IDGAF

Change & Transitions, Entrepreneurs, Passion & Purpose, Self-Love & Self-Trust9 Comments

I know I’m pretty much useless when, instead of getting work done, I’m folding clothes.

It’s 11 a.m. and my workday should be in full swing. But I work from home, and so instead I’m folding laundry and checking my emails every five minutes looking for something exciting. Nothing exciting comes in.

I spot the stack of old financial papers that need shredding. I’ve let them languish by the shredder for months. Yes, months. I know something is really awry because now pulverizing that stack through the shredder is looking really good and I spend the next hour doing it.

Hello, Rebellion. How are you today?

“I don’t want to! You can’t make me. I don’t care if I should. No.”

My name is No . . . my sign is No.

A Types, overachievers, controllers, and those of us who generally Get Shit Done know this feeling and it scares the heck out of us. It’s called IDGAF. (You can work that acronym out.)

IDGAF is your inner rebel, telling you she needs a break. Give her one. What’s so hard about that?

Oh, I know what’s hard: you’re going to lose control of your life for five or ten minutes, or maybe even half a day. Or if you really slack, maybe even . . . a week. And if you’re really, really screwed – a month. And of course the ultimate freak: forever.  You’ll be in IDGAF forever.

Because what if you never find your way out of IDGAF? What if you stop earning your income? What if your marriage that you’ve been propping up suddenly bores you? What if you stop to relax for one bald second and discover that you’re running on fumes and those fumes felt so real that you lived off them for ages?

My hate mail

Passion & Purpose, Self-Love & Self-Trust42 Comments

I get hate mail all the time. I’ve gotten it for years. It started at least a decade ago or more, when I created Hay House Radio, and people would send me, the Network Producer, hate mail about the particular shows I aired and how I should run them better or even kick certain hosts off the station. (Yes, Wayne Dyer got hate mail, Louise Hay got hate mail….it’s pretty universal). It taught me a lot about people.

So for no particular reason, I found myself trolling my old book reviews this morning, and getting a laugh out of the particularly hostile ones. Book reviews can be a form of hate mail.

Here’s a condensed excerpt of a book review I stumbled on that’s so bitter, I even forwarded to my mom (she gets a laugh).

“Apart from coming across as abrasively full of herself ”¦ in fact it is apparent that Ms Summer has lived a very nice life and apparently has no concept of how bad life can get, how little control ordinary people may have over certain things. It seems to me that Ms Summer is the lucky owner of a newly minted soul, a first lifer (you get them), still reflecting the in glory of wholeness. How nice. Enjoy it while you can.

If I were you Summer, I would have a serious chat with my ‘guides’, your higher self or wherever you are getting your guidance from, because the info you are getting is flawed. Also, read a bit perhaps. Find out what’s out there before making sweeping statements about life, the universe and everything. A considerate person would hedge her bets, show some humility (none here!!!) and show some understanding for the common human experience, which is in fact not all colored roses bubbles and bliss.”

If I were this woman, I’d have thought, “No big deal. I don’t like this book. Move on.”

But this person got deeply triggered, and this is where things can actually get dangerous. She wants me to get triggered with her. She wants me to feel how she feels.

And if I’m not careful, this means that not only could I get really upset or sad, but even worse . . . I could begin to subconsciously hold this other person’s opinion of me inside myself.

If I believe her, and feel hurt by her, then I’m accepting her opinion inside me of who I actually am.

And if I did that, I’d be letting this stranger have power over me, from inside me. Then I’d start to fail to me be, and become a little more like her.

I’d have given her that power over me. Follow that? That’s the Big Daddy concept here.

It’s not about whether or not you’re hurt by words, it’s the slow build-up of doubt they can create. It’s someone else telling you how to think and feel, and if you believe them even the teeniest bit, then you start living a little less like yourself, and a little more like them.

Her words remind me of other emails and reviews I’ve received, most of which tell me how in some way or another I’m fatally flawed, selfish, insensitive, or ignorant and then prescribe how I should fix myself.

Which leads me to remember another email I got a few years back in response to a newsletter just like this one, which, I’ve started to realize, did in fact affect me.

Here’s how that one went down:

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???

Do you know how to let the genie out of the bottle?

Entrepreneurs, Passion & Purpose2 Comments

Self-Trust + Manifesting (creation)

The two together are all you need to build a happy life. It works. Period. I just proved that to myself again. When are you going to prove it to YOURself?
This is the point of Flowdreaming: to create things that sell out or expand or take you to your next level; to create relationships that make your heart sing; and to cultivate and follow your self-trust so you know that whatever you choose to do next, it’s what will bring you the feelings you’ve been yearning for all these years.

There’s nothing to see here, folks

Entrepreneurs, Passion & Purpose, Spirituality28 Comments

Last night, I dreamed I was doing some kind of martial arts routine that ended with me doing a one-handed handstand on an ancient fallen log. Some martial arts type masters walked by, and one stopped and suggested a complicated routine for me.

I stared back, confused. “You must have mistaken me for someone who actually knows that stuff,” I tried to say. I felt unmasked, mistaken for someone more qualified.

Funny huh? On the one hand, it could be a dream about insecurity, a fear of not living up to my actual ability. Obvious conclusion, right?

Nope, wrong.

“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.

Flowdreamer wins $1.5 million: Lynn’s story

Passion & Purpose, Wealth2 Comments

I’m amazed at the email in my inbox. Can a Flowdreamer have really just won $1,425,000?

Yes. Lynn Hunter’s email subject line says it all: “Flowdreaming changed my life.” She writes:

My dear Summer, I have been listening to your tapes, reading your books and following you and your mother’s advice for the past few years now. Even when things were not going so well for me, I never gave up my flowdreaming path. I am happy to tell you my dreams came true on August 24th, 2010. I won $1,452,130.64 at our local casino. I do have a vision board with one million dollars on it, a new car, and pictures of a new kitchen. Summer I now have it all thanks to your flowdreaming and my strong believing things will come. I have mentioned to many friends and my own daughters just how you have changed my way of thinking. I share my books and tapes. Now I need to replace them!! Just hearing your voice every day is power to me. There is so much more I could go on and on about, I just felt you should know  what flowdreaming has done for me. Now I can afford to someday see you live. – Lynn Hunter

I’ve been asking people to let me know what Flowdreaming has helped them with in their lives. Lynn’s email flowed in with the dozens of others I’ve been receiving. It’s one thing to read my books or listen to me rambling on during my radio show each week about the broad, supportive, almost “magical” power of Flow energy in all of our lives. It’s quite another thing to read about other people’s extraordinary successes.

I’ve always been reluctant to promise anyone that the Flow can MAKE them lucky. Just as I would never promise anyone a miracle. How could I? It’s THEIR Flow. THEY are the creators in their lives, not me!! But have I seen miracles happen? Have I helped “unplug” things and get energy moving for people? Oh, yes!

 

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.

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.