What happens to our Authority? What happens to our deep trust in ourselves? What happens to our ability to listen for and trust our creativity, which allows us to sing, write, speak, and live without fear?

The answer is simple: we are ashamed and ridiculed out of who we are meant to be.

Our ability and love of writing is shamed out of us when people ridicule us for our inability to spell, or when our handwriting is poor, or when we don’t organize a paper the way someone has told us we must organize it — as if there is one way to organize anything. I have written an article about my strong feelings about how the five paragraph essay has stolen writing from millions of people. Click here to read my mock five paragraph essay: Why I Grow Edible Pod Peas As If You Care.

Singing

Once, when I asked the question, “When did you lose a sense of yourself as a singer?” a woman answered by telling me her grandfather had told her she “couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket,” and she has never sung since. She was four years old when her grandfather took her singing away; or, rather, when she gave away her authority. She wept as she told the story.

I’m sick of these stories and I hear them all the time. If I ask a group of five-year-olds if they are singers, what do they say? “Yes! I’m a singer!” And they are right. And if they are not taught to hold onto what is Good and not give themselves away to anyone who wants to steal a part of them, they will give their singing away to family members, music teachers, friends, and perhaps even to American Idol.

Speaking

The top three fears of Americans are death, blindness, and public speaking. Talk about not being able to own your own voice! Just as with writing, there is a brilliant speaker in all of us. Give me five minutes with you, and I’ll prove it. For now, I will settle for you entertaining the idea that possibly, just possibly, you might be a singer, a writer, a speaker — anything your deepest heart desires.

Living without being afraid of making fools of ourselves

We all need to honor our inner authority. Not doing so creates despair, disconnection, disillusionment, and depression. It is dangerous indeed to ignore who we really are. But how do we balance this trusting and knowing of our deepest selves with being open to coaching? We all need to be willing and open to learn new things. But how do we stay open while staying connected to the deepest truth that is in us?

Here’s my answer: it is a balancing act.

Right now I feel as if I am on a high wire. I have invested thousands of dollars, thousands of hours, and my heart in building this new business of which this article is a part. I know how to be a performer. I know how to get audiences and my clients excited about their lives, ready to take risks to remove the debris from their path so that their lives can unfold before them with glory and magnificence. I’ve spent the last 25 years working to learn all of this.

But I have not spent much time learning the business part of things. Marketing? Not so much. If I am to do what I am meant to do, then I must get help from people who know more than I do about getting myself out in the world so that the people who need me the most can find me. That is why I hired Suzanne Evans as my business coach.

Spending all this money has created a crack in my sanity that has allowed an old enemy of mine, Urgency, to creep in and smack my joy. Other friends have joined the party: Frustration, Overwhelm, and Self-Doubt. This has made the challenge of whom to listen to even more difficult. I feel I am on a high wire with no net.

On this high wire that I’m walking on, I have a balancing pole. On one side I have my own authority, my own sense of what is true and good and right for me, my own best guess as to what needs to happen so the world can find me. On the other end of the pole, there is Suzanne, my Mastermind group, my friends, my family, my husband, and anybody else who has an opinion, which turns out to be most everyone else.

If I listen too much to other people’s opinions — even Suzanne’s opinion, which I’m paying a lot of money to receive — the pole leans too far one way and I lose my balance. But if I only listen to myself and my best guesses as to what I need to do, my pole will lean too far on the other side and I will topple.

I know in this realm, this realm of marketing and business, I’ve been doing my best guess. While it’s worked on many levels, getting me all over the world for example, it has not produced the revenue I need to do the work in the world I was brought here to do at the level I am capable of providing.

Sometimes in this process there is a bit of frenetic balance pole wavering. I listen to one voice, then another, then my voice, then another, then my voice — and soon I’m a bit of a crazy person.

It comes down to me and it comes down to you.

In the end, I must trust myself and what is right for me. I must be willing to listen and to try new things, but always bring it back to Me. The “Me” that lives inside me that I have spent many years getting to know and getting to trust. I must not abandon this Me. Ever.

My job as a coach

This is what I help my clients do — get to know and trust themselves deeply. I also help my clients find the courage they need to trust themselves and take that next step, even when the people they love the most around them think they are Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

Our lives are not five paragraph essays all neat and tidy and well organized.

ee cummings said it best:
“for life’s not a paragraph
and death I think is no parenthesis”

Blessings,

Vicki

How do we maintain our authority while staying open to learning new things? How do we know when to listen to what others tell us, take it in, and change what we are doing — and how do we know when to hold fast to what we know is true?

Learning who we are through writing:

One of the best ways to find out who we are, to get in touch with our authentic voice, is through writing. I found my authentic voice for the first time when I went into therapy when I was 32 years old. I kept a journal for my therapist and, because I was paying for the therapy out of my own pocket and didn’t want to waste one dime, I wrote the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the messy truth for the first time in my life.

This process was exhilarating and terrifying. But, because I persisted even though I was terrified at times, I found an inner sacred gold mine, and I have not lost touch with it since. That is why I am a bit of a fanatic when it comes to doing whatever I can to help restore writing to people from whom it has been stolen. I believe writing is a civil right, and that most of us have our writing shamed out of us because we are taught writing by people who are not writers.

I used to be one of those people teaching writing who did not write. I did the best I could with what I knew at the time, but I am absolutely certain that, because of my teaching, some people are walking around right at this minute thinking, “I am not a writer.” I did not mean to teach them this story, but I’m afraid this is the story they learned from me because I thought my job was to look for their mistakes instead of finding and celebrating their glory.

Now, one of my greatest joys is helping people discover the brilliant writer living inside them. Let me make this clear: I do not teach people how to write. Instead, I help people learn how to listen and trust what is deeply inside of them.

Here is an example of this process:

A fourth-grade boy told me that when writing was hard for him, he felt like a rocket ship blowing up. I didn’t tell him to give me more concrete, specific details. Instead, I got interested. “Tell me more about the rocket ship,” I said, leaning toward him, fully present and full of eager expectation.

“Well,” he said as he went inside to find the answer, “I’m a rocket ship and I’m someplace where there are rocket ships all around me. All the other rocket ships are taking off but I’m stuck. I just keep getting hotter and hotter and hotter until I explode.”

“Where did he go to get the answer,” I asked the other students. They knew. They saw him do it. He went inside. That’s where his authority lies. Always. He is the boss of his own writing. He knows what is true for him. I don’t. I can’t know. But I am interested. (One of the best compliments I’ve ever received was from a seventh grade boy who told me, “Vicki Hannah Lein has taught me I am the author of my own life.” The process I’m sharing is how I did that.)

“Tell me about the explosion,” I said to him.

“Well,” he said, thinking, “I explode into so many pieces I’m afraid I’ll never be able to find all of me again.” Have you ever felt that you have exploded into so many pieces you might not ever be able to find all of you again? Can you believe a 10-year-old boy said this? This kind of writing brings me to my knees.

I am not teaching this boy at a summer writers retreat for gifted children. This is my first lesson with the class in a school that has about 50% of its children on free and reduced lunch. Writing this profound is not an unusual occurrence for me when I teach writing. This kind of writing is laying in wait in all of us. Sometimes this passion lies quietly and sometimes it stirs up quite a fuss.

So what happens to this Authority, this authentic expression of who we truly are?

I’m going to let you ponder these questions for the next week: What happens to our authority, our belief in ourselves? Where did it go? When did we lose it? Who did we give it to? How can we get it back?

All these questions I will answer in next week’s blog installment. Is this a dirty trick? I hope not! I think these questions are worth thinking about. And I have confidence that if you entertain these questions, answers will come to you. These questions are worth thinking about. These questions are worth discussing.

Stay tuned.

Vicki

I have my own, unique music to play in the world, and so do you. That’s why I’m starting my Outrageously Alive Club. I’m here to help us all join together, and keep on keeping on even when it’s scary, even when no one listens, even when people question our intentions.

Joshua Bell, one of the world’s greatest musicians, played incognito in a Washington, DC subway station. He played one of the most difficult, beautiful pieces of music in the world, on one of the most well-crafted, expensive Stradivarius violins in the world. He played for an hour and made $32. The only people who heard him clearly were children. They would walk over and stand before him and listen, until their parents dragged them away. Everyone was too busy, in too much of a hurry to do all those important things we all have to do.

The point? I think there are several points. One point is just because nobody is paying any attention to you, doesn’t mean that you don’t have something of value to offer. Joshua Bell had just performed earlier that week at a sold-out concert where tickets cost $100 apiece. If his self-esteem was based on his response to the subway station, he might give up. That would be a bad thing.

Here is a link if you’d like to see him playing, and he is incredible…Click Here.

I have my own, unique music to play in the world, and so do you. That’s why I’m starting my Outrageously Alive Club. I’m here to help us all join together, and keep on keeping on even when it’s scary, even when no one listens, even when people question our intentions.

What gets in the way of seeing clearly who we are meant to be? Sometimes it’s by being who we think we should be, instead of giving ourselves and others the time and space to find out who we really are. We fill up our lives, our brains, and our hearts with knee-jerk behaviors. Some of those behaviors serve us, and some of those behaviors are so habitual they’re more like compulsions than choices we make.

For example, some of us are compulsive helpers. If someone shares a feeling of anxiety, disappointment, or uncertainty with us, their feeling triggers our own anxiety, disappointment, or uncertainty. We rush in to solve the problem, so we can get rid of our own discomfort.

Example: I got scared the other night when my sweet husband had trouble peeing because he was taking some new medication.

Here Are Some Responses We Might Hear When We Share This Kind of Vulnerable Feeling:

• “Is he taking supplements to help with his enlarged prostate?” or
• “A friend of mine has prostate cancer and you had better get that checked out: or
• “You know if you focus on negativity, you will create more negativity: or
• “All illness is an illusion” or
• “What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?”

Rarely, oh, so rarely are we honored with a blessed silence, giving us time and space to explore our feelings more deeply. Rarely, oh, so rarely, are we encouraged by someone saying, “Tell me more.”

Before I start sounding too self righteous, I must confess that I am not a great listener myself. I have focused on improving my listening for almost thirty years and I am only an Intermediate Listener. Still, I know enough to catch myself before I start micromanaging other people’s problems for them, and before they have asked for my advice, at lease most of the time.

We aren’t being bad when we over help without being asked.

We are, though, missing an opportunity to connect with another human being on the planet.  And when all is said and done, our happiness is dependent on this Connection.  We can have billions of dollars, literally, and then commit suicide when we lose money.  (True story.)

On 9/11 people on the hijacked United flight that crashed in Pennsylvania did not use their last hours to leave memos for work.  They called their loved ones to say good bye, and tell them how much they loved them.

It’s all about relationship.  And relationship is all about listening.  Not solving, just listening.

Action Step

Try this for one day.  When someone shares a feeling or a problem with you, take one moment to breathe before you jump in with a solution.  Then wait five beats and see if they continue talking.   Usually they will.  Often if you just shut up and listen, people will come to their own solutions.  You may say something like “Tell me more” but discipline yourself to stop from telling them what they should do or how they should think or feel.

Just for one day trust listening.

Let me know how it goes.  This is one of these simple, profound changes that could alter all of your relationships, especially your relationship with yourself.  When you start listening to others better, you listen to yourself better as well.  How cool is that?

When You Listen More Deeply to Yourself, You Can See More Clearly Who You Are Meant to Be.

Shower the people you love with love and love all the people you can,

Vicki