We are feeling creatures

"We are feeling creatures; we are meant to experience, not deny, our emotions."  Jen Sincero

Life must be exhausting for people focused on denying rather than acknowledging & fully experiencing their emotions.  I do understand the pressure to suppress deny repress feelings.  But it's NOT natural.  Consider a baby & how they breathe, with the whole of their body - you can practically see their tiny toes & fingernails sucking in air.  But then they grow up, are taught how to sit properly on chairs, the importance of taking inconspicuous breaths, of doing the unnatural as naturally as we can.  And, above all, keep a lid on our emotions.

I have no idea why all those lessons never fully stuck with me.  Oh, the ones about using the right chair & taking well-modulated yet unobtrusive breath - - enough to keep me from keeling over in a dead faint but not even close to filling my oxygen-starved lungs - - took hold, but the ones about disconnecting from gnarly emotions?  Nah.  

Back many moons ago, when I had my dream job of teaching middle school, there were days I'd leap into the classroom with the sheer joy of doing what I was blessed to do.  When I was shown the door from teaching (too unstandard), the principal asked me to suppress the truth that I'd been given the boot  "for the sake of the school."  My response was a definite, "Don't think so."  No way I was going to slap on a smiley face when my heart was breaking.  Suppression was never part of my original operating instructions.  I was a feeling person & let myself be seen as feeling dejected disheartened destroyed - 'cause it was true.

I've had people practically sneer, "You like everyone."  I do  see a lot of good in a lot of people.  And in each case, I can point out exactly what it is about that person that sets him or her apart in my opinion.  

It wasn't a winner in love, either.  A long-ago significant other told me his friends didn't trust me because I was too effusive, too sunny & bright.  

Business taught me that people who are buttoned down, practically emotional zombies, are trusted while those who show their feelings are considered unprofessional.  Repression seemed WAY more likely to nab a corner office than being emotionally literate.

Accepting myself as a feeling creature doesn't mean being all happy sappy & shelving any sad mad bummed-out emotions.  It's having the freedom & emotional intelligence to experience every emotion that arises - feeling it come up, inform, pass through.  

Per Jen, "If we all just spent our days focusing on strengthening our love muscles, lawd the changes we'd see.  For you, dear soon-to-be-rich person, practice viewing everything in your world, and I mean everything, even your backed-up septic tank, with love & appreciation and behold where it gets you.  Fall madly in love with your purpose for making money & you will be unstoppable."

Team up my natural emotional intelligence with the once unthinkable - money - and wrap positive emotions around it, including affection & love.  Knit mittens for Jackson, Grant & Franklin with gloriously colored skeins of constructively creative emotions.  

I've let money know that the only emotions I feel toward it have smiley faces all over them!

"If you want to change your life, you must be more available for the ridiculous than your reality."    Jen Sincero

healing relationships

It is mere coincidence that my relationship with John turned super healthy the same month my love match with money came out of the closet to rapturous applause?  I THINK NOT!  Not even serendipity.  Chalk it up to mega marvelous synchronicity!

Makes sense that the forces that helped heal my relationship with John, letting our warts & woes be compassion catchers instead of irritation churners, also gave bashful money energies that felt shamed into abeyance the courage to demand the respect, honoring & LOVE they deserve.

This is a big week we've headed into, a bridge between the opening month & the next, waiting with baited breath to delve even deeper, do even more & see what happens when healed relationships join hands to make all of life - including bank accounts - whole & filled with happies!

Money is goooooooood...

Repeat after me, "Money is goooood."  Say it again, louder & stronger.

If you can do that WITHOUT squirming, without suddenly feeling like you're somehow dirty & fret on how disappointed your Nana would be with you for being brazenly avaricious - - well, then good for you!

I am among the Nana disappointers.  My birth faith seemed wondrously progressive because it taught that money, per se, was not the root of evil - - the love of money is.  Well, I say phooey to both thoughts.

Think about it - it's really hard to make beaucoup bucks when a cornerstone belief is that loving will lead you to hell.  If you're looking to eternal happiness, wouldn't they make you feel at the very least contemptuous of moola?

Today, am starting something new, something that had been simmering for a couple weeks - ever since starting Jen Sincero's You Are A Badass At Making Money .   I am going beyond simply making peace with the fact that having money is the root of happiness & not having it, being poor, really stinks. 

As we head out of a FABULOUS January into February, will be hauling out my metaphysical pom poms (green, black & silver - Eagles' colors!) & cheering on creating financial prosperity, for making mucho moola, for no credit card debt,  for having two cars, a welcoming house, kitties that each have biannual check ups, great investments & plenty of Jacksons, Grants & Franklins tucked in the bank.  For this bridging week, will be a avid advocate for the sort of income streams, investments & savings that let ME throw financial lifelines to friends in need.

Please do not think that I am thumbing my nose at all the people who've told me over so many years that money is ____________ (fill in the blank).  Yes, money IS energy.  Yes, money IS neutral, good or ill depending on how it's used.  Both of those statements always struck me as back door apologies for money.  So let me say it, loud & clear - - I love money.  Love all the things it can do for me & mine.  Love all the bills it can pay & the learning experiences it can underwrite & the trips it can finance & every wonderful thing that it can help make HAPPEN.

Repeat after me -  "Money is goooood & I love it!"  Guess what - you might even find that your Nana sings its praises, too!

Clarity Questions Week of 01/21/18

One of the legion of empowering take-aways from yesterday's Create A Crystal Clear Vision 2018 with epic woman Christa Tinari was writing out, every week, reflections on the week just past.  Will write it online, since a hope intention goal for the coming month is to latch onto a tutor or tutorial to effectively & cost efficiently equip myself with core social media skills, once that will move me forward in my work as an eldercare evolutionary.

Reflecting back on the past week, am struck with what a difficult task this will be since it was filled with heart-flipping moments, super duper synchronicities & serendipity.  But honing in on my truest of true feelings is a big part of welcoming the Universe into partnership, so will plunge ahead!

My best memory of the week:  Talking yesterday with Luke Frazier at Be Well Bakery & Cafe.  We played catch-up just before he met a pal & I headed out to Christa's workshop, but what an energizing 15+ minutes it was!  My awesome friend is headed down to SXSW!  Luke is a key part of depression2extinction (d2e), a non-profit dedicated to erasing the stigma around depression.  Am envisioning all the wonderful that will come from the confluence of Luke's & d2e's energies with the zoomin' energies that throb SXSW - imagining it as the greatest natural high!  Was it just two years ago that Luke & I tagged up regularly for breakfast at DaddyPops, sharing our life & dreams?  Can't decide if I am amazed at what he's accomplished in such a short time ~or~ if it seems "Well, of course he did!"  He told me about what's happening with his WHY blog & d2e, I told him about Christa's workshop.  An unexpected link back (in so many ways) to my past & current before heading to a creativity event focused on my now & future.

What I'm most grateful for this week:  That John & I have - since 01/15/18 - come to a remarkable place in our relationship.  This has been a really rough month for both of us, loving each other but stressed to breaking point by irks & irritations that reveal deeper challenges than simply bothersome traits.  A  casual comment from someone in our weekly mutual support group - totally unrelated to us - was like the last, elusive piece falling into place in a jigsaw puzzle we've been working on for 28+ years.  On Wednesday, something happened that did NOT send me spinning to feelings of devastated isolation or John to a sense of confused wrongness - - to my delighted shock, my only feelings were compassion & love.  THAT's the very response we've been working toward lo these many years!

Accomplishments this week that make me smile:  See above.  Also, helping someone at the workshop differentiate between hopes, which the Universe can help draw into her life, and general wishes, which It often can't. Including a couple awesome life forces as references on the Twilight Wishes volunteer application, which I took up to hand deliver yesterday. Making the time to watch sessions from the week's Age Without Borders Global Caregivers Virtual Summit (and working out glitches I experienced getting online).  Overcoming my instinctive sense that it was avaricious to include financial prosperity as one of my ten core values.

A challenge I faced this week:   Not knowing how to access Facebook's Facetime - brought home my need to learn basic social media skills.

Strengths & supports I used to get me through the week:  LOVE, compassion, empathy, creativity, organization, seeking to find rather than to just seek, being open to unexpected opportunity even when it made a dent in my budget, and my greatest strength & supports - having John & the Universe as my partners.  Trusting in the Divine.

A lesson from the past week that I am taking into the current one:  That I am charged to make straight in the solitude a pathway for the Divine to make the changes that fully uplift my life.  To quote Jen Sincero in You Are A Badass At Making Money, "I know that I just spent several pages screaming about the importance of specifics, but you must also stay open to allow Universal Intelligence to deliver what you need, and the thing or opportunity that makes your heart sing may be in a different form than the one you were thinking...  Your job is to envision your life with all the specifics you can must up so you can get all emotional and excited and take inspired ACTION.  Then you hand the rest over to the Universe."

empowered & equipped

One of the participants at today's wondrous Create a Crystal Clear Vision 2018 workshop mentioned that when she's in her flow, she empowers & equips people to do what lays before them.

Empowered & equipped - it took hearing those words paired to realize I'd never connected them that way before.  It's not enough to empower others, myself.  I have to do what I can to make sure they/I am equipped to take action.  Empowerment is energy, equipped is what it takes to act.

I am empowered to help people reach in & reach out to expansive lives, but empowerment alone still leaves me static.  How do I equip myself to make the small sweet steps & brash bold leaps required to bring change to individual lives, communities, the culture?  The Universe detests generalities, loves details - then It knows what's needed & can figure out how to respond.

It is 1/27/18 & I am empowered.  Now, to get equipped.  To be detailed in what I need. To spell it out, see & feel it, make use of it.  Because empowered & equipped only matter when they end up in something constructive being DONE.


originally posted on allagesallstages.blog

Taking out my inner Habit Zombie

As in decimating!

One of the many things I learned from the Gremlin Taming method is to spot a gremlin, tip my hat in acknowledgement of its presence, then dothe thing that absolutely drives it WILD - move past it to better. 

Which is not to say that I don't reach out for HELP getting past those professionally obstinate, velcro-like gremliny negatives that constantly do everything in their power to stick to our innard wherever it is that gunks up our best intentions.  I've learned to respond differently than over my first fifty years, to start by keeping my feet in NOW, my head in the game & my intentions focused on my next action, not fixating on the past or fantasizing about the future.

My way of taking out my Habit Zombie is the same.  Differentiate between helpful habits & harmful ones, lasso out self-limiting or downright self-defeating ones, then reinforce good ones to counteract them, create new ones strong enough to give the old ones the boot.  Am now better positioned to accomplish great goals & realize ab fab dreams

Once we're this far, we MUST remember to NOT look back to check if old habits have gone - that simple untrusting action gives them the chance to wave & implore in the most beseeching voice how much they miss & just let them back for a teensy moment...  & then SHAZAM! We're back in their bad graces. 

Taking out Habit Zombies starts with a detached SEEING, with not resisting or fighting it (waste of energy, leads to nothin') - just move past, get over.  The goal is to feel good & at peace, not wallow in the high drama of  bring-us-low icky habits. 

We're ALL born to birth wondrous things (although too many are told otherwise from the times our our flapping ears can make sense of what we are told).   KNOW, to the eensiest of your being, that God doesn't make junk & does expect fabulous from each of us. 

Here, in five simple steps, is my method for taking out Habit Zombies:

Step One:  identify habits that limit my real best interests - if they harm anyone, they're not in my best interests, even if they seem to advance them.

Step Two: create a new action that moves me out of the old habit, to a WOWrous new one that keeps moving me forward to glorious goals & awesome accomplishments.

Step Three; repeat & repeat & repeat ad infinitum until the new actions becomes habits & the old ones withers to mere wisps of almost nothingness. 

Step Four: CELEBRATE!

Step Five: repeat Steps 1 - 4

In its good time

Things are showing up in my life IN THIS MOMENT that should have been part of my consciousness months or over a year(s) ago.  Because they showed up in their good time.

Sort of like John.  I am blessed to have a wonderful marriage that's sometime punctuated by upheavals (on my part) & cave dwelling (John) which have somehow turned into fresh awareness of ourselves & our relationship.

Confession - I've had an all-access pass to the 2017 Age Without Borders Global Caregiving Virtual Summit since April 2017 & never took a peek.  My first experience with Kari Henley's surrealistically fabulous online summit was just before the kick off of the 2018 event.  Figured I should at least watch ONE session from the first before viewing the second.

Was I bowled over!  One of the first speakers on the first day was Dr. Peter Whitehouse, someone I've known & admired through the National Center for Creative Aging Conferences.  My first thought - instead of kicking myself & thinking, "WHY didn't I watch this last spring?" - was "All in good time."  And this, in spite of  connecting with Peter at the International Association of Gerontologists & Geriatrics World Congress, when it would have been great to say, "Loved the AWB presentation!"  But the person who would have watched it pre-the IAGG, the things I would have pulled from it, would have been radically different from what I gained on Friday, in my post-IAGG more fully ME self.  All in its good time.

When did I sign up for Jen Sincero's You Are A Badass At Habits?  No idea. But when I went to check out a Daily Om course I just signed up for, Healing Through Writing, there it was.  Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?  The Universe is SUCH a wondrous partner, always having my back, always saying, "Here, try this."

Not kidding - I have absolutely NO memory of Jen offering this course through Daily Om, let alone remembering signing up for it.  But here I am, primed & ready for what she has to offer, and there she is.

When the student is ready...  In its good time.

Four steps to get in sync with the Universe

With thanks to Jen Sincero, who includes four steps to strengthening our relationship with the Universe in A Small But Mighty Chapter About Universal Intelligence in current hot hot hot book,   You Are A Badass At Making Money: 

• Learn to quiet your mind & receive the information it's trying to send you.
• Trust that this information (aka your intuition) provides all the answers you're seeking no matter how terrifying/bananas/unacceptable they may seem.
• Surrender & have faith that when you bravely head into the unknown, the Universe has your back.
• Accept that you don't have to know how to do what you don't know how to do yet, and that the Universe will lead the way.

dreams of dream building

Recently came across a posting from 2014 that described a dream that felt beyond cool.  A large wealthy family - four generations, from new born to 90+ - were gathering in a swank NYC hotel for a weekend of...  I wasn't sure what.  In the dream, I was pretty darn certain they'd confused me with someone else, because I certainly was not the sort of entertaining, mega interesting person with which they typically chose to rub shoulders. 

Events were planned for all ages, from itty bitties to ancients.  And they all focused on dream building - what is your dream?  How can we, individually & as a group, help you catch it? 

To my surprise, everywhere I turned there was a smiling face, happy to see me, happy that I was in that place, at that moment.  The hotel staff seemed blissed out - they'd played host to this annual gathering many times before & loved it, loved how it affected the staff for weeks after the last guest had said their grateful farewell.

My sense of not belonging evaporated, as it became clear from everyone I met - especially the youngest - that I'd been included because they experienced my energies as supporting the weekend's dream building mission.  I wasn't part of the family, but understood & shared a passion for collaborative dream building, whether a small project conjured up by an 8-year old or a massive construction project blueprinted by the patriarch for the grandchildren generation to make so.  Dozens of ideas, an abundance of support. 

A total fiction, but in my heart... In my heart, it will always BE.  The sense of that place, that moment, those energies, from toddlers to a close-to-centarian, all focused on "What your dream?  How can I make it real?" 

So - what IS my dream?  How can I make it real?  Dream building only happens when an effort is made.  Doesn't need to be big, just effective & consistent.  Like the story Mom loved to tell about a man who built a boat he sailed on the Chesapeake.  Friends marveled at how a busy man found the time to build a beautifully designed, water-tight boat.  His answer was simple, direct - "When I had an extra moment, I'd hit a nail."

Since writing that post, I've made a number of dreams come true following that advice - when I get a minute, I take a step.  Got there through taking a lot of little steps & a few biggies.   The biggest & boldest stretch within reach.  Swing away.

A solid fact about Donald John Trump

Here is a non-partisan, just-the-facts-m'am truth about Donald John Trump that everyone knows & too many accept as okey-dokey  ~ ~ he is a master of dehumanizing language.  He swept aside the vast field of challengers by reducing them to caricatures through demeaning descriptions & a level of flagrant ridicule that we would, as a nation, have once found horrifying in anyone, let alone a man running for the Republican presidential nod.  It's a trait he's carried with him into the White House.  His normal language is dehumanizing, every adjective grinding opponents into sneering inadequacy while elevating him to Olympus.

No one has weaponized the English language like Donald John Trump.  It was the first way he subverted the very norms that have helped us keep civil tongues in our heads.  From his speech kicking off his campaign to his 01/06/18 tweet praising himself as a "stable genius," DJT has used over-the-top descriptions & jaw-dropping grandiosity to override, in both friend & foe, sense & sensibility.  And it's just Donald Trump being Donald Trump, no master plan or puppetry.

A solid fact about Donald John Trump is that he achieved all he has through his ability to dehumanize, turning opponents into objects of ridicule while glorifying himself to Elysian heights.  And the sad, scarier fact is that a frightening number of Americans were primed & ready to embrace him & every word out of his mouth, compounded by opponents responding with their own versions of dehumanizing destabling destructive terms & taunts.

As a nation, beginning with the man in the White House, we need to read & discuss Brene Brown's Braving the Wilderness, with its eloquent, heart-aching explanations of why we use dehumanizing language, its immediate impact & long-term corrosive effect. 

We need to do it NOW, before the one solid fact that I know for sure about Donald John Trump sucks us all into a dark place no one wants to be.

Difference between myself & John

When something upsetting happens, I go to inquiry, while John goes to his battle stations.