Is Integrity Obsolete?

“Yeah, cash is great.  You don’t have to pay tax on that,” Sally said.

 

I just stared at her, stunned.   “I report all of my income.” 

Now it’s her turn to look at me like I’m an alien lizard from Alpha Centauri, or clinically insane.  “I prefer cash for my international clients because it’s easier, that’s all.”  Now she’s looking at me with pity.  I’m really, really stupid, she’s thinking. Could be.

I admit to disappointment in my friend.  Professors Kohlberg and Gilligan developed frameworks to explain the levels of sophistication of our human moral reasoning, and doing whatever you can get away with is the level typical of a 3^rd grader.  Later in our development, we grow through understanding that general lawfulness makes everyone safer, on up to doing The Right Thing just because it is The Right Thing, from focusing solely on yourself through level after level until you arrive at the place where all living creatures are your siblings and the earth itself is your mother and father, and you devote yourself completely to the alleviation of suffering in the world.  Nobody gets to that summit but some folks get closer than Sally seems to be aiming.

Then there’s another colleague, who changed her email signature to “Amazon Best-Selling Author” a month before she even finished writing the dang thing.  Her reasoning: she had hired someone who guaranteed to make her book a best-seller (it only sold 200 copies), and thus she was just jump-starting what WOULD be true.  Except that she didn’t change it when she saw the sales results.  [Which were totally predictable, for a newbie author tackling a popular topic that had dozens of real bestsellers to compete against.]  I’ll bet that “I’ll make you a star” charlatan suggested it, but it was my colleague who did it, and still refuses to own her lie.

And she’s not alone.  Everyone who releases a print or even an e-book these days claims it as an “Amazon Bestseller” before it’s even on the metaphorical shelves.

I pity the real bestselling authors, who have their hard work and quality product cheapened because everyone (including me) who knows about the “Amazon Bestseller” scam, assumes they are lying also.  Except Ian Brodie, who does such good work, he doesn’t have to lie to impress you.  I’d be willing to believe that his book really IS the best seller in its category of e-mail marketing.

That’s something that my blow-hard pals don’t seem to understand.  If you cheapen the status of an Amazon bestseller because everyone with any level of thrown-together product is claiming it, then when and if you ever do achieve that real pinnacle, no one will believe you.  It’s a short-sighted strategy, based on the belief that the rest of us are too stupid to see the pattern.  We’re not.  So cut it out, already.  Work for your accolades, like your pre-iPad ancestors’ generations did.

My colleague – whose name really isn’t Sally and isn't even a woman – who thinks that integrity is something you turn on and off, is an example of the driving force behind so much cheating, on every  level, these days.  You tell yourself [and there’s always at least a tiny grain of truth in here] that you have been cheated, or the whole system is unfair and corrupt; this belief and the resentment it generates frees you from your moral imperative to being fair and honest yourself.   And then anything is possible.

Many people have a situational-cheater’s response to taxes.  Taxes are, as my anthropology students learn [see my YouTube channel Anthroisfun], the way that complex societies make sure that resources are redistributed.  In small groups of 20-40 individuals, as our ancestors lived for millions of years, until around 7,000 years ago, we shared our good and bad fortune on a daily basis.  No one hoarded; you shared the food you gathered or scavenged (or later, hunted) and no one went hungry.  If you made two knives, you gave one to your sister or cousin-in-law.  Once a money economy emerged, people could contribute coins instead of wheat and barley and goats, and still no one went hungry.  

Modern Western societies have become so complex, and so many of them,  including the USA, are unequal, unfair oligarchies, that the original purpose of taxing – to share food and provide for common goals like roads, medical care, education of the young, and defense against enemies – can be ignored, while you focus on the things you don’t like or approve of.  It’s impossible to have 330 million people agree on anything, including “the sky is blue.”  For example, in Seattle, the sky is actually varying shades of grey.  If we get a tiny patch of blue sky, we all go nuts and stop talking about politics for the duration of the blessed event.  My otherwise-admirable colleague could give you a litany of things that she refuses to contribute to, and thus is morally justified, in her own mind at least – maybe in yours – in pocketing cash that she refuses to share.

But taxes support children and disabled people, and I’ve been both. You have been a child.  If you are blessed to live a long life, you will be too old to earn a salary.  Taxes fix the roads, provide fire protection and libraries, and you need those things.  Taxes provide Sesame Street and Nova, the National Weather Service and Meals on Wheels; I’ve learned from the former and may live long enough to need the latter.  We all may.

 

I know how selective resentment can make nearly anything seem morally acceptable – and I am asking you all to become aware of it, too.  I have a class that brings people into connection with all the components of their ancestry (Meet Your Ancestors, launching on www.soaringdragon.biz/classes) including the noble and heroic.  These heroes are the parts of your DNA that you can tap into when you feel yourself getting up a head of steam around justifications for resentments.  A new class on Freeing Your Soul From the Poison of Resentment is debuting soon to give you tools for this.  

It all starts with awareness of what is really going on inside your thinking, and a commitment to listen to the better angels of your nature.  Deep breath and make a choice.  Pay your taxes, on all your income.  Give generously to those who have less than you do.  Realize what a hero you are for doing both.  YOU, my friend, are protecting seniors and children, and the disabled, and you are the guardian and protector of your community.  Be proud of yourself.  

And remember the Hindu scripture, “Do not despise your neighbors who are poor, for many poor people were once well-off.  And you may someday be poor.”  We’re all in this together, my friends, we truly are.

If we all learn how to call on our inner hero, regardless of the choices that the swamp around us makes, we will have a roadmap to creating a paradise out of this Earth that we have inherited. 

  Take a step on that path today.  Take another step tomorrow.  Repeat until the day you die.

Harness the Energy of Nature for Your Own Transformation!

The sun is just starting to climb over the horizon.  Dawn is here.  In the same way, Spring is the season for beginnings.  As the Light begins to return, more and more each day, our human bodies get more serotonin, and more dopamine.  We have a surge of energy.  We are throwing off the lethargy of winter.  Harness this natural biological surge and move forward.  Do the 5 Breaths meditation listed earlier, or another free guided journey from my website www.soaringdragon.biz/classes, and when you are deeply relaxed, softly and gently ask your deep unconscious what it really wants.  This is the part of you that always knows what you really want the meaning of your life to be.

Pick one small change - perhaps in your health or how you spend your life - and make a commitment to yourself.  Start walking every day for 20 minutes.  Check out my recipes and ideas for healthier eating.  Read my blog for steps to take for more self-love and self-respect.  Start Dumping the Garbage every night (see 101 Stress Busters).  Just one small thing, not a major make-over, because that can scare your unhealed inner child so much she starts sabotaging - and it scares other people into sabotage as well.  Just one small thing.  Commit to it utterly.

Set up rewards for yourself (not food-related, please; meditate until you know what you really want and aren't giving yourself permission to have), when you do your one small thing every day for a week.  And keep your word to yourself. You're a person of integrity.  You deserve to be able to rely on your word.  Give yourself that reward - perhaps time to yourself.  I have a client who went to her sister's house for 90 minutes every Saturday, just for Me Time, because she could not trust her family to respect her boundaries.  Eventually, she was able to have Me Time at home, and also Creative Time when the whole family did various art projects together - bliss!  Whatever your rewards are, know that you CAN brainstorm the rewards that are small in cost but huge in meaning and personal value.

Everywhere, plant life is coming into exuberant form, pushing up through the earth, bursting into colorful bloom or lush foliage.  You are part of this ageless rhythm as well.  Let the energy of spring flow through your veins and answer the call with a clear and exultant YES!  The journey of a lifetime is accomplished step by step.  Take a step and commit to another one every day....

How to Make Changes; How to Vanquish Fear... Brene Brown and Eleanor Roosevelt

An excerpt from my 2017 book, Red State, Blue Heart, a memoir of my years in North Carolina….

HE WAS ENORMOUS!! THE SIZE OF AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER!! Well, maybe a pocket battleship. He came at me with vicious intent, a blow glancing off my skull and then he landed on my computer keyboard just as I hit the Publish buttom for my last night’s blog. I screamed (of course).  He attacked again and I screamed again, remembering to cover my mouth this time. He landed on the keyboard again.  The rational part of my brain (not doing much at the moment) would like you to know that he looked almost exactly like a (slightly) smaller version of the Shadows on Babylon 5, and I have my ex-husband the entomologist’s voice in my head telling me that most bugs are female, so I should say “she.”  

Notwithstanding the fact that she was the size of a house, I draped a towel over her and got her out the back door, but not without several false-starts and enough blood-curdling screams to bring my neighbors running. [Nice to know I have backup when I need it – god bless Southerners!]  So – what’s the point here, besides don’t invite me to a restaurant to eat chocolate-covered multi-legged creatures?

1) There are a lot more bugs in the moist and humid Southland than in the dry climates I live in now, and some of them are ENORMOUS and using all of their persistence and brain power 24/7 trying to get into my home to terrorize me. [I also need to work on my paranoid tendencies, yup.] Native Southerners have been laughing (mostly good-naturedly) at me for over three years. Laughing at one’s neighbors did not end with Jane Austen in 1815. It’s still good, clean fun in the 21st century. Y’all in non-southland states who are laughing at me right now – quess what? As global warming continues, the bugs are moving northward. Ah-ha!

2) fears are frequently not in proportion to the actual threat. Oh, yes, this is the big one. It’s fun to laugh at people who have exaggerated fear-responses to bugs and wasps, but the reality is that all of us have exaggerated fear responses to something – and it is usually more social/interactional than related to bugs and snakes and mousies, oh my. I work with people in career transition, people who want better health and vitality, and people in other kinds of transitions, many of whom stall part of the way through their way to where they say they want to go. Lots of reasons on the surface. They all add up to – at some point, fear takes over and no amount of encouragement or inspiration from others can counteract that internally-generated fear. My terror when confronted by a non-woman-eating insect is ludicrous.

When I look around me, I see all of us running away from little bugs who loom enormous in size and power, in our imaginations. Our brains are wired to respond to fear, as a way to keep us alive in a predator-filled environment. In today’s world, it is primarily social “death” we fear, an interpersonal attack, with words expressing judgment, condemnation or contempt. We unleash these weapons on each other to show how powerful we are [not realizing that it actually demonstrates just the opposite, to someone who has a strong sense of their own power], or to [benevolently] try to protect each other from what we see as dangers [because, of course, they are all-knowing and all-wise, godlike in their own perceptions and 100% know what the future will bring], or for gain [promotions, a date, you name it].

Most of what we are afraid of is not really the size of an aircraft carrier. So, what “bugs” have you been afraid of? Sure, you’re not screaming loudly enough to bring the neighbors running.  Maybe you have been shutting yourself down before you ever really consider certain options. Maybe you let them start to surface before you thrust them away, unconsidered.

A big source of fear in our lives is What Will [People in general or a Specific Person] Think? None of us like to admit that we crave approval, but nearly everyone does nonetheless. We hold ourselves back from achievement to avoid being criticized. We hold ourselves back from the possible failures that would propel us light-years ahead in personal growth, because we are afraid of the I Told You So and the amorphous Feeling Like A Fool. Well, I am here to tell you that actually acting like a “fool” is the least foolish thing you will ever do in your life.

It’s sometimes painful, when you are walking a pristine path without a trail, but it is in those moments that you are most truly alive, most truly in touch with the DNA and the person you were born to be.  Lots of people think my bug freakouts are funny; some consider them shocking, and try to induce shame in me for being so "weak," because I am "so strong and capable the rest of the time."

As Brene Brown would say, “Nonsense!” 

As Eleanor Roosevelt tells us, you gain courage from every time you stop to look fear in the face and don’t back down.  After a while, you can’t be frightened by anything.  You tell yourself, “Well, I lived through these horrors, I can live through the next thing that comes along.”  Eleanor conquered her extreme shyness and became a wonderful public speaker and fearless advocate for the powerless, one scary confrontation at a time.  Some of them turned out to be tiny insects when she confronted them, other fears stemmed from real danger.  But she built her courage muscles, step by step, and so can you.  And so can I. 

Your homework assignment for next week: 1) consider some of your fears as possible bugs, annoying but not life-threatening, 2) come running if your neighbors scream, and 3) put up plastic sheeting on your windows. It not only cuts heat/cooling losses and lowers your fuel bill, but it also keeps the damn wasps out.

Contact me for your FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch).  Victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com

Step Forward from Intention to Action!

I just finished an interview on sharewisdom.tv, on Marianne Marlow's show Conscious Conversations. Marianne was my mentor when I was learning hypnotherapy, and now she is starting a new TV show!

My segment (from 20 minutes to 40 minutes of the hour) continued her theme of taking action. We have to step away from the thinking about it phase to the taking action. You don't want to race off a cliff in an excess of enthusiasm, but after you have done serious and analytical as well as intuitive searching for info, you need to put steps in your calendar and start SOMETHING.

[Or call me for a FREE Getting Unstuck session. This is not an offer for a sales pitch. I will get you through your first, starting step - the hardest - on your road to your goal!]

If you enjoy Marianne's content, some more wonderful free content on the same subject of taking action in my YouTube channel humanbio4everyone. Lots of encouragement as well as specific steps! Go for it!

And the funniest part of it is that until 30 minutes before airtime, I thought that it was a radio interview! [I was a last minute addition to the show, so some details fell through the communications cracks.] When I got a checksheet telling me about lighting, backgrounds, etc., several very genteel and ladylike expression fell dulcetly from my lip as I dashed into action. How appropriate for the theme of the show!

Earrings and lipstick, because my mum always said you can walk out the door for a meeting with the Queen with just those two. Eyeshadow because I didn't have time for makeup. No time for my truly spectacular, gorgeous wardrobe. So I had my tv debut in a denim dress and fabulous earrings. A tan in place of professional skin products. My hair all which way from a hair-wash 30 minutes earlier. If my philosophical framework is wrong and there is a humanistic deity in charge of events, all I can is that he, she or it was splitting their sides laughing.

How do you take action?

1) Start with the overall goal and break it down into specific, small, discrete tasks to get you to the first milestone. Forget about the rest, just focus on the first milepost.

2) Choose the easiest task on the list that doesn't depend on an earlier step and do that. Feel yourself moving! Cheer when you get it done!

3) Pick another easy step. Don't agonize over which one. Just one easy one. See you your muscles are unknotting as you are in Action?

Keep moving until you get to the milepost. Celebrate.

Name the next milepost and create steps. You're in motion. Just keep going.

The minute you feel resistance, stop. Meditate and ask your unconscious mind to tell you what it's really about. If the answer doesn't come, call me for your Free Getting Unstuck session and I'll get you moving again. [Not a sales pitch, remember.]

www.soaringdragon.biz 253-203-6676

The Most Important Mind Shift for Driving Real Change

We are all prone to this. But we have to battle it. Fear what is dangerous, certainly.  

But - to change your present reality into one of joy, freedom and accomplishment, breathe deep, gather your courage, connect to your spiritual sources of strength and protection - and step forward....  

Focus on what you will gain, to reduce the human fear of the unknown....  

All you need to give up is what is harming you, not serving you, giving you temporary pleasure and long-term damage.

The Downside of Being Totally Focused on Success, Marketing, Goals

She was sitting by herself at a table while conversations swirled all around her. You know how a person looks when they are in an unfamiliar situation and they don’t have the language skills or social moxie to know how to insert themselves into the social relationships all around them? That’s how she looked, like a person on the other side of a glass wall. When a person is alone with their thoughts and happily so, they look different. After the first full day was over with no change, I wandered over and tried out my 6 words of Japanese. No signal success. So I fell back on my All-Purpose Solution to Life’s Problems That I Otherwise Have No Solution For – I crocheted her something. I put reiki healing symbols into the scarf. We stumbled through a conversation in English and I shared my email address.

Fast forward a month and she ends up in the Emergency room back home in Japan. She clutches my scarf and the reiki symbols pull healing energy to her; she feels the pain recede. Wow! Our email conversations change into deeper sharing of business and personal goals and dreams.

Two years later, she is one of my soul-sisters. She has brought me more business than my wildest dreams.

Why am I so moved by this serendipity?

Simple. All these beautiful personal (which would have been enough, I promise you!) and professional gifts came from a simple, kindly gesture, the sort of thing my mum raised me to do. I don’t expect or need anything other than a momentary smile to come from them. I don’t do them for Results. I just do them because someone I admire and love taught me that doing them is the rent I have to pay for the gift of living and breathing on this earth. I am so, so grateful, down to my toes, for the blessing that this serendipitous soul sister is in my life. My husband thinks that we were guided to that particular date at that particular resort specifically so that I could meet her.

Here’s what worries me: how many other angels have I missed, at times when I was so gripped with My Goals, or the urgent focus on my marketing or other Make It Happen activities, that I missed opportunities to pay my soul rent?

I don’t intend to stop working hard, harnessing brain as well as heart. But I have been reminded today of the importance of stopping, taking a breath, looking around and noticing if there are any needs that I can respond to, without an expectation of ROI. When I do, I am truly living. And every once in a while, without my controlling or directing it at all, I meet an angel. Blessed be.

The #1 Factor That Will Keep You Going Toward Your Personal Goals

 How often do you celebrate?  Official holidays and family events only?  Or do you also celebrate your small victories and achievements on the mountain that you are personally climbing?

Some of us aren’t aspiring to anything.  I know lots of people like this.  They have achieved what they have always wanted – a certain income, grandparent status, a comfortable job – and they are satisfied.  They will read and learn and grow intellectually, or not, but they don’t have any aspirations burning a hole in their souls.  They have no mountains that they are attempting to summit.

Now please note: a mountain that you feel compelled to summit need not be something tangible.  It doesn’t need be healthy weight, a strong, muscled body, graduating from college or the Displaced Homemaker program or completing a marathon.  It could be getting through an entire week without snarling at anyone, feeling completely free and happy in one’s sexual expression, meditating for 10 minutes a day for a month or graduating from the eternal Yes Woman at your church (and being OK with everyone being mad at you, up to and including needing to find another church).  I particularly love the clients who come to me for that 2^nd type of mountain!

Some of these mountains are public – you tell everyone that you are changing your eating pattern forever, or becoming tobacco-free, so they will help and encourage you if you are tempted to return to your life-killing choices – and some are completely or primarily private.  My personal fitness goals have been in the latter category.

I have had a couple of injuries, which have kept flaring up, and other complications that have kept me from completing the six hours/week that the Surgeon General says we all need for optimal health.  I couldn’t even complete the three hours needed for minimal conditioning.  Most weeks I could complete 1.5 hours. Some days, I did 10 minutes of yoga or hand weights at home and it was all I could do.

The end result: poor physical condition.

But I’m celebrating today!  For the third day in a row, I was able to complete a 30 minute interval program on the treadmill, speeding up my walk to nearly running for at least half of those minutes.  I warmed up for 10, and then started a “5 minutes fast, 2 minutes moderate” progression.   I felt great every day, no relapses.  I can see muscles starting to form all over my torso, arms and legs.  They have been silently building for months, clearly, even as I’ve struggled and thought I was failing.

This is not the mountain summited, no.  It’s not the beginning of the end of my conditioning mountain.  But it is clearly the end of the beginning*.  

Along every mountain trek, there are interim resting spots at the ends of the switchbacks.  If you are a project manager, or have ever painted your house, these are the checkpoints along the project road, the places where you stop and assess your progress.  If you are literally climbing a mountain, you look out and down and realize, in awe and appreciation, how beautiful the view is and how much you have accomplished.

It’s so important to take these progress assessments!  Not in the way we do assessments in the corporate world, where their exact translation is “let’s see what you HAVEN’T accomplished so I have a stick to beat you up with the next time you want a concession on time, flexibility, whatever,” but in a Wow, I’ve Taken Some Steps, Haven’t I spirit. 

This is also what I talk about in my programs when I say that all behavior change goals have to have rewards for every effort toward a goal, as well as rewards for interim steps.

This is my day to celebrate with a non-food reward, and I intend to – extravagantly!  An entire hour of crochet tonight, finishing up a meter-tall stuffed animal, a fuzzy, funny wolf for a wolf-obsessed colleague.  It is not great art or great technical execution but it is fun, and another milestone in its way.  After all, how many people do you know who have ever created a 3 foot tall plush toy wolf that sorta-kinda looks like one? 

When you reward yourself, when you don’t allow your inner damage to slough it off and push you to spend your Reward time/energy/money on some other chore or goal, you are sending a powerful message to your subconscious mind that these actions DO matter, that small actions taken every day, consistently, rain or shine, tired and busy as you are, WILL get results.  It sends the message that these mountains that you are climbing are formidable, but you are more formidable.  It sends the message that you believe in your mountain-summiting ability, your ability to get to the very top and survey the entire world from the highest height.  It sends the message that you matter – to you, which is all that really matters.

Tomorrow, I go back to the gym and return to the climb.  For now, I am celebrating!

*[Extra points if you know who I plagiarized.]

www.soaringdragon.biz
For a comprehensive class on navigating the barriers to a daily movement habit (only $20): https://zparkl.com/course/about/transform-your-relationship-with-exercise/
On Facebook: healing minds, healing bodies.

5 Top Reasons Why You Need to Focus on THIS Form of ME Time

Some of us don’t give ourselves any Me Time at all, because we’re convinced, for family, gender or cultural reasons, that taking time for ourselves is selfish.  Some of us take our relaxation primarily with evening television or by physical pampering like mani-pedis.

I’ve shown you how having Me Time is the least selfish thing you can do for your family and career in another post.  For now, assume that you’re  convinced that you need Me Time and are ready to consider spending anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour on most days, entirely engrossed in your most creative, fun activities with absolutely NO guilt!  How does this sound?  Look what joys await you when you get up from the zoning-out-with-TV habit:

Ø  Diving into library books and magazines on crochet [come sit down next to me!]

Ø  Watching videos, and YouTube – humor, how-tos, history, science, drama, cute kittens.

Ø  Chatting with friends

Ø  Reading, especially about hobbies or interests that engross you (deep-ending in histories of Elizabethan England, Ancient Scythia or WWI)

Ø  Picture-intensive books about travel, garden makeovers or visual hobbies (art, crafts)

Ø  Listening to catchy, upbeat music.

Ø  Listening to audiobooks and podcasts.

Ø  Building or making physical objects, from bat houses and cat houses to human furniture.

Ø  As well as more specialized joys, like feeling the joy of warm water all around you, or taking a virtual bike-ride along the wine valleys of the Loire.

Now THAT’S what I call Me Time!   Are you ready to plunge into all this fun?  Good, because I want to give you the 5 powerful reasons why you want this particular form of Me Time:

Reason #1: Your chances of developing 14 different forms of cancer, plus diabetes, Alzheimer’s and heart disease plummet.  Your blood pressure and blood cholesterol plummet.  You add an average of 7 healthy years to your lifespan!

Reason #2: Your enthusiasm for life and your positive energy will soar, without you having to recite affirmations or engage in any other life changes!

Reason #3:  You’ll get fewer colds, you’ll be less liable to depression even when the days are cold, cloudy or rainy, your sleep will be easier and sounder and you’ll be able to successfully race for the express commute bus.

Reason #4:  Your career will improve because your mind will be calmer, your confidence will skyrocket, your ideas will be more creative and clever, and your increased energy as evidenced in your sparkling eyes and easy smile will convince management that you are overdue for a promotion to more responsibility.  If you own a business, people will be drawn to become customers because of the magnetism of increased confidence, which also manifests in smarter business decisions.

Reason #5:  You will be a kinder, more patient and understanding parent (with less effort), and all your personal relationships, including your marriage, will be happier and calmer.

So HOW do you get all these benefits and enjoy all that Me Time?

Are you ready for the Secret?  Take a deep breath, because it’s really, really powerful

Here it is: Go to the gym, or community center, at least three days/week, and engage in vigorous movement on the other days.

That’s right, it’s exercise! 

I go to the gym to get Me Time to deep-end in imagining new crochet projects while I walk on the treadmill or use a stationary bike.  My clients revel in the guilt-free joys of reading and taking vicarious trips, including the creative lady who bike-trips along the Loire.  She bikes in place and can taste all that lovely wine in her imagination!  Others enjoy guilt-free video or Facebook time as they bicycle or treadmill.  Gyms always pipe in catchy, upbeat music to help keep you moving as long as possible.  Home shops can be hives of vigorous movement as you build and create.  Once a week, hubby and I take a water aerobics class and laugh and giggle together as we leap, jump, and practice-box in the soothing warm water; after class we laugh and catch up with our friends. 

And it’s all guilt-free fun, because you are doing the #1 thing that you need for optimal physical and mental health, a happy life and successful career. 

Are you convinced that you hate exercise?  Want to bet I can’t change your mind?  OK, the deal is on!

Step #1: Sign up for my transformative, fun class here: https://zparkl.com/course/about/transform-your-relationship-with-exercise/.   This class focuses on the most powerful organ in your body – your mind.  It is in your concepts and beliefs that you turn away from the most powerful Me Time on the planet, with all the amazing benefits it brings you.  Exercise literally puts money in your pocket as it adds years to your lifespan.  For $19.95, it’s priced to be super-easy for everyone.  So go ahead, sign up!

Step #2: When you have completed the class, call or email me and book a FREE Getting Unstuck appointment.  If you complete my class, I will DOUBLE your free session to a full hour, and we will get to work demolishing the barriers that are holding you back from all the fun of the most powerful Me Time ever.  That’s my gift  and it’s worth a whole lot more than $19.95.  Maybe we can solve your time problem or blast away your other barriers and hand you your heart’s desire on a plate in one session.  Maybe we will only get part-way there.  The important thing is – you get a $70 value for only $19.95, even if my class doesn’t do for you what it has done for everyone else who’s ever taken it.

Are you willing to bet that I can’t make a Me Time addict out of you?  Sign up now at https://zparkl.com/course/about/transform-your-relationship-with-exercise/.

253-203-6676

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4 Steps to More Powerful – and Happier - Problem-Solving

A seminar attendee asked me yesterday what I considered the biggest blind spot in the human soul.  What would you say?  There are so many amazing candidates for that honor.  Close your eyes, breathe deeply for a few moments to let your heart soar, and watch all of your own candidates bubble up to the surface.

What did I answer?  What was “top of mind” for me, and what I said, was that we forget that humanity was never, ever designed to be a solitary problem-solver.  As far back as we go in the hominin lineage, and back much, much farther than that, we see groups of people constantly working together, healing each other, giving each other a hand up, seamlessly shifting from give to take, moment by moment.  Group living conveys so much benefit, from safety from predators to lowered cortisol levels and improved immune system function.  Today, the “predators” are rent increases, medical crises, car accidents and malevolent co-workers, but the same advantages are there. 

Except that we’re not taking advantage of what we evolved for.  Modern US culture creates people who grow up with the bizarre belief that they are supposed to solve their problems alone, figure out their dilemmas alone and rely on their personal resources alone.  THAT, I said, is the biggest blind spot in the American soul.  We evolved for alliances, and we stubbornly, insistently, cut ourselves off from our own strongest power and fastest road to success.*   So many of us have rebelled against the dangers of dependency and have gone to the other extreme, because those are the two choices our culture allows us.  Our souls want to be interdependent within a reciprocating system of allies.

The next time you have a dilemma, keep this blind spot in mind.  Here are some hints:

Hint #1:  You could hire someone to do some things for you.  You need to move, so you hire some people and a truck.  You need a stump dug and instead of putting your 50-year-old back out, you get a moonlighting young neighbor to do it.  Your small business needs bookkeeping and you hire someone.  When you hire someone, you send cash-energy circulating in the world, you allow people to feed and support themselves and their families and you tie connect yourself to the wider world.

Hint #2:  You swap with someone.  I don’t have the physical abilities to take care of my ¾ acre healing center entirely on my own.  I am a truly amazing healer of minds and bodies.  Put the two together.  

The swap might not even be obvious as a swap.  I spent 18 months in a weekly cleaning session every Saturday afternoon for a friend who was recovering from serious surgery.  He got the physical help he needed and I got two hours of stimulating intellectual discussion and deep philosophical insights.  That was a fair swap.  When I lived in North Carolina, I had all the neighbor kids at my house for a monthly Girls Night Out for their single moms, a nine-month swap instigated by me and enjoyed by all.

Hint #3:  You could receive a gift.  I spent two hours today sending a friend on her first Reiki and hypnotherapy journey to end her anxiety and insomnia.  I enjoyed the thrill of a really amazing healing session and so did she.  So many people have reached out a hand and pulled me out of mires, over the course of my life, and the same is true for all of us.  The universe contains both challenges and gifts.  Ask for the resources you need, from individuals and from public options.  Ask gently and if help isn’t possible from one source, keep asking until you have the resources you need to thrive.  Those who can’t help you directly can send you their prayers.  Breathe deeply and let the prayer-energy fill your soul and give you the courage to keep going.

Hint 4:  You could borrow or repurpose a resource someone isn’t using.  So many times, when I have been tunnel-visioning on a problem, someone will come up with a resource that could be repurposed to give me what I need now – either my resource or theirs.

The only failure is the choice to turn inward and believe that you are an entire universe.  You aren’t and never can be.  Your DNA is screaming for you to expand your vision.  The resources to solve your dilemmas exist.  After you have brainstormed, repurposed and juggled your own resources, expand your heart again and see what the wider energetic world might have for you as a swap, a purchase, a repurpose, a borrow or a gift.

Don’t fail.

*Yes, I really talk like this.  On our first email exchange, before our first in-person date, my future husband said that I looked a lot like his step-daughter.  Sure, sez I, because 60,000 years ago, massive volcanic eruptions killed off the entire human species except for 2000 individuals in East Africa, so all the 8 billion of us alive today are the descendants of a very small gene pool, so of course lots of us look alike.  I don't try to be a nerd. It just leaps out of my throat on its own.

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New Year's Resolution 4: Not My Circus, Not My Flying Monkeys

I bought a plaque a few years ago: it says NOT MY CIRCUS.  NOT MY MONKEYS.  I know, it's pretty funny.  But if you really meditate on this simple "joke," how profound it really is.  

How often do we get caught up in someone's else's drama, someone else's emotional snares, because we get "hooked" by one of the Three Horsemen of Disaster:

>  We are trying to change someone.  You know you can't do that, right?  Really know it?  Take a long, slow deep breath.  It isn't even your business.  You weren't put on this earth to tell other adults - regardless of how much you love them or how much DNA you share with them - how to behave or what choices to make in their lives.  If they are harming you, get away from them.  Otherwise, not your circus.

> We are trying to force an outcome.  This doesn't mean the same as changing someone's nature or their take on things.  It usually means a circus involving more than one person, which is more insane than a circus with just one flying monkey.  You can't make things come out the way you want them, no matter how many vision boards you create.  God may or may not exist.  What's for sure, is that it ain't you.  Let go of trying to control absolutely everything in the whole wide world, including all the outcomes of your life.

> We are trying to defend ourselves. The worst of the three! In addition to not being able to control other people's behavior, you also can't change how other people think, including how they think about you.  Even if you are being judged based on something other than facts (or the facts that you know).  Even if it's terribly, horribly unfair.  Even if no one asked you what "really happened."  Even so.  You 100% cannot, and will not, ever, ever, ever have the power to control your image with others.  They are going to think what they think.  They are going to talk about you.  They are going to spread false rumors and tear down your reputation.  Your integrity is what you know about yourself.  Your reputation is what others know about you.  Guard the one; ignore the other.  What others think about you is not your circus.

Keeping other people's circuses from poisoning YOUR peace of mind is probably the #1 challenge of our lives.  

Martha Beck had a suggestion years ago about how to survive family holidays with less-than-optimal families: she suggested that you and your sane friends each create a Bingo card in which each segment represents a Circus event (Uncle Harry gets drunk; Dad starts a rant about race; Mom asks me when I am going to get married - or divorced).  Keep track as the holidays pass.  The first person to get a winning Bingo row calls the others and we celebrate.  By taking the focus off the Circus and onto the game, it helps the players to avoid being hooked by the obnoxious comments that tempt you to "defend" what never needs defending - your life choices.  [If you break a law, you might need to defend your choices to a jury of your peers, but otherwise - no.]

If you can chuck all those monkeys, peace of mind is a cinch.  Call me for a training session on who owns the Circus.  www.soaringdragon.biz

New Year's Resolutions 1: Your Burdens, My Burdens

 If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough….. Henry W. Longfellow

I am a big fan of resolutions to improve health (lose weight, stop smoking, exercise, change eating) and improve one’s money situation (new job, promotion, more clients, less time wasted with poor organization).  My profession, after all, is healer and change agent.  Using hypnotherapy to effect deep changes and energy healing to reduce anxiety and stress, with life coaching to set up goals, rewards and timetables, it’s a very powerful toolkit and it gets very powerful, fast results.  What’s missing?

Nothing, if your goal is the utterly admirable ones of physical health and the end of limiting beliefs about yourself.

But that’s not all there is to a human life.  We also have a striving to be better people.   All of my tools work really well to help people to extinguish the lingering remnants of harm from childhoods with imperfect families, traumas from adult life like criminal assaults, natural disasters and war, as well as personal imperfections that can’t be traced back to a particular cause or event. 

It’s noble, I think, to truly want to cause less pain to others by wanting to be less quick-tempered, more patient, more kind and understanding or more generous with praise and focus on catching people doing something right.  All of these and more have been resolutions of my clients over the years.  Removing the defect entirely is wonderful, but when we are talking about deeply ingrained barriers like this, even removing a layer or two of habitual patterns is a victory.

There is one challenge that I think underlies all the frustration, the envy, and the anger over the Good Luck in others’ lives, and that is what I’d like to talk about today.  We look at others in the superficial way that we do when we are assessing others’ lives, we see what we think they have, we compare it to what we know we don’t have, and anger arises.  We spin stories about why we don’t have, and why they do.  That story becomes our truth and we live our lives believing the story.

Let’s break this whole conundrum apart, piece by piece, and let’s start with a really common example: you have a particular burden holding you back and I don’t.  One of my many clients who is also a coach or healer tells me that it’s harder for her than for me, because she has two young children and I don’t; in fact, I have an easy life all around.  You’ve done this a million times, and so have we all.  Even I, who am super-aware of the fallacy, occasionally fall into the pit before I realize what I did and jump out.  The truth that we need to learn at a deep level is that we actually DON’T know a damn thing about what burdens our fellow humans are bearing.  All we know is what is public and obvious. 

People assume I don’t know how black people suffer because my hair is blond; they don’t know that I grew up with African American brothers and a sister.  People assume I have no burdens because I tend to be cheerful and don’t ride in a wheelchair.  During flu season, people learn that I have immune system weaknesses that make illnesses very common, but if you meet me in summer?  Nope.  My other health concerns are private; that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or don’t hold me back in myriad ways.  Only their closest intimates (usually) know that a person had a deeply-abused childhood, has been a victim of violence or is battling their way back to wholeness from the effects of PTSD.  And you don’t know any of this.  You know your life.  You don’t know the truth about the hundreds of people you are telling stories about every year. 

The underlying purpose of the story-telling that Person X has fewer burdens than me is to have a ready-made reason for why s/he has something and I don’t, an ignoble goal if ever there was one.  If you find yourself wanting to push back on this wisdom, now you know why your limbic system doesn’t want to let go of the Everyone Has It Easier Than Me story. 

How to overcome this (frequently wrong) story-spinning?  Every time you hear your mind coming to a conclusion about someone, especially after a short acquaintance, STOP.  Take two long, very slow, deep breaths and remind yourself that You Don’t Know A Damn Thing About This Person.  If you are in I Don’t Know territory, your mind is open to collecting additional information.  As soon as you have spun a story, you will interpret all new sensory information (what they say, do, twitch, etc.) through the filter of whether or not it fits in the story. 

The goal of this exercise is NOT to turn off your intuition – absolutely the contrary!  We just to the story that we can trust a person based on our limbic system liking the person’s welcoming smile and generous offer of home-baked cookies.  But sociopaths and garden-variety manipulators are very charming and “nice.”  You need to reserve your story-making/judgment until you have a lot more data.  Only a true sociopath can keep up the smokescreen forever.  The others will start to slip up.  If you are paying close attention, you’ll notice it and step out of range.  If you have your “S/he’s a great guy/gal” story/frame in place, you’re by definition no longer paying close attention. 

Acknowledging your own burdens – you are building a career or a business and want to be a good parent as well; you are battling asthma or ADD to get to your goals – allows you to generate goals that fit your physical and mental limits.  You won’t choose the same goal or timing as some outside entity thinks you should.  You know what you can realistically do and if you don’t, call me and we’ll figure it out in a coaching session.  You can walk from Panama City to Washington DC or from a Auschwitz to Hiroshima if you just keep putting one foot in front of another and don’t give up; my mom the dedicated peace activist did both, in her 60s.

For 2016, let me suggest this additional Resolution for your consideration:  slow down the creation of stories.  And when you hear yourself getting ready to conclude that another person has less burdens than you, remind yourself that you know all the secrets of your own soul and absolutely nothing about theirs.

Call me for a Free Getting Unstuck session, on whatever your goals for the year or your life are.  253-203-6676.  victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com   www.soaringdragon.biz