Outrageous Visions - See Who You Are Meant To Be

August 23rd, 2011

Imagine this scenario:

You are in a foreign country far away from home. You have no cell phone. You are staying in the guest bedroom of the man who invited you to do workshops. You are legally blind.

Instead of being defensive, you are curious: curious at a time when it would’ve been very easy to be afraid, sad, angry, and mean.
Your heart beat doesn’t go up.
You are full of compassion for yourself and for the man who is so angry at you.
Although you are being attacked, you feel extremely grateful for the moment.
Because I was curious instead of destroyed, I felt stronger about myself and my abilities.

He is very, very angry at you. He has the secret list of all the things you would never want to have anyone say to you. He declares you have lied to him. You are ungrateful. You have tricked him. You have ruined his reputation with 1 billion people. Furthermore, he fires you for being incompetent and boring.

Now imagine this:

Your response is, “Really? Tell me more.”

And, you are grateful that you practice curiosity enough, so that when you really needed it is there for you.
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Following the YES

August 1st, 2011

My husband and I are leaving in September to go to Bali for a grand venture. We are planning to stay for 9 months with one short trip home to meet our grandson who will be born in December. We’re going to Bali to see what happens. This is what I’m calling following the YES.

Murray quit his job, we are renting out four rooms in our house, fostering our dog and our houseplants, and going to Bali to see what Bali wants to do to us. We have plans to be of service–helping local teachers of English, getting a recycling project started in the schools, and helping people with disabilities. We are also planning on having lots of massages, trips to the beach, and luxurious relaxing time by a pool.

These are inchoate ideas and it remains to be seen what will really happen when we get to Bali. We are open to the YES. We are following that YES.

25 Years Ago or So

The 1st time I felt a YES flutter in my heart for Bali was when I heard that the Balinese had no word for art. Everything in Bali is art. I thought to myself, “I want to go and experience what it’s like to be somewhere where everything is art.”

I felt a fluttering in my heart and put a Post-It note in my brain: someday go to Bali.

In December of 2007 a dear friend of mine, Jana Stanfield, invited me to join her on a trip to Malaysia and Bali. There were 17 of us and we were Transformational Troubadours. Jana is a fabulous singer-songwriter, motivational speaker, and human being. We had a marvelous, magical trip that was full of songs, laughter, and connection with each others, the culture, and the natural beauty surrounding us.
I spent 7 days in Bali on that trip in December of 2007. I felt deeply healed in the cells of my body. After decades of therapy and psychological and spiritual work, I found a deep home in myself in Bali. I felt seen and known and understood, and before I left I asked our guide how I could best serve Bali.

Dana Lee is a wise man in his 50s, a man who had to leave the mountains of Bali to go into the city of Demizar during the revolution in order to save his life. His grandfather was murdered and they found him floating in a river. These were difficult times for the Balinese to say the least.

Dana is full of wisdom and heart, and when I asked him how I could serve Bali he answered immediately: “Bring more people to Bali like you. Help us learn English and help us learn computers.”

Okey-dokey, I said to myself, “will do.”

I Have Returned!

Each time shortly before I returned to Bali I’d think, “Did I make this up? Have I exaggerated Bali’s beauty and my love of its people?” I’d step out of the airport, feel the humidity surround me and think, “No. I love it here, and this is not even the good part.”

Since my 1st visit I have gone back to Bali 4 more times for longer and longer stays. In March 2010 during the Balinese New Year’s Day of silence, I completed the sentence to myself: “If I weren’t afraid, I would…”

Here was my answer: if I weren’t afraid, I would move to Bali.

Are you kidding me? What about my husband? He’d only been in Bali once, he has a job, and he loves his dog. Could we leave our home, his job, our friends and our life, in fabulous Corvallis, OR to come and see what could happen to us in Bali?

A few days later when he arrived in Bali for his 2nd visit, I asked him if he would consider moving to Bali. He said Yes. The huge YES to life. What a guy! I know how lucky I am most of the time to have a husband as wise, sweet, funny, hard-working, honest, and creative as my Murray. Since we create our own reality, I’m giving myself full credit for inventing Murray.

So now we are following this YES, this YES to aliveness and adventure. We’ve been working since we returned from Bali to get everything ready for this sojourn that begins in September. We know we’re coming back for sure to meet our grand baby, but after that we don’t know what we’ll be doing. We might become world hoppers, people who travel all over the world and come home for short stays to hug and kiss and love up children, grandchildren, and friends and then hop right back out into the world again to see what will happen.

Carpe Diem

I’m turning 60 in September and Murray will turn 56 in October. We are healthy and lively and now is the time. As my dear friend Neil Gladstone, singer-songwriter, said in a recent concert, “time is slipping away.”

What Does this Have to Do with You?

Time is slipping away for all of us, and all of us are in different places in our lives. When my children were young, the YES in my life was living next to an elementary school and the park, so they could walk to school and play with their friends without having to be driven around. It was taking them camping and canoeing and skiing and rafting. It was giving them time and space to invent their own games and settle their disputes.

When my children were little they were the yes in my life. My daughter is 32 now and my son will turn 30 the day we fly away to Bali. They are fabulous human beings with good jobs and outstanding partners. Though the timing of being out of the country when my 1st grand child is born has been a bit troubling to me, I’m deciding that is part of the Yes as well. I have the rest of my life to love this grandchild well. He will know us and know he is loved by us. And we might perhaps be the coolest grandparents ever–world hoppers that we may turn out to be.

Our Yes may bring us back to Corvallis where we have many friends, a gorgeous garden, and a house full of color and art and love. We are living in paradise, and we are following our Yes to another paradise to see what happens to us. It is scary, exciting, thrilling, and is opening us to new parts of ourselves in a way nothing else could.

Joseph Campbell said follow your bliss. I’ve added follow your bliss or it will stalk you. If you want to find your bliss, listen for the little fluttering suggestions that are in you, and follow them one step at a time to see where you end up. You might end up in Bali and you might end up in your own backyard.

I will keep you posted on our journey, hoping our adventure will help you find the courage to follow your YES wherever it leads you. Let’s all die with no regrets, shall we?

Who’s That Knocking at Your Door?

July 19th, 2011

What can we do when were afraid something might be true?
What can we do when we wake up full of fear with the feeling of dread in our bellies?
What can we do when we wake up feeling totally incompetent and we have to go to work the next day and look like we deserve our status and pay?

I found the answer to these questions last week. I was teaching a workshop for teachers called Discipline with the Brain in Mind. I love teaching this workshop, I’ve taught this all over the world, and it’s usually days of bliss.
This year I only had seven students, seven dedicated educators who are taking the time out of their lives to learn whatever they can to do a better job helping students discover the joys of learning, believe in themselves, and overcome any obstacles that come their way.
As I said, this is one of my favorite things to do, so it was with some surprise that I woke up in the middle of the night, 4 AM to be specific, and felt fear and dread.
Fear and dread? What was this? I love teaching this class! What’s this fear and dread that is attacking me and threatening to ruin one of my favorite classes? I did not want to feel fear and dread, but the truth in my body, and our body never lies, was that I was feeling fear and dread. I did not want to go to class the next day.

I had a choice to make here. Fear and dread was knocking on my door wanting to get in and I felt sure, as I was huddled in the fetal position in my bed, that it was threatening to ruin my teaching career.
Here are the choices I had at that moment:

I could have tried to insulate myself from what was knocking on my door and not hear it. Been there, done that.
I could have pretended I wasn’t hearing the knocking at the door, wasn’t feeling the fear and dread in the pit of my stomach, and gone to class the next day and tried harder. I’m very good at what I do, and I’m fairly confident I could have fooled everyone into thinking I was secure and competent. I would have worked myself to a frazzle, and would have known that something was wrong, though they might not have known what was wrong. I would have been pretending instead of being present.
I could open the door and let that “horrible” truth come in and tell me what was going on. In short, I could get curious about the knocking at the door instead of trying to ignore it or pretend I am someone I’m not.

Been There, Done That

For many, many years of my life, I ignored the knocking at the door. This is why I had a chronic anxiety disorder in my 20s and into my early 30s. I was afraid of the truth, afraid that I would find that I was a disgusting human being and unworthy of being loved.
When I was about 32, I got tired of being afraid all the time and decided I would make a commitment to being a little braver every day. Whatever you practice you get good at, and I was tired of practicing being a coward. Since that fateful day almost 38 years ago, I have been getting a little braver every day.
But this getting-a-little-braver-every-day business means exactly that — getting a little braver every day. I don’t get to ever check the box that says, “You are Now Brave Enough.” Am I going to show up as I am, as I truly am, or am I going to try to hide behind some facade of competence? I answer this question regularly.
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Traversing the Bar

July 5th, 2011

The Columbia River Bar Pilots were established in 1846 to ensure the safety of ships, crews and cargoes crossing the treacherous Columbia River Bar, which is recognized as one of the most dangerous and challenging navigated stretches of water in the world.

I’m following my bliss, so it is not stalking me, but it is scaring me down to my DNA.

My husband Murray and I are going to Bali in October and we plan to stay until the end of June 2012. Murray quit his job as an occupational therapist for a school district, we are renting out rooms in our house to cover our house payment, and we are going to Bali to see what happens.

My only daughter is pregnant and due in December, and we will probably not be coming back for the birth of my first grandchild. We plan on coming back in March to help her transition back to work while her husband starts his student teaching adventure. People have opinions about this choice. You might have opinions about this choice, and your choice might be different than my choice. That’s okay.

We figured out a way to finance this year of Murray not working and for us to live Bali. We’ve been working on this for two years. We have it all figured out. It’s all figured out. Boy, have we got it figured out.

Traversing the Bar
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Loving Our Bodies “As Is”: Three Fun, Funny, No-Fail Techniques

June 23rd, 2011

I’m Talking to You!

I heard you groan when you read the title. I know what you are thinking: “Not me. Not ever! I am too disgusting, too fat, too ugly, too unacceptable, too rejected, too skinny, too pock-marked, too flat-chested . . .” I have heard it all and said much of it to myself.

Aren’t you tired of wishing you looked different? Aren’t you sick of trying every new diet that steamrolls down the freeway aimed straight at your self-confidence? Do you think possibly you’ve been duped by a youth-obsessed, anorexia-inducing culture? ? Isn’t enough finally enough, already?

A confession: I do not yet love my body completely as it is. I am in recovery from a disapproval addiction, and I will need to be in recovery every day for the rest of my life and so will you. This is not bad news; it is good news. Recovery is fun. You will live longer, laugh more, and have time to appreciate the important parts of your life instead of wasting your precious time focusing on that dry skin on your elbows or those little wrinkles around your eyes.
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Curiosity: The WD-40 for Liberation