I used to think life was fair

Entrepreneurs, Jobs & Work, Passion & Purpose, Resistance24 Comments

I used to think life was fair: If I played by the rules, bad stuff wouldn’t happen. Now I know that those rules are bunk.

I received an email this morning from someone that puts into words exactly how I used to feel:

She wrote: “We couldn’t afford much as we went through our layoff with our newborn and toddler in tow, but we managed to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in the end. For quite awhile there, our life was a chaotic storm. We couldn’t see anything but the nightmare around us…we didn’t understand…we were educated professionals who played by the rules…why is this happening to us?!”

I know that feeling so well. It’s pure disillusionment.

But when you get past this, you become free. Absolutely free.

Here’s why:

We all have a set of rules that we play by. And we get really upset when other people break these rules, and seem to suffer no consequences.

(Have you ever wished someone you despise would get a broken leg, but they NEVER do, and worse, better and better things keep happening to them? If you have, you’ve got to keep reading.)

We also get bummed when we ourselves do everything right, and then one day we get completely dumped on.

I felt this way when I left my corporate job. It wasn’t fair that I was making the company multi-millions each year through our new division, and no one saw or cared about what I had given them, even when the numbers were staring them right in the face.

I felt this way, too, when I got cancer at 43. I eat organic foods, was vegetarian for 24 years, and I’ve probably swallowed more herbs and vitamins than most people will consume in a lifetime. So, cancer? Seriously?

It’s not fair.

However…thank God I’ve gotten over fairness!!!! 

Hear me: Fairness can hamstring you and hold you back in ways you can’t imagine. Let’s turn this concept on its head. 

Ready to go break a ceiling in your thinking?

I’ve got a much better strategy to play by!!! 

Do you want to find out what it is???

Sucky jobs & pre-existing patterns

Entrepreneurs, Jobs & Work, Wealth17 Comments

One of my students, Maddy, is telling me that she’s waking up at night, panicky, worrying that she’s going to lose her house when they lay her off at work. She doesn’t know when the layoffs will come.

She’s living in a constant state of low-level fear, feeling horribly frustrated and powerless. She’s even applied for another job in the same field that she doesn’t even want, and afraid they’ll reject her.

Last night, another student, Claire, told me that she’s already lost her job and now she’s dreading finding another even as the bills are piling up, since the jobs are always the same low-level, horrible, mind-numbing kind. She’s been on a merry-go-round of them for twenty-five years. Her credit card is stacked up with debt.

Both Claire and Maddy have the same emotional energetic pattern. Let’s pull it out into the sunshine and take a look.

I ask Maddy why she thinks she can’t be happy in a career.

She answers, “My parents always said ‘just get a job. No one likes their job. Everyone just does one. That’s the way it is. Just get through it.’”

“And that’s what you’ve been doing?”

She tearfully nods and chokes out, “Yeah.”

“Do you think I hate my job?” I ask.

“No.”

“Does my husband hate his job as a designer? Do you think my mom hates her job? Did my aunt hate her job teaching English as s second language? Does my cousin hate his job as a chef?”

No, no, no, and no.

“And do you think we have jobs we love because we’re special or smarter or something? In other words, different or better than you?”

“Yes,” she practically whispers.

“Oh Lord, let anything hurtful spit me out like a bad peanut.”

Change & Transitions, Jobs & Work, Passion & Purpose, Resistance1 Comment
 Remember that scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, when Veruca Salt gets tossed down the chute for being a “bad peanut?” What a right and fitting end for her, we all thought.

As a bad peanut, Veruca was ejected from her situation. And, oddly, I find myself thinking along similar lines often in my life, whenever I say some variation of that to myself, usually something like, “If it isn’t in my Flow, it won’t stick. My Flow will reject it like a bad peanut” Or, “This bad situation can’t touch me, since I don’t resonate with it one tiny bit!”

I talk to a lot of people on my podcast and in the private sessions and workshops I hold. There are always people who have the same gripe, which goes like this:

“YOU have a great life. You’re lucky. But I have a horrible job that I dread going to – it’s SO mind numbing. And as for my husband and family…ugh, there’s constantly some problem! But YOU – you have an easy life because nothing bad ever happens to you. You’re lucky! Why?!”

Yikes. My hypothetical client has a lot of ugly situations in her life. And these situations should be rejecting her like a bad peanut – the kind where you eat one out of the bag and then spit it out in surprise, half-chewed, because it tastes like something died in it? That kind of bad situation.

The ugly black jacket I wore for my boss

Change & Transitions, Jobs & Work, Passion & Purpose3 Comments

Here’s a photo of the ugly black jacket I wore for my boss. When I knew I had to have a meeting with her, I’d wipe off my lipstick in the bathroom, shrug into this shapeless polyester mess, and if I didn’t have enough cat hairs and other fuzzy crud already stuck to its lapels, I’d rumple myself up a little more to look as bad as I possibly could.

Notice how loose this jacket is, and how the sleeves are way too long so I had to cuff them in bunchy rolls. Notice, too, the kids’ snot on the arm. That has been there for years. Wiping it off would’ve defeated the purpose.

I’d be throwing on the jacket, of course, just a few hours after I’d cried at my own bathroom sink before leaving for work, so my face already had a miserable blotchy look going for it. I was ready.

This was a really sucky time in my life.

“No, I refuse to change you. And damn! … That makes me so happy!”

Change & Transitions, Family, Jobs & Work, Love & Partnerships8 Comments

 

What is it that makes us think we can change people? How many times have you found yourself wishing that your romantic partner would do something you wanted, or not do something, or somehow meet your needs by changing somehow? How often have you wished the same about a parent, or sibling, or child? “If they’d just do this, or give me that, or stop doing this…”

A cardinal rule of Flowdreaming is that you are a magnificently powerful being…but your power extends only to YOU and YOUR OWN LIFE. Anyone else…well they’re also incredibly powerful…in their own life.

As long as you stick with manifesting for yourself, you’re going to prosper. Once you start trying to change someone else, you’re going to hit walls. Why?

Rejection Is cold company

Jobs & Work, Love & Partnerships, Passion & Purpose, Resistance3 Comments

A good friend of mine had to shake me out of my gloom yesterday. “Rejection is a good thing,” he told me. “It means you’re still putting yourself out there. You’re still in the game. You stop being rejected, then you’re in the bleachers, not on the bench.”

You can guess what kind of “go leap off a cliff” look I gave him. When you’re blue, it’s hard to hear any kind of pick-me-up talk, even from people who care about you.

You see, I’ve been feeling passed over a lot lately, like the dish at the picnic that no one tries. The kid not picked for the team, while all her buddies pick each other. The girl waiting to be asked to the dance, while all her best guy friends ask someone else. Rejection is an experience that comes early and the sting stays, no matter how old we get. Psychology Today has a good article that explains why it’s necessary that we carry around such deep emotional responses to rejection.

Best resources to learn Flowdreaming

Jobs & WorkLeave a comment

Today’s post is a little unusual for me. Most of the time, I write about situations in my own life and how I’ve applied the Flow perspective to them. Or, I talk about solutions to the emailed questions that readers send to me, or ways, generally, we can look at our life and understand why we have what we have, and what to do about it if it “ain’t so great.”

So please grant me this exception…you see, a few weeks ago my second book about Flowdreaming came out. It’s called Creative Flowdreaming. And hot on the book’s heels is my other new project: a 6-month online course called,The Art of Flowdreaming, to teach you how to become a Manifesting Practitioner in your own life.

Between these two, you can learn everything you need to know to make real, concrete changes in your own life. First, it isn’t another “Law of Attraction” book. (LOL, I think just about anything worth being said on that has been said.)

Instead, Creative Flowdreaming takes you deep into what living in the Flow really means. Sure, the first few chapters lay out the nuts and bolts of the technique, and give you a thorough introduction to the art of manifesting in general, but from there, I go into the deeper questions that I’ve encountered over the years. Questions that are usually deal-breakers for the inexperienced manifestor,

Your ideas: Lead … or gold?

Entrepreneurs, Family, Jobs & Work, Passion & Purpose, ResistanceLeave a comment

I suffer from the “great idea” syndrome. In other words, I’m always thinking of what I think are good ideas. Then I (often) fruitlessly try to get other people to go along with them. What I’ve had to learn over the years is this: 1) not everyone will see the value in what I offer, 2) if I feel strongly about my idea, then I’m probably going to have to make headway on it myself and quit waiting for other people to help me, and 3) if it genuinely is a great idea, then my Flow will likewise scoop me up and help smooth the way for its implementation.

Let’s start with #1. For many years, I’ve been in a position where I’ve offered some excellent business ideas to someone.

How to know what you should be doing with your life

Jobs & Work, Passion & PurposeLeave a comment

Alright, this post is blatant rip off from Brazen Careerist. I read Penelope Trunk’s blog regularly, not because I’m always looking for business advice, but because I like her. She’s someone with just enough neurosis-and personality-to fit well in my own quirky family of renegade thinkers. For instance, she’s always telling us that to do well in business, you just have to be likable, not skilled. And because of her, I’ve decided that I’m not particularly likable. Though I am highly skilled.

Anyway, she posted recently about how to find your life’s work. Now, this is coming from a woman who’s written for yahoo business, and other fancy big-name sites. Penelope has also worked for corporations-as have I. She’s had start-ups. So have I. And she’s got young kids in the midst of it all. So do I. So I was curious to see her advice, and after I read it, I thought, Gee, what would I say?”

Some people are just not going to like you

Family, Jobs & Work, ResistanceLeave a comment

Some people don’t like you. And, they’ll never like you. And you can’t make them like you. And there is nothing you can do about it.

I took a yoga class this evening with a new teacher. We spent an entire hour doing what felt like a variation of the same standing pose, and the teacher was full of criticism. My butt was too high, my shoulders were drooping, and my feet were not wide enough apart. When I inadvertently stretched in between poses to unkink my aching arms, she scolded me, “We are not doing that stretch right now.”

Twenty minutes into the class, I wanted to leave. And twenty minutes later, I found myself thinking what an awful teacher she was, and how her rigid yoga philosophy was so unlike my own. Twenty minutes after that, I thought, “What is my Flow doing bringing me here?” and so I spent the rest of class thinking about the way I really disliked this teacher, while around her the other students were happily chirping that this was the best class in town, since you really got to learn each yoga pose so well.

Not long ago, I made the decision to finally begin teaching workshops in person.