Yet even while these are hidden in the recesses of our minds, we seek ways to release ourselves from the past.

As one who had a violent marriage to a heroin addict, I was such a person. I would have given everything I had to someone who could have helped me transcend my own trauma. But shedding it looked impossible to me. For a long time I could not count a single day when I was not terrified.

Being in that wilderness without an exit was the lowest point in my life. As time passed I had good days when I forgot about it all. I had fewer bad days. I longed for, but wasn't quite able to find what I really wanted: my complete freedom.

Then the way to freedom showed itself. Not in a blaze of light, but a small parting of a curtain. And as I persisted in finding out what was behind that curtain I found my own way.

Sydney Banks, a great teacher of kindness wrote "The Missing Link" and in it he said:

There is no way to guarantee a trouble-free life.

Life is like any other contact sport.
You may encounter hardships of one sort or another.

Wise people find happiness
not in the absence of such hardships,
but in their ability to understand
them when they occur.

The "ability to understand" is they key I was looking for. I spent a lot of time rummaging in the drawers of the past looking for my answer, my freedom, but didn't find it until I found out something deeper about myself and my true nature.

To me, Syd is suggesting we all allow our own deeper nature to show us the way forward through love and understanding. He is inviting us to look away from the searing pain and toward the spiritual, formless side of life -- not to ignore what is happening now -- but to look behind it. To look to something more.

During the time I looked for my answers, I read many spiritual books. Among them, "A Course In Miracles." I even worked helping to translate the Course in the very early years before any translations had yet been published. The Course has been in my life for 30 years now, off and on, and I must admit it has both comforted me and confounded me.

I came across this on page 591 today:

You need no healing to be healed.

The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is still.

I almost missed the great importance of this. I wished I had really seen this those many years ago when I was struggling to let go of all the painful memories I carried with me.

It comforts me to know that these messages of help are everywhere, although we may miss them or not understand them. But even more than this, what truly helps me today is to know that there is a spiritual, or formless life that is me, and remains unchanged regardless of what happens to me.

How can we turn to the remembrance of what we are, within the formless nature of life itself, and know that it is inviolate?

How can we be in acknowledgement of the events and yet separate and untouched by their consequences?

It seems impossible. Yet, it is not. That is all I know. For so it has been for me.

More books that have helped me on my way.

About Life, Crazy Thoughts and "Evil" Forces

4/26/2013

I recently made a new Facebook friend named Kristian --who you are about to meet. Kristian friended me, I asked him why and we began talking about The Three Principles. Messaging back and forth.

Lead by his thoughtful questions, Kristian and I reflected together about "the voices in our heads," obsessive thoughts, why we all get scared and how we stay safe.

I asked him if I could share our chat here on the blog. He said yes. At first I thought I would edit this to be shorter, but I've decided not to. So...

Here is the unedited dialogue between this wise fellow and myself exploring the nature of thought in the context of The Three Principles.

Kristian Thalin
A question, do you think there are "evil" forces that can control peoples action or is all that just thought?

For example, sometimes people do these really bad things and say stuff like "that was a voice in my head that told me to do it" ... Therefore I thought that is very scary for me at times. "What if I suddenly ..." and then the worst possible thing that I can come up with like kill someone etc..

Have you ever met one with these kind of unwanted almost obsessive thoughts? If so, what makes you think they become obsessive when you don't even want them in the first place... This is where I get confused with our "free" will.
Thank you Elese,
All my love,
Kristian

Elese Coit
Hi Kristian,
How wonderful to meet you. What a thoughtful place to reflect. Here is what I have found most helpful to know about thought. See how this lands for you and let me know.

1. Everyone has every kind of thought.
The most beautiful to the most terrible. The Principles do not say you will not have "evil" or "obsessive" types of thoughts. They say: you will feel the content of your thinking, whatever it is.
Notice in your own life and see if this is true.

2. Everyone has had and continues to have (daily!!) thoughts that they ignore.
We ignore "I could eat that whole cake!" even though we have the thought. So, we do know how to let thoughts come without making them a big deal (even awful ones) and simply allow them to pass. I find that is nice to remember about ourselves.
If you can find one example in your experience, you have established that thought cannot take you over. That is what I call free will.

3. When thoughts come alive in our 5-senses, we feel them very intensely and in full 3-D.
This feels compelling, true and real. And it is. However, most people feel compelled to do something about them to stop the feeling. That means they will act on the outside of themselves in order to get rid of a feeling they don't like: strike out, get revenge, eat the cake... etc. Most people will do this and will truly feel they had no choice to do anything else. Now this is going to sound a bit tricky, but see if you can see that makes sense to people -- but only if feelings are coming from outside of us! (Which they are not).

So here is the REAL KEY: Once you know that your feelings are coming from thinking, and reflect the content of thinking alone, you do not need to act on the outside world in an attempt to rid yourself of a feeling. The more you understand where the feeling is coming from, the less you need to do "out there" to resolve it. (In fact, the less you need to do to resolve it at all. That includes improving on yourself.)

4. Remember, all feelings WILL and in fact MUST change. It is the nature of feelings. There is nothing you can do to stop yourself getting a new idea (and the feeling that will go with it) at any point.

If you want to test out number 4 for yourself, try to take one feeling, any feeling maybe anger or rage and see what you would have to do to keep that feeling going -without a break in the feeling at all.

Most people cannot last one minute with a single feeling. Within seconds they are thinking "I'm hungry" or "how long have I been doing this?" and the feeling they are trying to sustain will simply subside.

This shows you just how much natural feelings are moving along with the thoughts behind them.

So how does this help you to trust that is what is happening and know that it is the Principles that keep you safe, not the content of your thinking?
Love,
Elese

Elese Coit

P.S. and YES, just last week I was totally enraged and wanted to hit someone. I told a friend of mine in the Domestic Violence prevention unit, I could totally see how wives beat husbands and husbands beat wives. I could easily have been one in that red hot moment.

Luckily, I told her, "The Principles kept ME safe because I know what is happening to me -- what they did not do was keep me "safe" from having the thought in the first place!"
Does that make sense?

Kristian Thalin

Elese, all I can say right now is WOW! I acually found myself smiling with a deep sense of relief as I was reading your answer - thank you so much!

What you say just make perfect sense Elese, becouse if we think that our emotions really comes from something or someone then there is no wounder that one might think that we are controlled by something, when we in fact are feeling our own thinking! Thank you for helping me see that
Im starting to realize more and more that there can't simply be any "evil", it's rather a absense of god! In the same way that cold is the absense of heat and darkness is the absense of lightness like Einstein was on about. The way you came across with it made it very clear to me!

For me it feels like that the more we start see our true identity, the less scary our thinking gets simply becouse we just think we need to feel fearfull of it. I mean just look at a little baby, it does not get scared of spiders or snakes or even the most brutal horror movie becouse they don't even know what it is! It's all conditioning!

Or am I all lost when I say that we are learned to fear most things that we are scared of Elese?

Elese Coit

Kristian,
Glad to be in this reflection with you

As to your last question, here is what I think we learned: we all learned to "attribute." We had a feeling, looked for the reason for it, and then just pointed to something outside ourselves and said, "this made me feel ..."

We learned to attribute this way because no one knew any different. I certainly didn't before I came across the Principles and began to reflect on what they mean in practice...

So what we attribute to is random. Which makes sense because no one is afraid of the same things right? It's kind of amazing if you think about it, that we have never noticed this is the reason!!

Anyway, my favorite way of talking about this is "No one can make you feel ...X"* Nothing can make you feel it, but you can attribute feeling to something and believe yourself. That's not something wrong with us, it's just a misunderstanding...

does that help as you reflect on your question?
Love,
Elese

*(With thanks to Mara Gleason who put that on the white board when teaching at Supercoach)

Kristian Thalin

Elese,
First of all I want you to know that your amazing kindness and wisdom means so much to me

The way you explained how we "attribute" makes perfect sense to me! I can really see how this missunderstanding makes one think that there is something wrong with us, when in fact there is nothing wrong at all!

Elese, what do you do when you get caught up with negative feelings from your thoughts?

Sometime I find myself feeling sad but I could not identify what kind of thought that caused it and I tend to get into this strange gap between stress and wellbeing.

Once again thank you Elese!
Love,
Kristian

Elese Coit

Hi Kristian,
Hm, a question on this one ... tell me, why would you want to "identify" the thought that caused the feeling?
Love,
Elese

Kristian Thalin

Hi Elese,
It's funny how we give meaning to meaningless things. The moment I read your response a statement made by Einstein came up in my head:
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

Identifying the thought that caused the feeling would be like identifying the tiny object on the road that caused a flat tire on a bike. Focusing on that object will not do me much good...

I guess we're so used to focus on our mistakes so our habitual thinking kicks in.

Anyway, thank you Elese for questioning my thought and helping me look at it from a new angle!
Love,
Kristian

Elese Coit

Wonderful. No one could say it better. Even Einstein.

Hey Kristian, I'd love to share some of our conversation on my next blog. Would you be happy with that. I can remove your name and such -- I just think everyone has these questions and it's a comfort to people to know that everyone else does. We often feel we are the only ones, and everyone else "gets it" -- never the case!

What do you think?

I could send you a draft before publishing if that would be helpful.
Love,
Elese

Kristian Thalin

Dear Elese,
Thank you so much and it would be a honour for me to be part of your blog! You can use my name if you want. Im grateful and excited about the possibility to help others find food for thought in our journey in this amazing gift of life!

Once again thank you so much Elese for all the loving kindness and wisdom you've given me and so many others with all awesome things that you do!
All my love!
Namaste!
Kristian

With immense gratitude to Kristian for allowing me to share this dialogue. *bows* We may be individual thinkers living in our individual worlds, but in this sense we Are all in this together!

It's Not Your Personality We Love

4/2/2013

We are all wearing masks. I'm not talking about the professional mask you put on to go to work, I'm talking about the mask you call YOU.

It's the shell you've wrapped round your authentic, natural self. Let's call it your "personality." I've had one for years and I don't know how I couldn't have one. What gets tricky is when I think that me and my personality are the same thing.

It is a bit like putting on a mask and then forgetting about it. There's this weird uncomfortable feeling, but you can't put your finger on why...

If you have an uber-competent personality it may look like that serves you well. I thought mine did. And yet I had to face some inevitable facts:

The personality is not you.
The personality is actually the biggest barrier to knowing you.
The personality is not what people really appreciate about you.

All the time spent evaluating ourselves, measuring and comparing, has never been put on pause long enough to consider the deeper question that lies behind it. Unless we do, we may look in the mirror many times a day and the greatest mystery on the planet remains the face staring back.

I rarely reflected on the question, "Who am I underneath who I think I am?" I could tell you who I thought I should be. I could tell you who I was trying to become or how I was doing in relation to so-and-so. But me? On a deeper level? Very blurry.

I just assumed that I was my personality. I tried to make this personality of mine better and "special." I tried to make "me" into someone I would like. ( Remember "love yourself"? ... I did not succeed). We construct a version of a person that our own constricted minds are thinking of and within those parameters, of course it's going to be an imitation version. Roll on the self-improvement ...

"Mi, a name I call myself..."

As I began to ponder "what is me?" I began to notice that the personality I had became used to referring to as "me" was entirely composed of -- just things I think about myself. There was a the tableau of traits and characteristics that I called myself, but these were no more than a bunch of thoughts I'd had. They just happened to be about something I call me.

I had made myself up out of nothing. Out of thought.

Other people did not necessarily share the view of who I thought I was and so I also incorporated their opinions into my own thinking about me.

I remember first getting a glimpse of the depth of this as I came to know Robert Holden (listen to my radio show with him) who called the ego "the sum total of all the smallest ideas you've ever had about yourself."

It hit me that I really had constructed me. And I was terribly small. It began to dawn that, since the personality was a construct in itself, it could never find the answer to Me. The answer was beyond the content of my own thinking.

I look out through two eyes from something I call my body. I think the limits of my body are "me." I pass or fail a test, I think the results tell "me" something "I" am suited for or not suited for. I get divorced and I think this means something about "me." Thoughts. All just thoughts.

We minimize our capacities -- based on opinions that just float past -- and yet talk about them as facts and live the limitations as truth.

I was reminded of this recently when I had a client here in San Diego for a 3-day retreat and I related how people walk up to me when I am on my skates and just blurt out, "I could never do that!" The truth is, they can't possibly know that. They don't have the slightest idea. But this does not stop people from deciding precisely what they will or will not believe about themselves.

When you realize that what you think you are made of is nothing more than a jumble of ideas, maybe it's time to start asking "What is beneath what I think I am?"

"Everyone in this world shares
the same innate source of
wisdom, but it is hidden by the
tangle of our own misguided
personal thoughts"

- Sydney Banks
The Missing Link

Debbie Ford, Thank You.

2/21/2013

A great woman, friend and mentor, Debbie Ford departed this week, as her sister Arielle said, "into the waiting arms of her ancestors and guardian angels." I'll miss her. She played such a big part in my life the last 8 years that it's hard to think of her without feeling her shimmering aliveness.

Debbie's list of accomplishments are long. The newscasts and eulogies are reminders of how one woman with a heart bigger than her whole body, can actually change the world. But you could never list it all. Her life was dedicated to all of us. Her impact was massive. She flung herself out there in order to give us back ourselves. And left this world peopled with unspeakably precious gifts.

I want to say Thank You to a woman who blessed my life, who practically saved my life, and who left me with so much to be grateful for.

I found Debbie reading "Dark Side of The Light Chasers." A light went on inside me. Many more insights followed during my time training with her, assisting at the Shadow Process and hanging out. And what I most recall now are lessons I learned from her realness and her humanness.

In the time I was honored to be with her, she helped me see:

You will never be rid of your foibles. Give up trying.

You can only be yourself. You have no choice.

The only problem is you think that "yourself" is awful. And it is. But it is also beautiful.

Half the people will dislike you no matter what you do, the other half will love you no matter what you do. Get on with your work.

You don't have to settle for "surviving."

Beyond your comfort zone is your life.

Tell the truth and listen well to the truth about yourself from others. You'll get used to it.

Let It All be bigger than you are. You are Divine. Can't handle that? Though shit.

Everything you ever struggled with is going to help someone.

No matter who you think you are, you are way more. And then some.

Thank you, Debbie, for all of this and for ...

the people who are in my life only becuase of you

the healings and insights I had because of you

the way I can be with myself and others because of you

and the roads I never would have taken, were it not for you.

I Love You.

Debbie's interview with Oprah will replay this Sunday February 24th

Link to Debbie Ford's books on Amazon

The Inner Gong

1/17/2013

In April 2012, when I stopped broadcasting my live radio show, it happened in the strangest way. I had to choose to continue or not, and frankly, I just wasn't sure. Up until the last possible cliff-hanging moment, I didn't know whether to go on or stop.

All I can tell you is I waited and waited and waited and I got no Inner Gong.

The sound of that "Gong" is one way I refer to the feeling that I get inside when I know something is right for me. It can be a tingle or a feeling that my heart is bursting, or a simple internal whisper of Yes.

Which is great, except for that I had nothing. Nada. Zip.

Which meant I also wasn't getting an inner "No Way!" This was beginning to look like a bit of a problem. Then I thought, "Well, without a clear yes or a clear no, what shall I do?" I decided to simply let go of the show and wait.

Now if you know me, you'll know I'm a workhorse. I can be pretty tough to keep pace with. I walk fast. I eat fast. Normally I decide fast. I am not the kind of gal who just sits around and waits.

So maybe I should clarify what I mean by "let go and wait."

What happened really was, I tuned in. For once in my life, I slowed down just enough to not rush forward into the void, and began to turn my full attention inward. Not just my partial attention.

Over the last few years I've learned enough about how the mind works to know that you cannot solve problems by getting busier, speeding up, forcing things or taking on more. The only way to know yourself, to know your own mind, and therefore to really hear what you want, what you'd love and what you think would be wonderful -- you must listen.

I have not listened for most of my life. Case in point (FYI, Elese), there's a much better chance I might not have married a heroin addict in college if I had. (Amongst other things which would take me way off topic...)

This time I opted for listening before doing.

I mean, I needed to learn how to hear, but most importantly to what. So it has been an ongoing education for me, culminating in this very strange situation with the radio. With a quarter of million listeners behind me, I just simply didn't continue moving forward with something that was successful and growing, based on well, let's be fair, a guess.

I made a guess that if I waited, I would hear something eventually. Then it all went pretty quiet. Didn't expect that. So there I was, watching it end, with nothing new to go on and no direction to go instead. (Here's the blog I wrote at the time) To follow my gut this time round meant allowing myself to release what was working, not for something better, but for something unknown.

I'll admit during the following months it felt like I was being stretched on a rack! It seemed like I was in the unknown without a map and with a GPS system that refused to cooperate. I realized I couldn't make it talk but also, since most of my mistakes happen in the gap between not-knowing and not being comfortable with that, I knew I wasn't willing to try to force it.

Tough one. If you are me.

The longer this went on, the more challenged I was. I would get some notions, follow a few ideas, throw things out there -- but my inner gong still wouldn't play my way.

I had got myself by the "short and curlies," as they say.

For eight months things kind of fell apart and were replaced by one increasingly large question mark. I'd love to say I was comfortable with all of this. The truth is I went up and down a lot. And that is the nature of the mind. Luckily I also knew that and it helped me immensely. I was able to stay in the discomfort zone and even to relax there, and as I did, I started to get finer distinctions for myself about the different tones of the gong. Eventually I began to be moved by something within that I could hear clearly.

There is no real end to this story, but there are some interesting conclusions. Today I have more clarity about my reason for being on this planet than I ever have, and that's pretty amazing to me. (Read my newsletter of today for more on this). Had started this process with that in mind, I am not sure I'd have seen that result. Maybe. But that is certainly not what my clever mind thought I needed at the time.

Could I have learned all this without dropping everything?

Maybe.

At the same time I have to admit I feel so much more myself. Even though it
doesn't feel like I'm the one holding the mallet.

During eight months winding along a path of hairpin turns with no horizon in view, something else happened. One day I woke up and wrote down Ten Keys I use to recognize and tune in to my Inner Direction. I hadn't noticed these before.

In the autumn of 2012 I shared these Ten Keys with people in the form of an free ebook, which is still around on iBooks. I loved choosing the photographs for the book. They are amazing! You can check them out on a copy I have available here if you don't have a device with iBooks.

In addition, many people wrote me and shared their stories of following Inner Direction. I have not compiled these in the book -- yet. Why? No reason, really. They are all really great and wonderful. One day I might. Or not.

Isn't it nice to know that nothing has to be wrong -- or even right -- for you to steer in any direction you want? And for no reason at all except you.

Sounds like freedom to me.

In the last two months I've added exercises to Inner Direction (based on many of the questions I asked myself going through this process of change and inner attunement) and expanded the book content, plus I've included pages you can take notes on. More Here.

Breaking New Ground

10/16/2012

One day it occurred to me: for EVERYTHING I've ever done, there was a time when I had never done it before.

Obvious. Clearly. Yet this had never struck me as deeply before.

I was speaking to a client recently and we were talking about how we are all hard on ourselves, thinking that we should be further along than we are, or moving faster than we are moving.

It is so common in coaching and in consulting that clients downplay their progress with these kinds of comparisons, forgetting to look beyond events in order to see the underlying plate tectonics.

Take my client recently. In the middle of an argument with his spouse he had the idea to slow down, listen and try to understand what was being said instead of the defense/attack strategy that was in play at the time.

As we talked about how this had happened it was obvious to me that he was underplaying the importance of what he had done. I wondered why. "It really wasn't going very well" and "I could have done this sooner" were threatening to wipe out the significance of a momentous occasion: in the middle of a deep quagmire, he'd actually found his bearings, had a fresh idea flash before him, acted on it and turned the conversation in a more positive direction.

Amazingly, with no provocation and in the worst possible conditions for a new idea to arise, it did. And he listened. Yet what I heard as a sign of success, he was viewing as a near-failure.

How was that possible?

Along the course of our lives we seem to have (most of us, me included) picked up a nasty habit of thinking we should be better than we are in any given moment. This keeps us from knowing what to look for and from perceiving what is happening on a deeper level.

Ruminating over our performances we often judge them to be less than successful ("I could have prevented that" / "I never should have got there in the first place). We compare ourselves to standards no one really ever lives up to: "I should have been able to create an open space of pure listening."

Really? No you couldn't have done that, because you didn't. Are you missing what did happen, however?

No wonder people head in the wrong direction -- thinking they need to double up their efforts, or be even harder on themselves, as if the point of life were to eventually be perfect. Or nearly.

That's not to say one can't do better next time, but surely we are missing the point. The point of self-awareness and self-observiation is self-understanding -- not self-condemnation. Seek to understand and what you see will change. Judge something and you cannot see it at all.

Let's give ourselves a break. This self-flaggelation thing has really run its course. There is so much research out there clearly showing that the carrot and the stick do not work.(Just watch Daniel Pink below on Motivation)

Personally speaking I think it is amazing that I can even have a change of perspective in the middle of a near-brawl, much less to act on it. Compared to the number of times I've ignored by own voice of reason!

Why not look at our lives from the gentler -- yet equally true -- perspective?

Not only does that mean recognizing the significance of our small triumphs, but realizing that they are not just one-off anomalies.

Take our example as a case in point. Consider for a moment just the fact that he got this new idea in the midst of a bad moment between two people. What does that tell you about what human beings need to do to have new ideas?

If you or I, or my client, can have a new thought in the middle of an argument, then surely there are no conditions to be met for us to "get grounded" or "be good listeners" or anything of the sort.

What it suggests is that our ability to hear afresh and to change is natural. Or as my client put it, "something you can count on."

This implies you don't have to be "good" or spiritually advanced, deserving, forgiving, listening attentively or any of the other pre-conditions we sometimes set up.

Imagine. You can just be going about your business and you can count on your ability to see anew just being there.

Regardless then of how badly we think we are doing when we play the game film, there is always the basic movement from: "now you don't see it / now you do." And this movement is always happening in us. We aren't making it happen with our self-development programs. Or better said:

We might be becoming more aware of how it's working; but we are not making it happen.

I know it's common to consider the self development pathway as one in which we get progressively better at this thing we call life. But really, everything we will ever do will always be something that one day, perhaps just the day before, we could not do or had never thought of doing, so I think this whole notion of "progress" and preconditions only gets in the way of that natural flow.

Every person on the planet knows how to shift from not knowing something one moment to knowing it. We did it with walking, talking and eating with spoons. We've been doing it for our whole lives and we'll continue doing it.

Let's start counting on it.

To Build Your Clientele, Meet Yourself

9/13/2012

A friend asked me how our new mangement consulting business will attract clients.

I sat back and thought, "How do I know that we are supposed to "attract" anyone at all?"

For those like my friend who find business building and marketing exhausting, there is a spiritual school of thought that says, "It's OK. Stop trying and start attracting. You are a spiritual being and the law of attraction will have your clients find you." Well, yes, we all are more than just our bodies. Talk to anyone who has had a near death experience, like Anita Moorjani (video below). But you can't unplug your personal plan and just plug in a new spiritual marketing plan. I am not seeing this working for people. And I'll get to what's missing in a moment.

Whether my techniques are old-school marketing and cold calling or new-school "attracting" it seems to me, the problem is: I am still working on the level of myself, Elese the human being using techniques to the best of her ability. It's as if we say, " I have tried marketing techniques, social media techniques, affiliate techniques, now I'll go for spiritual techniques."

We cannot substitute personal effort with spiritual effort.

In fact, I'm not sure there is any such thing as spiritual effort. What do I mean by this?

I mean, I don't think we MAKE ourselves spiritual, and I don't think we have any role in making spirituality work on a personal level -- anymore than we make electricity work.

To use "attracting" as your sales plan is just another technique, no different from traditional marketing, it doesn't work unless what is behind it is authentic. So if you are a coach, or a human services provider...

I believe you can't substitute any technique, spiritual or otherwise, for improving the base quality of your work. And the quality of your work is related to the depth of your own view of who you are and how you function.

Think of a magnet. A magnet does nothing to attract. When the right metallic components are in range, the polarity takes care of itself. I think we love the idea that we make ourselves into great magnets through our work and then people just get attracted. No. You don't make your polarity. You ARE the polarity because of your nature. Should you just stand there and radiate? Will they come? Maybe.

Or are you thinking that your job is to increase your polarity? Well, it's not. You job is to dance your dance. You don't even need to go deeper in anything unless it is useful to you to not only be who you are but to have awareness of who you are. But, you are already who you are. You are already the base metal and so is everyone else. Without your concept of who you are and your ideas about who you are, you would just simply be you.

So who am I and who do I think I am. Am I thinking of myself as someone who needs to attract clients? Where are all the areas I tend to forget who I am and become afraid and insecure? What's underneath my insecure thinking?

When was the last time you really reflected on: Who Are You?

From who you think you are flows everything that you do to make yourself happy, everything you think you need or is missing, all your problems and all your concerns. You are doing everything in your life right now based on your best guess about who you are.

I was raised in a Christian Science family and I was told from the earliest of ages, "you are not your body." I never believed this, even after spending the first 18 years of my life dedicated to this metaphysical study. So I do not expect that anyone, not you, not me, should take anyone's word for who you are. Belief should not come into it. You cannot sit solidly on a belief. But inquiry can get us beyond who we think we are.

We are too quick to accept everything we think as a true and accurate picture of life and of ourselves. We speak far too easily about ideas like "Law of Attraction," "ego" and "spiritual self" and have not taken enough time to investigate these beyond the level of concepts and pop culture.

Everything we do as humans is an attempt to remedy a life that is the direct result of accepting whatever crazy things we think and living them as true.

Most people I know (including me!) suffer at some point from some form of dwarfed or warped self-image. Most people simply try to apply this idea of "attraction" using their self-image. This image is made up of what we think of ourselves, but what is underneath it is actually what is most attractive about us.

At some point, if you are a coach and you are growing your business of service to others, the investigation into who is "Me" is a necessary investigation that has taken my clients and will take you through to the next level.

Forget attracting. Get to know yourself.

The Greatest Lesson In Love I've Ever Had

7/23/2012

Many years ago, I was in a serious relationship and living with the man I thought I would marry. he had given up everything to be with me, moving from the US to the UK, leaving his job and even selling his car (he loved that car). He arrived at the airport with a few personal items and carrying a promise: we would be together. Forever, I thought.

This was not to be. And it was the greatest lesson in love I ever learned.

After a year of living together and enjoying life together I noticed he was becoming irritable. He complained about city life. He felt like a foreigner. I jumped into action with everything I knew to show him the best sides of my city, my life and myself.

I thought, despite these little concerns, that we would marry and be together always. I was deeply in love and as I looked at it from the bright side, it seemed we could live anywhere and do anything we wanted to. We'd work it out...

About 14 months after we moved in together, he sat me down one day in the living room. It was spring and grey skies were lifting. I had noticed that his mood had not. He seemed to spend his days in the house now, smoking more often. He had more complaints when I arrived home in the evenings -- some about me, but mostly about life.

As I sat on the floor he began, "I want to go home."

I guess I had felt something coming. Recently our discussions about the future and marriage had got very sticky. I felt I was pushing him. A bad feeling was growing in me. Something was wrong. In my usual haughtiness, I assumed something was wrong with Him.

"Back to San Diego?" I inquired.

"Yes..."

Well, that seemed a reasonable thing. He had lived there for years and we met there. My mother lived there. It sounded like a good plan for us, but somehow I knew he wasn't talking about our plan.

"...I am leaving in July on my ticket and I don't want to plan to come back."

As each word landed I felt the ground rumbling under the pounding hooves of large oncoming herd of buffalo.

Now being an American in the UK has challenges. allows you only so much time in any one sojourn so the sand in the hourglass is always dribbling. You cannot work and you have to leave regularly in order to renew your visa. You can also only renew a tourist visa a limited number of times. If he were to come back after his current ticket was used, we knew it would be the last time and we were aware of the dangers of marrying under pressured circumstances. (Small detail: he hadn't asked). We could both live in the States, however, so we had talked about moving. My head was swirling. Maybe that's what he was talking about...

He was looking at the floor. This was something more.

I asked questions. Did he want me to come with him? Would I come later? Would we try living there for a while? Live in both places?

His answers were sad and clear. He could go live with a friend who had a room. I probably wouldn't like that place. Also, he didn't want to have any more possessions. Only the minimum needed to live. He would live a life "off the grid."

"Does this plan include me?" I asked, anxiously.

"If you can live that way," he replied still looking down.

A life "off grid" he explained would involve living only with recycled and found items, buying nothing new. He would get furniture or anyting else he needed off the street. But he didn't expect to need that. Sleeping rough in his room would be fine. A computer and a few hangers would hold his life. Enough consumer items have been made to fill a planet already, he would have no part of encouraging "them" to make more.

My head was exploding in two directions. First, I felt accused of being some kind of reckless consumer. I felt frivolous in my choices, the amount of clothes I owned, my spending on food and entertainment. I felt as if a great finger of shame was pointing at me. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was starting to feel sick. My stomach had sunk to the floor. Tears were burning my eyes. He had planned this. He had already thought it through. ohmygod. For some time! He knew exactly what he was doing and how much he would budget. It was all worked out. I was not being consulted. I was being informed.

He was leaving me.

In the months that followed I did little else but cry and cry some more. I was hurt, betrayed and I felt pitiful. "The one I love who I thought loved me, is leaving me." I begged to understand how I could fit in to this plan. Could the plan be modified. What about this? What about that? I got angry the more I realized I couldn't fit in. I yo-yo'd between grief and fury. I settled for despair.

The one thing I did not do, was act like someone who loved him.

It tooks months to see beyond the pain to the lesson I would eventually find. OH, the pain! I was sliced and diced. I could hardly eat. I was sleepwalking at work and when I wasn't actually sleeping I was crying. I woke up crying, I showered crying, I sat on the toilet crying.

As July approached and my once-lover, not-future-husband packed to leave, I had found some self-help books and leaned on friends to help me get through this major life event. But my suffering was intense and at Heathrow airport his parting words flattened me. What I longed to hear, "I can't leave you, let's figure this out somehow," fluttered through my hopeful heart as we shared a coffee and watched the clock in silence. Then we stood up, walked to the gate, he hugged me, ticket and passport in hand, he whispered, "I made a mistake. I wish I had made love to you one last time."

And then he disappeared into the security check and the crowd beyond.

Zombified, I walked to the car. Called a friend. Pretended like I felt OK and drove home blind with tears.

Some while later I found myself transferred to the US with my job and living in San Diego. Briefly my lover and I reconnected and I had a revelation that showed me everything I had been unable to see.

My revelation was this: I loved him, but I actually didn't know what love was.

You see, when I arrived in San Diego I began to notice a happy man living exactly as he wanted to. He was enjoying the life he had made "off grid." It was everything he had hoped for and more. He had a great life. For him.

The terrible truth dawned on me: that day of his revelation in my living room, I didn't want him to have a great life; I wanted him to want me.

THAT was all I cared about.

This is not love.

To love someone is to want what they want for themselves. To love someone is to want them to have their happiness. Even above you.

I realized that if I had truly loved him I might have sat on my floor that day full of curiosity about the life he was planning and interested in his happiness and his joy. But No. I was thinking "What about ME?" and "How can you leave ME!" and "Oh, my God, there goes MY life down the toilet!" Selfish Elese. I didn't give a shit what he wanted. I didn't care.

Thinking what I did seems perfectly normal and completely understandable when you get a shock. The problem came when I mistook it for love. I even thought my bad feeling came from the fact I loved him.

It did not.

Love loves that the other person loves what they love and leaves them free.

There are still many, many ways every day that I forget this lesson of mine. I still am fully capable of trying to shape the lives of others for my own selfish reasons, whether it is my family or my friends. And of course, it remains a challenge in any relationship too. I'm a human so life has it's variety. I continue to fail to be happy for other people's choices and to judge them. I continue to fail to leave people to their own devices, to bless them, to honor them and to continue on my way without still feeling some tug to intervene.

When I am at my most clear, I see that the intervention needed is for me, not for them.

But my personal folklore about Love has shifted. Most of the ways we all talk about love and what it looks like are simply sentimental and untrue. A piercing look into our love relationships may well show us, not the faults of the others, but the dark places in ourselves. We can refuse to step into these places at our peril. The danger being that we continue to experience love as nothing more than a form of pleasurable self-interest that comes with a sting in the tail the moment we don't get what we want.

I learned a hard but beautiful lesson and sometimes I need to remind myself of it.
Bruce de Marsico said in this article To Love is To Be Happy, "you only fail to love if you get unhappy."

I know that I can

be happy with another person's choices -- though I don't have to share them
be happy with their predilections and habits -- though I don't have to indulge in them
be happy with their lives as they see fit to lead them -- even when that does not involve living with me

Love has only one face and very simply, we know it by a feeling of love and happiness. To know that face we must stop trying to choose happiness for others and choose it for ourselves. Only then will we finally meet the other person as who they are and perhaps we will find they are as flawed and as lovable as we are.

My postscript. 8 years on...

Now and again I run into my ex and I see clearly we wouldn't have worked out as a couple. We've very different lives. Now I can appreciate him and that he gifted me this lesson.

Thank goodness for him. Thank goodness he had the strength to remain steady in his conviction instead of submitting to my misguided and misdirected will. What a mess of a compromise we would have made! Each trying to love one another at the cost of our happiness. I love that he is happy. I love to spot him from time to time riding his bike, smiling from the saddle of his free and unencumbered day. His life is not for me. And it is perfect for him.

I Love that.

Lessons From (near) Death

7/10/2012

I've spent the last two days in hospital at the bedside of a friend, while he recovered from his own death.

I was recovering from his death as well, as it happened in my dining room. He was chewing gum and singing one minute. Barely breathing the next.

My neighbor and I did our best to keep him alive while the ambulance angels arrived, thronged into my living room and whisked the grey-faced body to hospital as quickly and calmly as only they can. You've never seen people moving so fast take things so slowly!

Two days later in the Intensive Care, he was musing on being lucky to be alive.
"Good thing there's no brain damage," he said, barely able to speak after the tubes and lines were removed that had kept him alive for a day.
"I'll be the judge of that," I quipped.
We laughed.
The recovery had begun.

His journey to recovery will be whatever that turns out to be: the body healing, the mind recovering full equilibrium, and who knows what else may come to him.

For me, I can already tell you two odd things have shifted. Both point to something bigger.

Everything I've eaten today tastes sweet. Water tastes sweet. Soup tastes sweet. My mouth tastes fresh. Odd. Not unpleasant, but odd.

I also walked into my closet and realized I could be rid of half my clothes. No problem.

Only days before I was on a mission to clear out anything I don't wear. As all girls will know, there is always a moment of truth to be had when you are deciding to "throw" or "not to throw."

I was having some trouble letting go of a few pieces that, although I hardly wear, cost me more than I'd like to admit. I was hesitating and stammering and frankly, attached. I think I felt a bit foolish getting rid of them. I felt even more foolish standing there now looking at what only days before had seemed so important. The "I might need this one day!" attitude had left me. I had no desire to see these things hanging on the rail for another year.

The logic that keeps closets all over the world filled to bursting, is a curious one. I've talked about it in my book in the chapter on Wants, Desires and Addictions and how "so much of our wanting is fused with our self-esteem and personal identities." As happens so often, I come back to my own words. "Once we know how long we have to live, our desire to experience life intensifies."

These things I have do not constitute Life. Life can only be experienced. It cannot be owned.

As I returned from hospital today to my closet I couldn't imagine that only 48 hours before I felt so attached to pieces of clothing. I knew I would easily let go of this and more. In my mind's eye, I saw my closet full of things I love to wear, not things I can't bear to throw out.

It is very strange all the little ways I learn about myself.

As I considered all the things that would now be leaving my home forever, I felt an intense desire to get back to my own life's work.

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