Would you like to play with possibility for fifteen minutes with me? I will make you laugh!

How Can Joy be Dangerous?

I’m in Bali right now to attend a planning session for the Bali Institute for Global Renewal. Hearts and minds from Indonesia, India, Pakistan, America, Japan, and probably some other places I don’t know yet have gathered here to create a learning center which celebrates indigenous wisdom, leadership, and activism. Thirty of us are going to hang out, ask wonderful questions and make plans for an international conference in Bali in December of 2010.

When I was reading about the people who were attending and all their accomplishments, I kept chanting to myself, “I have something to contribute. I have something to contribute. I have something to contribute.” Even though I am very confident that I do have something to contribute, that part of me that worries whether I belong got triggered.

“Who do I think I am anyway?” is the question, the ghost, the spell, that keeps lurching through the room. It dives at my head. It whispers in my ear. It sits on my chest. It looms. It jeers. It invites me to crawl back into a small place, a cramped container that is very familiar to me.

So the question is: am I going to play small, or am I going to expand into my full capacity? Playing small is a non-option. But how do I support myself in this wrestling match with Incompetence?

I email my coach. I tell her what is happening and ask for her advice. She replies immediately and this is what she says: “Look around and see if there’s anyone else there who has accomplished as much as you have, who is blind, joyful, and as funny as you are. Pull your head out of your ass.”

Good advice. So good I pulled my head right out.

So what stops you? Want to learn to laugh about it? Contact my business manager Sandy Parker, at Sandy@myefficientassistant.com to set up an appointment for a free 15 minute Play Date. What’s stopping you?

Blessings,

Vicki

Here’s the good news: there are two secrets to being happy in this world.

Here’s the bad news: they are simple but not easy to do.

Secret Number One: Learn How to Not Be Ashamed of Your Shame

We all feel shame, and it is decidedly unpleasant. In the book Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw defines shame as the feeling not that you have made a mistake but the feeling that you ARE a mistake.

We are invited to feel shame when someone corrects our grammar in public. Or when we confess that we don’t know something and someone says, “You are kidding! You don’t know that???”

Any statement that contains a subtext of “you are an idiot!” is a shaming statement. We all have been shamed, and we all have shamed. It is how people control one another. People laugh at us for the way we laugh, so unselfconsciously, we stop laughing. People tell us we can’t carry a tune in a bucket, and we give up singing, sometimes for the rest of our lives.

Shame Isn’t the Problem

But shame isn’t the problem. Our shame about feeling shame is the problem. We feel shame, we feel enormously vulnerable and exposed, and we decide to keep it Secret. If no one knows we are feeling shame, then maybe we can get away with it. Maybe our brokenness, our unlovability, will be known only by us and not the rest of the world.

When we learn not to be ashamed of our shame, when we learn we can say, “I’m feeling shame right now,” then we are free. Our shame will become just another feeling, albeit an unpleasant one, but just a feeling. We confess that, and it will pass. If we try to keep it a secret, then we are marrying it for ever. We are branding it into our souls. It becomes another shameful, ugly scar that keeps us separate from other people.

If you are going to be able to see who you are meant to be clearly, then you’re going to have to be able to feel shame and admit it. If you are afraid of your shame, you will spend your life avoiding any situations that might trigger your shame. Instead of leaning in to who you are meant to become, you will spend your life trying to play it safe. You will never get to know who you really are, and no one else will ever get to know who you really are either.

I told you it was simple but not easy. The next secret is just as challenging.

Secret Number Two: You Can’t Make Anyone Love You or Themselves

Bonnie Raitt, in her song “I Can’t Make You Love Me” says it all. Is there anything more excruciating than loving someone and having them not love you back? Yes, there is something more excruciating than that. Loving someone and watching them destroy themselves through addiction, self loathing, or recklessness.

When you love someone and they are killing themselves with an addiction, it’s like watching a grizzly bear grab them and haul them off to their cave, eating them as they go. There’s nothing you can do but watch. You are there if they decide they want help, but you can’t make them want help.

Loving yourself well and feeling compassion for people who are hurting themselves is as good as it gets. It’s called Detaching With Compassion. It is not easy to do.

But if you spend your life trying to wrestle people’s problems away from them, you will be very frustrated. It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing. It just makes you crazy, and makes the pig mad.

The Truth About Happiness

The happy conclusion: there is no Magic Bullet, as I wrote about yesterday. There is only having the courage to face each day with humility, willingness, compassion, gratitude, and a healthy sense of humor. You will be able to see yourself clearly and those around you clearly. Who you are meant to be will emerge whole and intact, and it will not surprise you. Who You are Meant to Be you will know as an Old Friend, an Old Friend who has been waiting around patiently, perhaps for years, for you to show up.

You Have to Do It By Yourself, But You Can’t Do It Alone.

I love helping people in this process. I love finding a way to shift the “boogga-boogga” that has been stalking you, and getting you to laugh about it. If you can laugh, you can live.

If you’re interested in finding out about my coaching programs, contact me at the vicki@outrageousvisions.com

Blessings,

Vicki

My background is in drug and alcohol recovery, so the model I use is: Get up, take stock, be grateful, be honest, take responsibility, let go, forgive, and as soon as you can, find the joke.

When you’re in Recovery, there is no box to check. You are never Recovered; you are always In Recovery. It’s a process. You have to do it every day, and it never ends.

It’s kind of like brushing your teeth. If you want to have your teeth in old age, you have to brush your teeth two or three times a day All your life. There is no Magic Bullet to save your teeth. You have to do the work. You have to do it every day. And if you’re really smart, you will floss. It’s not inherently sexy to floss, but that’s how you keep your gums healthy and, even more wonderful, that’s how you help keep your heart healthy.

But That Sounds Too Hard!

Some people, many people, want a Magic Bullet. They want to find that One Program, that One Workshop, that One Guru, that One Ecstatic Experience that puts everything in its place and make sense of life forever.

But there is no One Final Answer. This is good news. I tell one of my clients — and this is why the word Outrageous fits me so well — that if she wants a Quick, Final Fix for her life, so that she does not have to get up every day, roll up her sleeves, and do the work that is in front of her to do, that she should start taking methamphetamines. Methamphetamines work really, really well the first time. All of your problems are taken away. Unfortunately, that’s the last time you’ll have that feeling, according to the meth addicts I have worked with. The rest of your life is, quite simply put, hell.

Our Addictive Society

Our society is an addict. We love addicts and we love creating more addictions. People addicted to fear are much more easily manipulated. People addicted to the belief of a Magic Bullet, are much more easily lead to another workshop, another program, another Transformational Once and For All Program that answers all questions forever.

This is why cults are so attractive. This is why gangs are so attractive. This is why fundamentalist religious dogmas that answer all questions for all people for all time are so attractive. There is something in us that wants to abdicate responsibility for our lives.

The Good News: There is No Magic Bullet

When we grow up, when we get that every day we have to wake up and figure out what to do, just as everybody else in the world has to do — the Julia Roberts’s, the Barack Obama’s, the Jane Goodall’s, the John Bon Jovi’s. We all have to wake up and figure it out every single day.

Knowing this truth is why I call myself a Life Coach and a Coach for Life. As Joseph Campbell once said, “Life is not a problem to be solved; it is a mystery to be lived.” And the Mystery is so Mysterious! It will not be tamed. When we accept this fact, we can enjoy every challenge that comes our way. We know where the rubber chicken meets the road, and we can find humor fairly quickly in just about any of life’s challenges.

The skill I’m working on right now is asking. So here goes: Do you need a coach? Are you resonating with what I’m writing? Is there a part of you saying, “Yes!” If so, contact me and we’ll set up a time to talk. You can e-mail me at Vicki@outrageousvisions.com.

It’s Time to Step Up

I believe it is selfish of us to hide our gifts under a bushel. I am very good at helping people discover the obstacles, the beliefs or habits, that need shifting, and finding a funny often musical way to do it. It’s a sin for you to hide your gifts under a bushel as well. The world needs the best from us now more than ever, don’t you think?

Blessings,

Vicki