Articles
You are what you feed
As I write this, I am awaiting friends at a lovely resto in Toronto. It’s a locavore’s delight. Their slogan: Food is Fuel. Food is Medicine. Yes.
And, while I am being more mindful of what I’m putting into my body (you know: Vita-Mixing kale like it’s my job), this isn’t a post about that.
It’s about what I’m feeding.
I recently ran across a story about a Native American tribal leader describing his own inner struggles. He said, "There are two dogs inside me. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time." Someone asked him which dog usually wins, and after a moment's reflection, he answered, "The one I feed the most."
Living a Life That Matters, Harold S. Kushner
Have you ever noticed how much time is spent on the problem? The pain, the worry, the fear? How we feed those with our time, energy and devotion, even as we recognize how it depletes us?
And how we merely tend to our successes and move on quickly to the next problem?
Now, Darlings. Please do NOT get me wrong. I’m not suggesting we ignore the pain, worry, fear, betrayal, disappointment. That would be unrealistic and arguably, irresponsible. After all, what we resist persists.
I’m suggesting we flip this around.
Tend to the pain. But feed the joy. Tend to the fear. But feed the love. Tend to the anger. But feed the freedom. Tend to the worry. But feed the excitement.
Do you feel the energy shift? Do you feel how important that is? Do you see how this changes everything?
Yeah. Me too.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Thing Finding Thursday – What’s YOUR Thing?
I truly cannot express how joyful it’s been to invite some of my favourite people into my virtual living room on Thursdays to discuss their THING. What it is, how they found it and sharing their collective wisdom about how you can find yours. I’m richer for the experience and it is my sincerest hope that you are too.
Remember these interviews/posts and these gems?
Fabeku Fatunmise – Trust the bigness inside of you that is pulling you toward your thing. (TWEET IT)
Chris Guillebeau - The goal isn’t so much to vanquish fear, but to find a way to channel them into s.t. positive + motivating. (TWEET IT)
Jen Louden- It’s okay to find [your thing] + abandon it + find it + abandon it. (TWEET IT)
Tara Sophia Mohr - Compassion is the natural expression of wisdom. (TWEET IT)
Dyana Valentine - I want you to believe that you know the difference between right and right now. (TWEET IT)
Susannah Conway - do the work that makes your heart sing the loudest. (TWEET IT)
Pam Slim - Focus on where you can make an impact based on who it is that you are. (TWEET IT)
Jenny Blake – Sometimes in order to admit what we really want there are some scary questions (TWEET IT)
Amy Kessel - And making peace with not knowing the answers is a crucial aspect of these journeys. (TWEET IT)
Matthew Stillman - (When we’re young) our radiance goes out in 360 degrees. (TWEET IT)
Jasmine Lamb - Stop and listen. What is your life, right now, trying to tell you? (TWEET IT)
Megan Potter- My Thing is ME(TWEET IT)
Sabrina Ali– In facing doubts, ask yourself: Where is the love coming from + what’s it saying? (TWEET IT)
Brandy Glows - We could all use more gorgeous crazy in our lives. (TWEET IT)
Mary-Margaret McMahon – WHY NOT spread your gifts and enthusiasm? (TWEET IT)
Oh so much richness and light shared. And oh so much more to come.
And, for an added dose of inspiration, we’re going to hear the answer to the question from someone who HAS found their thing. And wants to share it with you.
This week, we're graced with the sparkliciousness of Andrea Schroeder of www.CreativeDreamIncubator.com. With a paintbrush in one hand & a glitter-gun in the other, Andrea lovingly mentors men & women who want to lead creatively abundant lives — and do ‘impossible’ things, with ease & joy.
So, Andrea, what’s YOUR thing?
My Thing is Creative Magic.
I help people find their creative spark and use it to bring their dreams to life, with spiritual practices & personal development techniques that feel less like silent meditation & group weeping, and more like magic potions & tea parties.
This means I support myself as a coach, course leader & creator of magical kits to help with everything from overcoming fear to mapping your goals to building the heart-centered business of your dreams. I spend a lot of time playing with crayons and glitter, wearing costumes and giggling. My job is the funnest thing ever.
I’m actively & passionately working on my mission of overflowing this whole world with sparkly wishes (fulfilled!) and dreams (come true!) — and I’m enjoying every second of my chosen adventure.
Express the greatest parts of who YOU are, at www.CreativeDreamIncubator.com.. You can also find Andrea sprinkling glittery joy over on Twitter.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Self Love begins with Values
(I’m delighted to have been asked to write about Values for a blog series put together by Molly Mahar of Stratejoy. She’s organized a blog crawl + Treasure Hunt where 26 writers I admire are blogging about self-love. Please be sure to go check their posts out.) I say “delighted” in the intro above because I truly was. And then, I became overwhelmed. Surprisingly quickly.
See, as juicy as values are, they are so foundational to self-love that it’s almost impossible for me to uncollapse the two. And values form the most basic level of the work I get to do as a coach. I could write a book about values. Two books. Maybe three. And self love? Yikes…don’t even get me started.
But I have just one blog post to write.
So, as I do when I feel overwhelmed, I went rooting through the closet of my values to see which one could help me out of this pickle.
There it was: simplicity.
(Knowing your values allows you to cut through the vines of your thought with machete-like discernment.)
And it really is JUST this simple: to know you IS to love you.
It’s rare that you can love that which you do not know.
So, let’s get to know you.
Spelunking for Values
Values, by the way, aren’t necessarily what you VALUE. Nor are they necessarily morals, ethics, or principles.
To be sure, when you are living from your values, there is a sense of “rightness” for YOU, but that’s not to say that values are intrinsically virtuous.
They are your own unique thumbprint of who you are. At your core. From the inside out.
Now, that innate “rightness” (also known as “resonance”) is a pretty powerful metric in learning what your values are. You can uncover some of your core values by thinking back to a time when you felt at your best. Like everything was right with the world and time could stand still. Conjure that moment and jot down what was going on, who was there, how you were feeling. That’s called “Peak Experience” and it’s a doozy for getting clarity.
Also notice what you’re always insisting upon, who you admire, and what makes you crazy (the flip of that emotion is likely a value).
At this point, you’ve got yourself a pretty robust sense of what makes you tick.
In the spirit of Molly’s ABCs, here are some values that my clients tend to own (this list is by no means exhaustive…nor is it a shopping list from which to load up your cart).
A – Adventure, authenticity, achievement
B – Beauty, bodaciousness
C – compassion, caring, community, connection, congregation, creativity, courage
D – Determination, duty, delight, diversity, discovery
E – Ease, excitement, energy, elation, efficiency, excellence, equality
F – Fun, freedom, flow, faith
G – Generosity, gratitude
H – Health, happiness, hope, humility, honesty
I – Innovation, intimacy, independence, integrity
J – Joy, justice
K – Kindness, knowledge
L – Love, luminosity, leadership, luxury
M – Mastery, meaning
N – Nature
O – Optimism
P – Power, peace, pleasure, performance
Q – Questioning, quality, quiet
R – Resourcefulness, respect, responsibility
S – Sharing, sensuality, success, simplicity
T – Trust, truth, transparency
U – Understanding, unity
V – Vision
W – Worthiness, wholeness, wisdom
X – Excitement (erm…)
Y – Yummy factor
Z – Zen, zest
See which ones show up in your work, and claim them as your own.
Rating your Values
Now that you have your list of say, 10 or 15 top values, rate each of your values on a scale of 1-10. How alive and well is that value in your life right now (one being the lowest and ten being the highest).
Given that you are human and have a pulse, Imma gonna guess that some values are rated pretty high and some have been taking a beating of late. And, if you feel any discontent in your life right now, it will become pretty clear why when you see which values have been ignored.
Let me be clear. This is not about you doing something wrong. Living fully from your values isn’t always comfortable. Just ask anyone with a core value of authenticity. Often, they must make choices to honour that value at the risk of saying some hard truths.
But selling out on your values is the quickest way to selling out on your self. A most inelegant act of self-loathing.
And we’re about self-love, right?
Onward.
Action
If you’ve identified that some of your top values have been a bit unloved as of late, make note of which ones need the attention and make a plan of action.
Also notice that you’re always moving towards, or away from a value.
Say you decide that you need ramp up the yummy factor in your life (a common value my clients are desiring more of) you can ask in a moment:
“Will this decision move me towards or away from the yummy factor?”
Or if you’ve identified that you’re missing ease, ask yourself:
“How can this (task, project, decision) be easier?”
Electric truth in the form of elegant simplicity.
Now, tap into that creative value of yours. What actions can you take to shine the love on your value of beauty, freedom, adventure, gratitude, pleasure?
Beauty? Adorn your night table with trinkets of gorgeousness. Freedom? Commit to clearing a day for white space, by lovingly saying no to dissonant obligations. Adventure? Lose the city map and go for a stroll in a new part of town. Gratitude? Journal your gifts. Pleasure? Well, I’ll leave that one up to you.
Love up those values but good. And in doing so, you’re loving yourself up.
Purely, resonantly and honestly.
Hallelujah.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Thing Finding Thursday with Fabeku Fatunmise
Fabeku Fatunmise . First of all: can you even stand how great his name is? Me neither. Moving on.
If Fabeku had a business card (which he doesn’t), it would read: Business awesomizer. Suck exorcist. Sonic alchemist. World’s Most Skeptical Shaman.
More mm-mm-good copy from his site: Translating music magics + shamanic secrets into nuggets of biz-building BOOM!
Seriously. How could I possibly be holding conversations about Finding your Thing and NOT invite the man who rocks HIS Thing as gleefully as he rocks his red doc martens?
Precisely.
Meet Fabeku.
How extraordinary is Fabeku's question: “Ask yourself what would your bigness do?” That version of yourself that holds itself bigger, smarter, more resourceful, more capable, more...YOU. Yes, that. What would THAT have you do?
I invite you to sit with that gift. What a wildly valuable filter for all that you face.
Tweetworthy Fabeku-isms (now, with 75% more ease!)
Know what doesn’t work? Using other people’s maps to find your home. (TWEET IT)
In finding your thing, look for what’s always been a part of your landscape. (TWEET IT)
Finding your thing may also be about finding the right language to talk about it.(TWEET IT)
Vanquishing your fear is part of process of doing your thing + putting it out there. (TWEET IT)
I trust the mojo of what I do implicitly. (TWEET IT)
Trust the bigness inside of you that is pulling you toward your thing. (TWEET IT)
In finding your thing: Ask yourself what your bigness would do? (TWEET IT)
Stop interpreting fear as a sign that you should stop what you’re doing.(TWEET IT)
In finding your thing, look for the edges that stretch you into your bigness. (TWEET IT)
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Wise + wonderful stuff.
Please go find Fabeku and follow what he's up to at his site and on Twitter. Treats and offers and deliciousness galore.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Thing Finding Thursday with Brandy Glows
Today's Thing Finding Thursday features a guest post by Brandy. She is a word-play arteest who writes and plays at brandyglows.com, a blog that chronicles her adventures in Shalom restoration.
Know what else? She's a brave and beautiful soul. Read on.
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Embracing The Thing That Makes Me Gasp
This morning I watched a clip from The Today Show with Tara Mohr. She shared five of her 10 Rules For Brilliant Women and one of them was to do something that makes you gasp. I remembering thinking my "gasp list" was short. I like limbs and I walk them well. I get high from the adrenaline of turning a big dream into a reality. It's one of the things I love about myself. But it's not my thing.
Kelly Diels encouraged us, a group she coached and coaxed into Artful, Heart-full blogging last summer, to share our stories with Tanya. I am excited to write this guest post because I love Tanya and this series she's created. It's been a great source of inspiration as I trek along the bloggard path. Also, I rock confessional narratives. I like being honest about what I've done and where I come from. I hold my stories tenderly and share them openly because they've made me the person I am today. And that's a big part of what I do, but it's not my thing either.
I've never actually said my thing out loud. I could say I didn't know it, but I think it would be more accurate to say that I didn't know I knew it.
I call myself a digital pastor. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I started a house church, so I guess I'm not strictly digital anymore. I follow Jesus, but believe God is bigger than Christianity. I believe in the restoration in all things. And I believe it's our job. I believe in humanity's capacity to partner with the Divine Source to restore Shalom, or wholeness and peace, in ourselves and our worlds.
I am irresponsibly hopeful.
I studied sociology in college but grew weary of just observing and discussing problems. I longed to create real social change. Let's end racism! Let's feed and cloth the poor and hungry. Let's free all the slaves! Let's reduce, reuse and recycle our asses off.
Let's change the world and leave it a better place than it was when we got here.
I am fierce advocate for social justice. I am a voice for the voiceless. I am a dreamer and a make-it-happener of dreams just crazy enough to work.
What's my thing?
I'm a prophet. (This is where I gasp.)
It scares me to admit it. Even though I'd wager God wants us all to be prophets and stand up against stupid crap. People often think of prophets as crazy people, alone and lonely, screaming their messages to a loud, chaotic world. But in his book, The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann suggests instead that they are leaders of social movements.
It makes sense. If Isaiah (a prophet from the Hebrew Bible) was a nobody, then nobody would have listened to him when he preached naked. Or they would have called the cops.
Although I do breastfeed in public, but I probably won't preach naked. Still, like Isaiah, I want to foretell hope, peace, justice. Maybe that makes me crazy. I've got to be crazy to believe in the restoration of all things. But it's a gorgeous crazy. And we could all use a little more of that kind of crazy in our lives.
It's us. The bloggers. The stubborn ones who insist we can write and make and work from our living rooms. We are the leaders of the next giant social movement. And unlike our predecessors, we're not limited by space and time. The people in our tribes can follow us from anywhere in the world. I get to share the stories - mine and yours - of radical Shalom. I get to proclaim that we can change the world - and then watch people actually do it!
Being a prophet is a process. I don't own it every moment of every day. Sometimes I feel too weak to shout. Other times my words are too critical or too soft and they lose their prophetic edge.
I know the more I embrace My Thing, the more exciting and dangerous the adventure of life will become. It's already led me on journeys I could never have imagined: Homebirth, helping survivors of human trafficking in India, the World Domination Summit! It's all amazing fodder for the juicy message I've been given.
And it's only the beginning.
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Go find this remarkable woman on Google+, Twitter, or on Facebook.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Emotional Real Estate (and other unapologetically mixed housing metaphors)
Love knows, love grows, bigger than before. In your heart, there’s always more.
{That's not Hafiz. Those are words our 7-year old daughter sings with great gusto (from a Barbie movie, natch).}
Yes indeed. I believe in the heart’s infinite capacity for love.
I also believe in efficiency.
Capacity vs Room.
When clients present in session with uphill battles they’re facing, or difficult relationships they’re “managing” (ugh…do you HEAR the weight of that?), I’ll often ask them to consider the emotional real estate that’s being taken up with the current situation, as it is. You have only so much bandwidth to work within. How much space do you want this situation, this person, that conversation, that decision, this relationship to take up? Is it worth it?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And ever a good enquiry.
That’s talking about room. Not CAPACITY.
So let’s assume your heart is a home. ‘Cause, it kinda is. It houses your emotions and is your sanctuary when you remember to rest there. You do your best to keep it well-tended. It’s neat and tidy and yours. You are a gracious host and so you invite people in. After the soiree has ended, some guests feel entitled to stay in this loving place for longer. You, of course agree. It would be unkind otherwise.
At first, it’s most convivial. You enjoy the devotional acts of leaving mints on the pillow and making your guests breakfast. Sure, they can pick the movie tonight and don’t worry about using all the hot water. Over time, you start to feel a subtle, but mounting resentment to the space they’re taking up. You can’t walk into your living room without tripping over their bags. Is that MORE dirty laundry for you to do? Don’t they EVER wipe the counters down after they shave? And about that toilet seat…
Then you stop yourself for being unkind. You take a step back and think: no, it’s not the last beer that they drank or the fact that they tear out articles from your magazines. No…the problem is you. It’s your house. If it were BIGGER, then you’d be a more gracious host.
Maybe it’s time to put an addition out on the back of the house. Then there would be TONS of space for visitors and their bags.
Sure, it will cost a ton (money, resources, effort), but then there will be room enough for all? Right?
Hmm.
You have only so much room in your heart. Fact. AND, heart’s capacity knows no bounds. But your love can.
So by all means, throw open the doors. And them all in. Just be mindful of who gets to STAY.
Allow to stay those who give as freely as they receive.
Those who value your radiance; not simply your PVR.
Those who come bearing nourishing greens + sumptuous broths to feed your soul; not three beers from a 6-pack.
Those who make you want to laugh with the world; not at it.
Those who cherish your quirks; not deride you for them.
Those who see you for the infinite light that you are; not just your generosity and comfy couch.
Those who are worthy. Of the space that you are sharing.
Before you know it, your house will have filled well beyond the imagined constraints of any architects’ drawing. There, in every room will be more love, joy, and fulfillment than you thought possible. An effortless expansion with not a bead of sweat.
Exactly what your heart’s been yearning for, all along.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.