Virtue Bundling. What happens when someone has one quality we really admire, such as a good sense of humor, and we think they must also be a person of good character? What happens when someone is supersmart, and we think that means they must also be a person of good character? The answer: problems.

In my life I’ve had a habit of assuming that people who have one quality I admire also possess other qualities I admire. This is a false assumption and this cost me a lot of suffering. Suffering which I now feel is unnecessary. If I stop my bad habit of virtue bundling and accept people as they are and not project onto them qualities I want them to have, I will be a happier person, a person with more joy, a free person.

Click here to hear the audio on Virtue Bundling.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Hello! It’s been a while since last I sent out a Thought for the Day. I’ve been trusting my inclination to burrow in and hibernate. Trusting and letting go is always good work for me to be doing, much more challenging than setting a goal and getting to work on it.

Today’s audio is about being a worthy listener, someone who can be with people when they are in the messy transitions of life. Parker Palmer in his book A Hidden Wholeness suggests that sometimes we listen with the rule: no fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting us straight. This is a kind of listening that is luscious to receive an surprisingly fulfilling to give.

Click HERE for audio

Follow your bliss or it will stalk you.

Vicki

What would happen if each of us decided to get just a little braver every day?
What would happen happened to our personal lives?
What would happen to the world?

What would happen instead of being embarrassed or humiliated when we made a mistake, we felt sexy and alive?
What if we knew that every time we stepped out of our comfort zone, we were likely to stir up old feelings of unworthiness and shame?
But what if we knew all we had to do was feel those feelings and they would go away?

The answer to all these questions is: we would live an outrageously alive life, full of adventure, love, and meaning.

Click HERE for the audio and stop apologizing all the time and start feeling sexy and perhaps even a little wicked.

Follow your bliss or it will stalk you,

Vicki

As I listened for a focus for the New Year of 2013 (everything is gravy now that the world didn’t end December 21) several threads wove themselves together.  Since coming back from Bali I’ve been floundering a bit, searching for my new purpose.  Much of my work has disappeared with budget cuts and new priorities in education. Should I write another book?  Who will read it?  Should I write more songs?  Who will I sing them to, and they will probably be boring anyway…

All of us go through this dance with self doubt sometimes and it is not much fun.  I’ve been reading Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness: Healing the Divided Self, rereading The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz, and writing to my Angel Committee regularly.  Here is what has emerged:

Why obey our inner inklings and nudges when they don’t seem to make sense? Why bother if we feel that they will not make a difference?  Why take a sketch pad and draw what our eyes are drawn to when we can’t sell our drawing?  Why do what we are called to do? Because the “I” in you asks, invites, beckons. Because it says so. It is not the one who says, “get a real job”, or “no one will read your book.”

Who is the “I”  calling to you? You decide.  Could it be called God, or The Universe, or your True Self, or your Muse, or your Angel Committee.  It is the truest, deepest, bravest, most loving, wisest part of ourselves.  And my agreement with myself is that this year, 2013, I’m going to do what it, my “I”, tells me to do just because it tells me to do it.

Here’s a more extensive explanation on audio:  click here.

Recently I read another great blog from Derek Sivers: Everything is my fault. At first I agreed with his radical suggestion that, by assuming everything is our fault, we can find freedom and happiness.

And, after some reflection, I decided I totally disagree with him. I am NOT responsible for his bad behavior and he is NOT responsible for mine. Yahoo! That is freedom.

Click here to listen to the journey of a young girl who took total responsibility for her family’s dysfunction – to the woman who has plenty to do taking responsibility for her little-ol’ self.