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

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.

Toilet woman

In the stall next to me, a woman is on her cell phone.

She’s booking an appointment. I can’t tell with whom. Is it nails? Her therapist? Her oncologist? Her voice echoes over the empty bathroom stalls.

I snap the paper toilet seat cover down and sit. This is really uncomfortable. I’m going to make pee noises. The woman in the stall next to me is chatting away.

I hesitate, then I get mad. She’s the one breaking the rules, I think, not me. I am going to pee as loud as I want.

When I get up to flush, I’m frozen again. I’m thinking how awkward it must be for the person on the other end of her phone to hear all the noises of a public bathroom. I’m actually thinking about the feelings of the person the woman beside me is not thinking about at all. This is ridiculous.

I flush. It’s really loud.

As I’m washing my hands I realize that I have just seen what happens when you break a social norm. It’s not embarrassing the woman next to me to talk to a stranger while using the bathroom. But it’s embarrassing me. Because I go around thinking that everyone feels like me: I would never call someone from inside a public toilet stall. Ever. I think that everyone else thinks like me, too.

Until someone snaps that idea in half.

You’ve all blown my mind

You’ve blown my mind. Over 200 of you replied to my last blog, “No More Pretty,” or emailed me personally with love.

Wow, has this been a big a lesson for me.

First of all, I wrote that newsletter (about my new bald life) to give you permission to let go of any hidden need to come across to the world a certain way.

I wanted you to share in my liberation by finding one of your own hidden needs to release.

So I asked you to post your personal liberation, or revelation, whatever that may be.

You know what you all told me instead? That I’m pretty no matter what. Holy heck that was sweet.

Even my hairdresser texted me that I rocked the fake Mohawk in my photo (and good god she sure hasn’t seen me for awhile!).

And it overwhelmed me. All of it.

Because of course it gave rise to another thought: I’m not a loner or a solo flyer anymore. I can drop that belief now.

So there I was thinking about this as I was zipping up the freeway to Long Beach for my next cancer treatment. My mother was driving and as usual we were getting lost and chatting about work, life, kids, and yeah, chemo.

The whole time, my phone was beeping and buzzing with your comments pouring in.

And I’m wondering: “All these people really care. Why?!”

I could use some Goddess Power. How about you?

“Summer, why don’t you ever talk about”¦you know”¦sex. And Flowdreaming.”

I get this question every few months, and it’s a really good question.

Because, you’re right, I tend to avoid talking about sex and sensuality with Flow.

I’m very aware that being in Flow can certainly be a practically orgiastic experience. After all, you’re opening your emotional self in huge way and synching up with the most powerful energy in the Universe.

For another thing, my Flowdreams can be pretty evocative. After all, I’m trying to stimulate you to feel something, and get you into your emotions.

So when I thought of narrating a Flowdream about your sensuality and helping you reawaken and strengthen your natural feminine power”¦I’ve continuously gotten stuck at the thought: “It’s going to sound just like porn!! Oh my God!!! I know it. Ugh how can I get it to not sound porny?!”

And that’s the truth.

But I finally got over it, because I love you, and my fear of how I might sound shouldn’t get in the way of all the good it will do for you and thousands of other women.

“I love me, I love me not.” Do you have self-love? Take a quiz.

Do you truly love yourself? Let’s find out. Here’s a quick test to check your levels of self-love. Keep track of your “yes’s.”
  1. I treat myself to little splurges now and then. Not splurges that get me in debt (like paying for something on my credit card that I don’t really need and won’t be able to pay off in a month) or harm my body (like having a cigarette), but I have splurges that make me feel good and and healthy ( such as a pedicure, some Flowdreaming, taking a walk in the middle of my workday, taking a nap, etc.)
  2. I take time for myself consistently at least once a week, either as my own quiet time or to enjoy something I love to do.
  3. I take care of my body and appearance with nice clothes, a good haircut, and anything that makes me feel more powerful and confident.
  4. I’m able to stop myself from unhealthy behaviors that will hurt me in the long run (overeating, smoking, drinking to excess, calling my bad ex, etc.)
  5. When I do take time for myself, or spend a little money on myself, I don’t feel any twinges of guilt or “I shouldn’t have.”
  6. I say no sometimes, and I don’t feel guilty.

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

 

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?

5 tips for using Flow to increase the intimacy in your relationships

Here are a few Flow-inspired tips to infuse all your relationships with more love and less conflict. While we can’t change other people, per se, we CAN change the energy that surrounds our relationship and our interactions within them. And of course, that starts within ourselves. So, these five tips will help you cultivate good, loving, open energy within yourself. As they say…change begins within.

1. Break out the honesty.
Very often the source of our frustrations is our fear that our loved one will not accept how we feel or what we need in a situation. Honesty needs to be purposefully developed and cultured. It often doesn’t just happen by itself, especially if we grew up in homes where honesty wasn’t the norm. When we expect that what we need and feel won’t be honored, we either clam up or stuff down our needs. If the idea of being honest and open sends shivers of fear up your spine, then you know you REALLY need this tip: Create a list of relationship issues with various loved ones that you want be more open about, and work your way up by starting with the easiest first. In your Flow, pre-act scenarios where you are open and honest, and feel the relief and acceptance when you do so. This opens the energies to allowing honesty into your relationships in a safe, comfortable way.

Rejection Is cold company

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.