The Lonely Forest Couches

I was lying on the massage table today.

If you’ve ever had a massage, you know how you end up kind of….drifting?

One thought to the next, your mind swirls in fleeting wisps like birds landing and taking flight again in a single flush.

Today, one bird landed and stuck in my mind. I was thinking how a few years back, I was at a fancy mastermind for Very Successful Business Owners and Coaches.

I felt lucky to have been invited and surrounded by other top people in my field. I was buzzing. Finally the people in my own field would recognize me as one of their own!

Each of us in the room of around 50 people were asked to introduce ourselves, share our business, and indicate our business value or sales volume for the year. (Ah, the pecking order begins!)

Witches on the Beach Tonight

It’s 1985. I’m on a beach, the cool salt-filled waves lustily lapping the shoreline.

The beach sand is flecked with gold, iridescent in the sunlight. Sometimes during the year, the beach is covered in black sand after the waves rush up carrying heavy loads of rich magnetite washed down from the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

But today, the sand is its normal creamy gold and the waves are brilliant teal, edged with white.

Around me in a circle are five or six women sitting in boho dresses or jeans, their crazy white and gray-flecked “mom hair” licked by the breeze. To me, they are very old. I’m only 14. In reality, they’re in their 40s or 50s. 

Hair Scare

I plop into the salon chair.

The stylist hovers behind me, explaining what’s going to happen. “Your hair might smoke a bit,” she says. “I don’t want you being alarmed.”

“Like, smoke smoke?” I say.

“Yeah, it’s just the keratin fusing in.”

“And there’s no formaldehyde, right?” I ask.

“Oh there’s formaldehyde. It’s not on your head but it’s created in the off-gassing.” Then she points to a literal gas mask she’ll be wearing.

We sit for a few seconds in uncomfortable silence while I weigh the value of my life against the prospects of divinely frizz-less, straight-ish hair that I will be proud to whip around for approximately three to six months.

“Ok, let’s do it,” I say.

The Roughest Coaching Session of My Life

I just had the roughest coaching session of my life.

It was so rough, I almost can’t write about it.

I chose to have a session with a person I’ve followed since 2007. I’m curious about their mind, their outlook, their business acumen and frankly the uncompromising life they lead. It was also my birthday gift to myself.

I totally got ripped a new one.

I get on the phone. They are 18 minutes late because they forgot they’d set the appointment with me the day before, after forgetting the previous appointment we had two days before that. That’s ok, I’m flexible.

What is Flowdreaming and how Do I Practice it?

PART 1: Awareness of Flow Energy: What Is Flow?

The technique of Flowdreaming has three components:

1. Awareness of Flow energy
   
2. Guided daydreaming
   
3. Strong, directed emotion

Flowdreaming is a process that lets you reshape your world—literally. It’s not meditation, or hypnosis, or based on positive affirmations or any other kind of program you may already know.

It’s unique, and its purpose is to help you access the creative, energetic “underside” of life, so you can sculpt and direct your future.

It’s a big promise, but once you learn this technique, it will feel so simple and natural that you’ll wonder how you never knew about it before.

30 Things I Did in 2022

Last year I posted my “30 Things I Did in 2021” list. I thought I’d do it again.

I write this list to capture my year. I cement it into my life and let remind me that a hundred good things happened to me, my family, and people I love. We often forget the sheer amount of joyful living that happened to us and because of us. 

This list will help you remember.

Do you want to do this with me?

First, this is an energy exercise as much as anything. It’s asking you to call up and touch on one bright sparkle of a moment or event, one after another, until you’re overflowing.

As we write down the 30 best things we did in 2022, we acknowledge that the year was bold, bright, healing, connected, and supportive. We shift from lack, fear, and depression into appreciation, love, and ownership.

And hey, keep writing more than 30. Stop whenever it feels right. Are you ready? My list is below.

How to Restock Your Dreams

This post is about living — living deep and well. And, recapturing that kind of living. And stranger things besides.

Some of you remember that I often say, “Go do something unusual. Do something not related to your regular life in any way. Shake up the salt. Give your mind something to chew on other than it’s usual 20 things.

I call it “stocking your pantry.”

Tonight, I’m participating, as a student, in a workshop for professional women with autism. No, I don’t think I have autism, but two members of my close family are on the spectrum. I just want to understand high-functioning autism and meet a bunch of cool ass women who’ve utilized it to become crazy successful.

Next week, I was torn between going to the Beyond the Brain conference that’s researching what happens after we die, or to see a very strange and exclusive magic show in Los Angles. Los Angeles only won out since I’d booked it months prior.

Why “Adventuring” Is the Next Big Thing

Yesterday I had a private session with a delightful lady who was stuck in the mud. Not literally, of course. But her whole life (her flow, her vibe) was one stalled out, stuck, endless loop of indecision and subsequent anger at herself for being in this predicament.

“I’m stuck,” she said to me.

“I know,” I replied. “How’d you get this way?’

“I was hoping you’d tell me,” she said.

We picked and pulled on threads that led her to this point. But more importantly, I like to find solutions. I like to find open doorways that lead to the next point.

Being stuck is actually a misnomer. You’re aren’t stuck; you’ve just been sitting there at a pivot point for so long that you started to think all the roads and choices you had have disappeared.

They haven’t. You’ve just gotten blinder to them.

So how do we fix that?