Flowdreaming Podcast 606: The Real Reason We Procrastinate or Avoid

Podcast, ResistanceLeave a comment

Avoidance”¦aversion”¦procrastination…denial.

What happens when you’ve created certain no-go zones in your life and Flow? Take a look at the energy components of what it means to not see, do, think about, or let yourself feel certain things. For more, try the Get Unstuck Playlist at Flowdreaming.com.

In this episode:

2:20 – Find out what procrastination is really about and what’s behind it

5:40 – Discover we say “no” to some things and yes to others

6:52 – Summer gives you the first of three points to get things moving and happening in your life

11:10 – Learn how staying in the waiting zone deprives you of your ability to live your life

15:10 – Listen to find out if you’re sliding from practical waiting into holding yourself back

24:52 – Summer reveals her some details about next program, an affordable program designed for makers!

28:55 – Discover the best thing you can do when you wake up each day to overcome procrastination! It’s easier than you think.

30:45 – Learn one move you can make that will make you feel lighter than you have in ages!

33:15 – Hear how letting go of “perfect” will help you get things moving.

36:00 – Find out how fear works against you to protect you, and how to get beyond it.

Ms. Goalypants

Jobs & Work, Resistance4 Comments

Hey there, Ms. Goaly-pants. Ease up.

If January (and all its goal-setting hoohaw) is sitting hard on your heart, then here is a reframe.

Relax. Breathe.

Most of us tend to overcomplicate everything because we’re driven by lack-thinking. And so we spend our days trying to be super on top of everything so nothing bad will happen. It’s frickin’ exhausting.

Now add those new January goals to the list. Arggh! Do you see why you don’t keep them?

The idea of living in a state of ease has become an ideal for most of us. Instead, it’s all: Goals! Work! Goals! Work!

Letting go and trusting Flow is apparently only what you get to do when you retire. (As in: hard work, frustration, and sacrifice now . . . ease later.)

Overcommitted exhaustion and continuously feeling behind or “not as good as”become the default energies that show up in every area of our life. And, instead of ending up successful, we end up burned out, cranky, unhealthy, and often with lower self-esteem than when we started.

Here’s the email that provoked this thought in me:

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???

I love myself…but you loving me? That’s more difficult.

Cancer, Health & Wellness, Resistance, Spirituality36 Comments

Honestly I’ve started and stopped writing this email at least three times. Not only have I not written anything to you in several months (aside from my newsletter last week), but now that I am, it’s incredibly hard to get my thoughts focused.

It’s that “I don’t know where to begin” paralysis.

So how about this: right now, my daughter Lexi is sitting on the bed with me eating chocolate covered strawberries. I’m laying down with bloody drains coming out of my side, trying to take as little pain medication as possible. I just had a mastectomy.

Every day this week, my friends have been bringing my family meals. It’s only the fifth day after surgery and already my refrigerator is stuffed full. My bestie Jen sent the chocolate strawberries. I have bouquets of flowers surrounding my bed and heaps of cards on my table.

And part of me wants to text everyone and tell them to stop sending things and bringing food, because I’m fine goddamit, and then another part of me reminds me that I still need help just putting my clothes on, or brushing my hair.

I know this might be a surprise. People who live a “straight and narrow holy life” aren’t supposed to get things like cancer, are they?

I remember feeling the same way when Wayne Dyer, my radio cohost for many years, got leukemia. And when Debbie Ford, another friend, got cancer. And when Jerry Hicks got cancer.

It doesn’t make sense. Yet of course it does make sense, if we only had the wherewithal to know what was really going on Upstairs.

Nevertheless, I’m going to save the “why I manifested cancer” epistle for another post, because instead I need to explore something more immediate that’s popped up that I’m struggling to understand in terms of Flow, which is how to receive.

Yep, that old bad boy, coming around for yet another round.

What an irony, I think, that I’ve practiced the art of Flowdreaming and manifesting to where I create some truly dazzling things, but even so, here I am rubbing up again against that same ceiling.

You know how I found it this time?

“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.

What to do when you face fear or frustration

Change & Transitions, Entrepreneurs, ResistanceLeave a comment

I can’t even begin to tell you how much of my life in the last decade has centered around breaking down fears. One after another, chop-chop-chop. Dead trees falling.

I’ve been stumbling through the downed logs (and even getting lost), but somehow, I’ve still been getting somewhere”¦and not just anywhere”¦but to someplace wild and fantastic and fulfilling. Each month breaks new ground for me, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even financially.

It never feels right to keep my secrets for success to myself. I want to shout them to everybody.

For instance, this last week, I’ve realized that Flow has purposely kept me on this hamster wheel of “fear breaking.” After all, whenever I break past one of my own blocks, I’m able to help someone else break past theirs. “Oh,” I said, no longer upset. “I get it.”

Fear, I’ve learned, has so many disguises. Just when I think I’ve pinned it down, it pops up in another costume. It’s like playing Whack-a-Mole.

For example, I might be helping a Flowdreaming student who’s been hemming and hawing. They’re suffering from indecision. We’re four months into our mentoring, and nothing has happened.

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.

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.