Outgrowing Your Relationship Is Normal

Passion & Purpose, Self-Love & Self-Trust7 Comments

Yes, the downside to pursuing a life of personal growth is that you might outgrow your friends and family and zip right past them.

Seems like a weird thing to worry about, but worry about it we do. Because when it happens, it’s painful. It’s sad.

I’m not going to bother with the whole crabs in a bucket story because I’m sure you’ve heard it.

Your friends and family fit who you are right now. We’re all floating on the same level of awareness in our big bathtub of life. If we connect, then we’re generally at the same level.

However, you’re maybe not so content with this level. It’s got some icky parts. You’re tired of the negativity. Tired of the constant lack-thinking. Fed up with the family bullshit. Done with feeling stuck in work that leaves you totally exhausted yet unfulfilled when you come home.

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Softness is strength

Passion & Purpose, Self-Love & Self-Trust7 Comments

Softness is strength. But sometimes we forget.

Our world thrives on the critical. So much so, that when we’re real and soft with each other, it’s suspect.

Lies make all the good shows on TV. Think Preacher, Barry, Game of Thrones, Orange Is the New Black. All depend on lies to spin them forward.

Realness and vulnerability are so much harder to write, let alone act.

That means these are rare, and what’s rare is coveted. Which means you are coveted. Because you are not a lie. 

Take this moment to feel how real and soft you are. It’s a rare and divine commodity these days. Forget what they say about being hard and tough. Hard and tough is easy. It’s walled, shielded, and thick. Bricks are easy to come by. 

The truly strong let their softness walk through their front door, knowing the risk, and they still take it. And because you do that, you are truly strong.

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I know you want to help someone to change. They aren’t going to. Now what?

Change & Transitions, Family, Love & Partnerships9 Comments

How can you make someone change? You can’t. Honestly, you can’t. But there is something you can do.

You know that feeling when someone you love keeps telling you to act different, be different? Spend your money differently, show up at work differently, show up in bed differently? You know how annoying that is? How you just want to smack them?

You wonder where they get off thinking that not only do they get total control over their own life, but now they think they get control over yours too? No way buddy. You get your life, I get mine.

Well they think this same way about you, so if you won’t change for them, they’re not going to change for you either. 

Now what? 

There’s actually a way to make some movement on this.

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I always see you loving yourself last

Healing, Self-Love & Self-Trust8 Comments

I always see you loving yourself last.

Why are you doing that? Loving yourself last, I mean. Who taught you that? It’s terrible. Stop doing it. Stop it so your own kids won’t learn that from you.

Oh someone told you that good people put themselves last? Do unto others before you do unto you?

You ever see those old Looney Tunes Chip and Dale cartoons?

The two chipmunks are so over-giving (“You first. No you first!”) that neither of them gets anything. They can’t receive. It’s a lose-lose. And we laugh at it since we get it so deeply somehow.

And forget that stuff about being a saintly martyr. You aren’t a martyr because you like it. You hate it. It boils your blood and makes you feel lonely and righteous. These are horrible feelings.

You put yourself last because you’re scared, baby. You’re scared that if you put yourself first, all those delicate relationships around you will get rocked. You think your family will suffer, your friends will call you braggy, and your boss will wonder why you’re no longer a team player.

You think that if you shine, and give yourself what you need first, you’ll be a selfish little pisspot like all those other selfish little pisspots you see and hate out there. Self-serving bitches. 

Except, you could never be that. You don’t ever need to fear that. 

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Old rusty windmills and “Mom is always working!”

Born to Make, Entrepreneurs, Jobs & Work, Passion & Purpose, Wealth1 Comment

Every one of us Makers who’s growing a dream, building a business, or trying to see our project turn into something rewarding knows the feeling of hitting a “stop point.” I call it flatlining.

We do everything to push things along, then as our returns start sagging, we slow down and eventually slide to a full, disappointed stop.

This is your dream, your baby, your idea or talent starting and stopping like an old rusty windmill.

You use all your resources. You Flowdream. You look up strategies on websites. You get a little lost and take a stab at a few things until again you slide to a halt.

• You have an email list that’s half built.

• You have ideas for a website, but no site (or the one you made yourself 4 years ago).

• You have flyers for your sessions but they sit on your desk undistributed.

• You have names of prospects for your business but you have phone-phobia and no one ever gets a call from you.

• You attended two conferences and three online summits to learn how to monetize your make, but now you don’t have time to implement anything you learned. You never open your notebook that you wrote so excitedly in all those days.

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Paper Flowers, Authentic Expression, and “Making”

Born to Make, Entrepreneurs, Jobs & Work, Passion & Purpose, Wealth4 Comments

Let’s Talk Making Each Day Count

I just spent the day in Old Town San Diego. It’s the historic spot of our town where the original settlers put up their houses along the El Camino Real trail. You get to eat truly excellent Mexican food and dress up in old-timey clothes for photos as you wander the old streets.

I haven’t been there in years since I was a kid. I remember pining for bouquets of those giant bright Mexican crepe paper flowers there … and my mom getting me weird-tasting sarsaparilla candy instead.

I looked around and thought about all these people making things and manifesting their authentic expression: Making art, making food, making music, making sales, making laughter, making memories.

Everything we do, all the time, is Making. Even when we’re binge-watching a Netflix show, we’re making ourselves relax.

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Sword of Damocles

Cancer, Change & Transitions, Healing, Self-Love & Self-Trust11 Comments

Caution: This is a morbid yet strangely happy post. It’s a weird post for me. It’s for all of you who are fogged out in the stressed-out  “just getting by” zone, and for those of you who are just depressed as all hell. I have words about this. Read on.

I just got my second clear MRI. No cancer.

MRIs suck. It’s not the needle in your arm, the cold medicine injected up your veins, the tight white sterile tube you’re sucked in, or the grinding, deafening  sounds that rip through your body. That’s all fine.

It’s the wondering what they see. And that you have to wait. And that those pains I have might go unexplained, which is better than if they DO get explained . . . as cancer.

I rose up high in relief for an evening after my doctor emailed me that they saw nothing. Year 3. You got more time, Sum.

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Exposure, truth and braggarts

Change & Transitions, M.E. School, Manifesting, Passion & PurposeLeave a comment

ME: “How’s your business doing?”

THEM: “Great! I just did a TedX talk. Then I closed $800,000 in sales and found my soul mate. Then I met God and he sat me down for coffee and told me I was His favorite. Plus, I look super hot. And everyone loves me.”

ME: “Oh. Awesome for you.”

. . .

I go to events as part of my work where conversations like this abound. Lots of well-heeled, overly made-up and smartly dressed people get together to talk about how amazing they’re doing. And how they want to collaborate with you. And they want to know if you know so-and-so, because they know so-and-so and just left his private island (or mastermind or personal vacation home).

Yes, if I sound jealous, it’s because it’s meant to make you jealous. The whole thing is like a Facebook page in flesh: now you don’t just see photos of my awesome trips, best selfies, cutest pets and smarter kids, but I get to wave it around to you in person.

You know how you feel after your Facebook or Instagram binge?

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Inside the mind of a personal-growth addict

Change & Transitions, M.E. School, Manifesting, Passion & PurposeLeave a comment

YOU:

  • Read countless blogs and attend a million webinars to try to figure out how to grow your business / fall in love / feel better about yourself / name your thing [ ].
  • Try one or two things from the most recent blog or webinar. They don’t work.
  • Wonder why they worked for someone else.
  • Think something is wrong with you.
  • Buy an online course. Maybe that will fix it.
  • Don’t finish it. Who has the time?
  • Are overwhelmed at work.
  • Actually I.D.G.A.F. about work. You’re on the hamster wheel of work.
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