5 Ways to Boost Your Energy, Boost Your Joy, Lose Weight AND Much More!

 One of my constant refrains in my group coaching as well as individual programs is that joy comes from learning new things. If you haven't done any significant non-career learning in a while, this probably sounds .

So here's my suggestion: trust me enough to try it. Options are endless. There are practical classes (what to do when the next disaster strikes; how to fly-fish, etc), and there are fascinating, intellectually-stimulating classes (how did the early Christians evolve their idea that Jesus was god; how did dinosaurs evolve into birds; how to write engaging travel stories for your family to enjoy).

What they all have in common is that they are engaging (you are thinking about them, not politics, the bills, your teenagers, your boss or the job market), and they are FUN.  When you spend time having fun and learning, as opposed to fun that you’ve done many times before (watch football on TV), you make more areas in your brain work.  You particularly make your hippocampus, where memory is stored, work hard.  The harder it works, the larger it gets.  New neurons emerge from neuronal stem cells if you work your hippocampus enough.  [Stress kills neurons and shrinks your hippocampus.] 

As you move through life, you tend to get into habits and routines, so your brain starts to “coast.”  When you are not learning new things, you invite cognitive decline to make a home, a process that doesn’t wait until you are in your 60s, please note!  I totally get why most of us don’t want to go into Learner Mode.  A Learner, by definition, hasn’t got a clue what’s going on. Do you enjoy that lost and clueless feeling?  No, course, not.  THAT, dear friends, more than the “I don’t have time to have fun” is the real reason why Learning isn’t compelling.  If we’re honest, those of us who “don’t have time” do make time for sitcoms and sports.   

Do you have any idea how many dinosaur species you get to learn about and try to remember in the Paleontology: How Therapod Dinosaurs Became Birds class from U of Alberta on Coursera?  A lot. I wasn’t taking it for a grade, so who cares how many times I take the tests before I get it?  Just trying to remember as much as possible was enough of a workout to kick my hippocampus’ butt.  Man, was that fascinating!  Hubby and I couldn’t tear ourselves away, every evening for a week.  And it was FREE. 

You want your hippocampus as robust as possible if you are going to avoid Alzheimer’s, and besides, learning is FUN. 

So here’s my challenge to you all:  One night this week, turn the TV off, get the kids to do their chores, and sit down at your Internet and research:

·        **  Coursera – where I do my dinosaur study, and many others learn history, language, writing, and on and on.  Most classes are FREE.  I've learned from Laura.com, but that's mostly work-related, not fun.  I have heard good things about Udemy, but haven't taken anything there.

·        ** The Great Courses – which aren’t free, but are regularly discounted, and many libraries carry some of them.  I bought How Jesus Became God and was amazingly enlightened at hundreds of years of conceptual evolution on just exactly who Jesus was, and if he was god, when he became god.  Whatever your actual beliefs, the history is can’t-stop-listening engrossing.

·       ** Local community centers  – where you can try something entirely different to give your hippocampus a real workout.  How about art?  [Can’t do it?  Great.  Skilled is what you are when you FINISH, not before you start!]  You can sign up for exercise classes while you’re at it.  My community center has a water slide that is open on Saturday mornings.  Just try to convince me that’s not fun.  You can’t.  Your head is shaking but your lips are curving up in an unconscious smile.  You know how much fun it is. 

·       **  Local community colleges will let you attend some classes without a grade.  If you want to attend Over 55/Senior college, you can, even if you’re not quite that experienced with life.  You don’t have to dye your hair grey and the yearly fee is only $125 in my town.

The key is to set aside your performance anxiety and your reluctance to be clumsy and dopey (as one of my clients put it).  Not knowing what you’re doing is the fog that clears as you work at it.  Working your brain and having fun doing it is the greatest rejuvenator of tired minds, hearts and souls, second only to physical exercise.  I combine the two by looking through crochet-pattern and art-instruction books while I fast-walk on a treadmill, 4 days a week.  [The other three I splash and laugh in water aerobics classes.  Not too much learning, but lots of movement; laughter reduces my cortisol load as well.]  When I emerge from my dinosaurs, or my crochet-treadmill, or my splashing, I have such a surge of energy, the “lost time” is more than made up in increased cleverness in solving problems and getting tasks done, and the enthusiasm to embrace all the boring and/or scary parts.  It’s easy to plunge in and just git ‘er done, when you have so much fun to get back to!

Next week: pick something to learn.

Week after: start it.  Get through the initial discomfort to break through to the “wow, that’s cool.”   The discomfort that has been scaring you for years might only last a minute!

Want to discover more ways to have fun with the same 24 hours you have now?  Call for a FREE Getting Unstuck session (not a sales pitch).  www.soaringdragon.biz

What is the #1 "Pain Point" people come to me to relieve? Go ahead and give it your best guess....

 What is the #1 quest people come to me for?  It’s not fame and entrepreneurial fortune, although many of them do, and I can definitely show people how to get more fortune.  It’s not a better career, although ditto.  It’s not freedom from physical pain and significant health problems, although many of them do.

Nope, the absolute #1 quest is – clarity.  If there were a tagline for this age it might very well be “I’m so confused and I don’t know what to do.”  What they mean is that what they really WANT is buried so deep under layers of “This knowledge is too scary – don’t, whatever I say, let me know this truth” that they couldn’t excavate it with a power-shovel.

Truth is so scary for so many of us because if we knew what we really needed and what we really wanted for ourselves we would have to initiate really, really scary conversations with people about the amount of relative power we have in our lives.  We might need to have conversations that threaten our financial survival or our definition of ourselves. 

When someone comes to me seeking clarity, it is nearly always true that clarity is being deliberately obscured as a self-protection mechanism by the person’s deep unconscious.

I particularly admire the clients who, when they start to realize what clarity would really mean, take a deep breath, strap on their Courage backpack, take their Courage vitamins, and plunge into the depths.  When that happens, the most glorious transformations become possible.  Sometimes, the reality isn’t as scary as the nightmares dreamed up by their (frequently mistreated or emotionally abandoned) child-selves.  Sometimes the reality is about right.  Sometimes the reality is much, much worse.

What is always true is that the courage to dive deep and face truth with deep breathing and slow steps and as many emotions as come up is a rare and glorious commodity.

The people who walk that path to their own and genuine truth, whether they are looking for clarity, more entrepreneurial success, a better career, better health or better something else, are my personal heroes.

God bless you all, every one!  You are the brave souls who bring light to human life.  Bless you all, every one.  

Get a FREE Getting Unstuck session!  Not a sales pitch, a real session.  Contact me at www.soaringdragon.biz or call 253-203-6676

Should Everyone Skip College and Just Start a Business? Angela Duckworth and grit

 A colleague of mine, whose brains and good sense I respect, made an impassioned case to a group of women this week, about an upcoming book she was planning, in which she intends to encourage women to forget about college and just start a business.  I’m simplifying in the interests of making this article shorter than her book, but at the 20,000 foot level, she believes that 1) economic independence is the key to every other form of empowerment, and 2) sexism is rampant so 3) start your own business.  And you don’t need a college degree to be successful in business.

Sounds good?

Well, I see some problems.  There are some kinds of work that just do not lend themselves to self-employment at all – police detective, forensics scientist and firefighter come to mind – and for others, entrepreneurship is the Hard Way.  It is possible to be a sole practitioner MD, for example, but the realities of business life in the USA make that a suicidal choice.  You can be an organizational whiz and start a business, but there ain’t much low-hanging fruit in that market.  Contrast that with the joys of being able to focus exclusively on what you do well, because the 40 hours/week of marketing for business is on someone else’s shoulders.  A good senior admin can have salary, benefits, vacations, praise and advancement in a government or business.  I needed two master’s degrees plus a year’s study in hypnotherapy to be able to rapidly and permanently demolish the barriers keeping my entrepreneur clients from their heart’s desire.  Not to mention state licensing.  The number of occupations that can yield much better results for economic independence within an organization are legion.  My own choice to solopreneur does not mean that I buy into the “everyone should be an entrepreneur” ideology. 

The 2^nd problem I have with my estimable colleague’s advice is the Don’t Go To College.  If you are eschewing academics in order to get an AA in an in-demand, highly-saleable skill like radiology/solography tech (another business you can’t set up in your garage, thank you, legislature), or take on a plumbing apprenticeship, then hooray, I agree with you 100%.  Now close your eyes and imagine an army of women taking up the plumbing tape.  Six figure income entrepreneurship and very little marketing moxie required.  Auto mechanics is mostly computer programming and intelligence at this point in history.  Electricians. Drool, drool, drool.  So, yes, let’s stop pushing everyone into college, and get most young Americans into job-ready occupational training.  I know that the USA has an understandable wariness about repeating the “black kids go to trade school, white kids go to college and then law school” or “boys get trained, girls get typing” paradigm.  Our President is a black lawyer; our First Lady is another black lawyer, but that’s not the norm.  Yes, I get it.  BUT – a focus on giving kids career-ready training does not have to become a vehicle for holding back races or sexes.  What we have now is an entire generation crippled by education debt getting a BA/BS or even graduate degree in a field like Documentary Film Production that doesn’t have much chance of leading to economic stability. In contrast, you can create a product and huckster it with no formal education at all, beyond basic literacy.   I understand the disillusion with college.

The You Don’t Need College argument misses a key point though:  College teaches you how to think rationally and critically, possibly for the first time in your life.  It forces people who have no knowledge of how science works to learn about experimentation, reproducibility and some basic statistics.  And it requires you to sacrifice your time and your impulsive choices to a dedicated quest for a goal.

On the same day that my colleague denounced wasted time in college, I read about Angela Duckworth’s research on grit, the ability to stick to a long-term course of action, and delay gratification of short-term urges in the pursuit of a big reward.  Many researchers before her have impressive results on the advantage of persistence and emotional resilience, over other factors like talent, intelligence or other gifts of one’s DNA.  Here’s her TED talk, for some details:

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit?language=en

Here is a national Geo article:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015

Listen to this:
“…what college admissions officers and business leaders have told her they're looking for these days from applicants is in keeping with her findings. It's no longer students who've padded their résumés by doing a little bit of everything or just prospects with the best college grades; they want people who stuck with something meaningful to them over time and demonstrated some level of mastery, and it doesn't necessarily matter in what.”

Business leaders have told me this over and over again: they want to hire someone who has a college degree, in anything.  Why?  Because it proves that the person can persist in a goal FOR YEARS.  Including jumping through hoops that don’t always make sense to the 18-year-old mind.  Academia has some crazy hoops indeed.

The ability to persist at a goal for years, and the ability to jump through your client’s hoops, are essential skills of any worthwhile undertaking, including being successful in business.  If you genuinely don’t want anyone telling you what to do, about anything, ever, you only have two options: a lower business income than your potential or therapy to blow up the mental blockage caused by an early-life authority figure.  I’m serious.  Nobody who is both honest with you and successful in business has the psychology of a tantruming two-year-old. Clients expect you to be working for them, not doing what you damn well please, when you damn well please.  If you don’t serve their needs, they won’t buy from you.  The sweet spot is finding something that makes you want to soar with creativity and joy AND is the solution to a major pain-point experienced by people with lots of money.

When I took the grit test (URL below), one of the items asks you about persisting in a goal for years – one of the attributes of a college grad.

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/8-item%20Grit%20081011.pdf

So, no, I don’t think you should ditch college and just go straight into business.  For one thing, knowing some history, geography, anthropology, math, English grammar and vocabulary will enhance your business potential and keep you from embarrassing yourself with stupid mistakes. Get that broad education that you didn’t get in high school, distracted as you were by blazing hormones and immaturity, and couple it with a concentration in something sale-able, which could include business.  If you really love creating documentaries, make it a double major and prepare yourself to use one profession to bankroll the other.

At least an AA in something sale-able is more relevant than ever before, and the full education of your mind and soul through all those basic subjects toward a bachelor’s at an inexpensive university is even more essential.  Take that preparation and then fly into entrepreneurship, if that fits your personality and your market analysis.  Or fly with another set of dragons, into another form of lifetime fulfillment and joy, like I did. 

Victoria C. Leo blasts through the barriers that keep her clients from their heart’s desire.  Find the program that blasts through your problem at www.soaringdragon.com, join her Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies, or email for a FREE Getting Unstuck session at victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com.

Digging Deeper Into the Terror Attacks, A Brilliant, Simple Explanation for American Disengagement

What We Miss When We Jump….

One of the key teachings of all the wisdom traditions concerns the dangers of jumping to conclusions on the basis of inadequate information.  Our limbic systems, bless them, never, ever think that they have inadequate information.  What we call a capacity for critical thinking is merely a limbic system that has been trained to stop, loop in the prefrontal cortex, and then and only then step lightly to a not-deeply-held conclusion.  Everyone who has taken the training with me is glad they did. 

I’ve felt for some time that the answer to “why didn’t Americans get emotionally involved with the East African embassy bombings?” wasn’t simple racism.  I knew that the knee-jerk “they’re all racists” explanation for why there hasn’t been a Je suis Ankara movement to complement the solidarity Americans felt with Parisians after the terrorist attack, was missing a core truth.  But simply knowing that someone else is engaging in simplistic thinking isn’t the same as being brilliant oneself. 

Then I read an article in APU Insider [In Homeland Security contributor Sylvia Longmire] that supplied the brilliant missing link. [I got my 2nd MA at APUS, great school.]  The reason why Americans are emotionally wrought about Paris is because we either have been there, someone close to us has been there and connected us to it vicariously or we dream of going there (mostly because – again – it is someplace that others we know have been).  Few Americans have been to, or wish they could go to, Dar es Salaam or Ankara.  Psych research clearly shows that a huge part of emotional connection is familiarity.  When something is just a point on a map, we humans don’t feel connected.  But places that feel “familiar,” we care about.  [Advertisers understand this: even if you rationally don’t want to, your limbic system, where decisions are made, feels more positive about products you have heard about repeatedly.  The familiar has a positive vibe to it.]  

** My earlier post misattributed the brilliant idea.  Pls forgive my error.

Sign up for a FREE Getting Unstuck session with powerful coach and transformation guide Victoria C. Leo, at www.soaringdragon.biz

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.

Soar With Dragons to Genuine Joy (part 1)

  What do you think is the most popular category for re-pins on Pinterest and for responses and shares on Facebook?  Inspirational sayings, right?  As a culture, we are starving for uplift.  How did we end up in this place?
Part of it is a reflection of economic realities.  Prior to the Reagan years, labor and management had a more equal balance of power.  With the near-demise of labor unions, the real wages of most Americans have dropped sharply, more and more of us have only part-time or contingent work with no benefits, we are working longer and have very little realistic hope of a dignified and comfortable retirement.  Having economic fears and anxieties simply means that you’re aware and paying attention.
Our health is a legitimate concern as well.  For the first time in history, life expectancy and overall health measures of adult Americans are declining.  Our young adult offspring have less hope and opportunities.  [If none of these categories apply to you, have compassion and generosity for the rest of us.]
In a reality where glib “don’t worry; be happy” platitudes are lacking in wisdom as well as empathy, how can someone like me insist that Happiness is the goal of ALL of my programs?  My answer to you:  Blast away all the external Barriers to joy that you possibly can and then learn the Secret Sauce that allows you generate joy internally.
So why am I such a joy advocate?
The first reason is physical health.  Anxiety and worry depresses your immune system, raises your blood pressure (which damages kidneys and arteries and leads to premature death and an end to sexual function), and wrecks your skin.  If you want to live longer, stop wasting money on supplements and potions and practice Reiki, EFT (tapping), meditation and daily movement.
The second is that joy is infectious.  All your other problems start easing, when you approach other people with a glow.  You can talk your bankers into outrageous rule-changes, you can encourage discounts and more-time-to-pay from nearly everyone, you can blind hiring managers to your flaws and weaknesses, and you can convince everyone else to have hope for their future as well.  You can even have the faith to commit to healing of long-festering problems (with me) if your expectation for your future changes.
How do you shift yourself away from dwelling on all your legitimate sources of dismay?
Well, you don’t want to ignore reality.  That is one beef I have with some less-than-wise proponents of Positive Thinking.  Did you know that in the 1950’s, the early advocates of civil rights for women and minorities were accused of fostering disloyalty and even treason because they were bringing up “negative” views of American society?  Don’t ever, ever allow a preference for a positive twist on your situation to morph into suppressing your first duty to tell yourself and others the truth about your life.  Black Lives Matter.  Women’s lives matter.  If this is “negativity,” then thank god for it.  Walk away from anyone who tries to suppress or muzzle your grasp on Truth.
But joy can be part of Truth, too.
Carve out time in your day, every day, for joy.  Joy is your natural state when you are fully present in your body, in your reality.  Stress comes from moment-by-moment time travel to the past and the future.  So -
Ø  Stop rushing from place to place, so you have time to breathe deeply and look up at the clear blue sky or the new daffodils or the cute dog walking your neighbor.
Ø  Have less things on your to-do list, if you have to, but make time for Reiki, tapping (EFT), yoga and meditation.
Ø  Give yourself time to breathe and be still, accomplishing nothing tangible, unless you count better physical health, sharper thinking and – joy.
 As one of my inspirational pins reminds me, “It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” [On Pinterest – SoaringDragon]
And make time, at least once a week, to be creative.
Ø  Get some inexpensive ($5) watercolors or acrylic craft paints from the craft store, some painting paper or cheap canvases and swirl some colors around.  It’s called abstract art.  Don’t show it to anyone or ask anyone for an opinion.  If you get a negative remark, tell the person to shut up.  When you let go of the desire to “do a good job,” and get others’ approval, not only do you create great art – because “great art” is anything that is an authentic reflection of your feelings and your vision - but you will feel such an intense upwelling of pure joy, it will take your breath away.
Ø  Build something.  Get craft supplies or a kit and make something.  It doesn’t even matter what.  It is the PROCESS of the creation that reduces stress, gives you new insights into your life and makes you bubble with joy.  I used to build furniture.  I still build and create useful objects every week.  You can get addicted to stained glass and mosaic kits.  That is my fun time, and if you try it, you, too, can contemplate giving up your TV.  Go to Michael’s or Joann [never Hobby Lobby], just walk around and when something catches your heart, don’t talk yourself out of it, second-guess or shame yourself.  Buy it. Take it home.  Try it out.  Keep going into mindfulness, to keep the critical voices at bay.
 Ø  Embrace colors.  Color has amazing impacts on your brain.  Painting the prison walls calming colors really does reduce conflict.

Ø  Learn a new skill.  I keep telling people that crochet is so simple, children learn it easily.  I can crochet in the dark, with my eyes closed, while watching scenery go by on a tour bus, because it’s a simple tactile task.  With crochet, you can create stuffed animals, a nifty protector/carrier for your smart phone, purses, clothing, housewares galore.  My smart phone carrier has compartments for phone, charger, USB, earbuds, a credit card and ID.  I can use it as a purse for short trips where I don’t need a gazillion ID cards.  Knitting is fun and leads to the same bumper crop of clothing, gifts and beauty.

There are literally thousands of cool things to learn – and learning something new brings joy.   Sign up for something on Coursera, The Great Courses, Udemy or another learning site.  When you are learning, your pre-frontal cortex lights up, and when it lights up, so do your joy circuits.  And your Pride in Yourself circuits.  You deserve to feel that good.  Learn something.  Konnichi-wa!
 People like the Dalai Lama, who encourage you to seek joy in the midst of your troubles (while also having compassion for your legitimate pain and difficulty), are your true North Star if you want a life that soars.  You deserve to soar with dragons.  Take action today!
 Who Am I?I’ve been where you are, thinking that I could only truly harbor joy in my heart when every desire of my life was being fulfilled.  I learned better, and so can you.  We’ll start by clearing away the fixable external problems. Victoria Leo offers programs guaranteed to blast through your barriers to bring you physical health, peace of mind and soaring goddess energy!  Is your career or dreams of entrepreneurship keeping you up at night?  Do you need freedom from worry and lack of faith in yourself?  Do you need physical health?  Every program also teaches you how to generate joy from within.  There IS a secret, magic formula and I will teach it to you!

Victoria offers both science-based and spiritual solutions that really work! Visit www.soaringdragon.biz and choose the program that will transform your life.  You deserve to soar with dragons! Victoria’s Facebook group Healing Minds, Healing Bodies welcomes you, as does her blog SoaringDragoninJapan. You can find her books on Amazon, Nook, Kobo or at your local bookseller.
   

Just had a breakthrough? Know your power? Consider this.....

If It's Powerful and Transformative, Does It Have to Take A Long Time?

I was reading a book on addiction  today, and realized that amid some very valuable content, I also learned something very important about myself.

No, I'm not a serious addict!  I have a hard time saying No to yarn sales and Kindle videos, but....  The learning was in aid of my profession, honest.

What struck me was that this counselor only knew about the action plans of cognitive-behavioral therapy and the rewards of behaviorism - both very valuable for helping drive transformation! - and never, ever mentioned the most powerful and quickly-transformative technique of all.

Clinical hypnotherapy with someone who's been through a long, thorough training and assessment program is the closest thing to magic we have in behavioral change.  As I read about the year-long processes the poor sufferers had to endure, I wanted to reach through the page and shake the author.  

Now, don't anyone misunderstand what I am saying!!  I am NOT arrogantly and stupidly offering the Miracle Cure that so many consumers today sign up for.  There are no Miracle Cures in behavior change.  If you were emotionally and/or sexually abused in childhood, yes, indeed, it will take years of hard work to craft a new mind, heart and emotional core that is equivalent to who you would have been if the abuse had not taken place.

However, if we're not talking about that extreme, I CAN turn your life around in a 90 day intensive program.  People with weight or physical pain issues can change direction.  Writers can banish Writer's Block forever.  You can blast through a whole slew of barriers in 90 days, and never see the dang wall go up again.  With skilled hypnotherapy, problems are gone for good.

Hypno works so well because it goes so deep, right to the source of the problem that is causing you the surface difficulty.  All my programs can wipe problems away permanently because they use a powerful mix of hypno, Reiki energy healing, spiritual healing, tapping (EFT) and professional life/health coaching. 

Spring is coming!  Tis the season for hope and transformation.  Don't hold back because you don't believe a solution can be this easy - just 30-90 days.  It can.  You could be free of your nagging problem.  Why not be?

Visit www.soaringdragon.biz and look at how quickly and thoroughly your nagging headache of a situation could disappear.

Why Care About a Math Holiday??

Math is beauty, it is poetry, it is love made manifest in equations. It is relationships of area, of motion, acceleration. It brings moving heavenly bodies together and might even do the same for human beings. When I see all these interdependencies in a an almost-infinite cosmic web, I think "what could be more glorious or more spiritual than math?"

Happy Pi Day! (3.14 every year!)

The Spiritual Road to Weight Loss - Live Webinar 3/23 6 PM Pacific Time

Have you been struggling with your weight? Does it seem impossible to get results that last? Are you TIRED of counting calories and constantly telling yourself NO? Do you feel like a failure? [You're not. Your strategies are ineffective, that's all.]

Trying to change your life with only willpower and "inspiration" is a losing strategy. It will work for a while, but it can't transform your life. The complete Spiritual Path program WILL! The key to success is using the right tools, in the right way, consistently and with intentionality. Once you have your first experience of blasting through the barriers that are keeping you from success, you will never look back - never return to the old, ineffective strategies.

“Spiritual” means a connection to the transcendent, which has an infinite number of forms. This class harnesses spirituality to unlock the door to PERMANENT weight control.

If you have been able to achieve permanent weight control, great; keep doing what you're doing. If you haven't, it's time to admit that what you're doing isn't working for you, long-term, and commit to a new program that really works.

Join a group of dedicated seekers who are tired of the old shame and blame game and are ready to combine effective action with joy. You can do it! This is the road to success.

Pre-requisites

A firm intention to follow the program

https://www.learnitlive.com/class/8440/The-Spiritual-Path-to-Permanent-Weight-Control-Blasting-Through-the-Barriers#

Have Courage and Be Kind: What do you do if you didn't have a Golden Childhood?

 Have you seen the 2015 version of Cinderella?  Wonderful movie isn’t it?  The theme – Have courage and be kind, and all will be well – stunned me when I saw the movie in the theatre, because it is exactly what my mother taught me.

Think about it.  So much of what “happens” to us is really the result of a lack of courage on our part.  We stay in harmful situations way too long, allowing ourselves to be more deeply hurt, because we are afraid of the unknown that lies outside of the Known But Awful.  We stay in jobs.  We stay in relationships.  We let ourselves stay connected to toxic people of all types.  We stay in toxic places, that suck our souls dry.  Why?  Lack of courage.

We fall into mistakes because we lack the courage to thoroughly examine a proposition before we commit to it.  We tell ourselves that we are following our heart or our intuition, but what we’re really doing is telling the universe that we don’t matter, that looking out for ourselves with a minimal Due Diligence is wrong, because we don’t have the right to stop a slick sales pitch in its tracks and examine it very, very closely.  If we really mattered to ourselves, we wouldn’t care who got pissed off.  We would move toward what is good for us, move away from what isn’t healthy, and smile kindly while we say “No, thank you,” which is a complete sentence. 

Ella exhibited both kinds of courage.  And many kinds of kindness.

And most lovely of all, the movie reminds people like me, who work every day to uncover, clean out and repair the effects of childhood damage in beautiful adult souls, of the importance of what parents and teachers do.  If you are a parent or teacher, don’t ever believe that the hard work you do every day is thankless.  It isn’t.  Adult Ella was able to endure her harsh young adulthood of emotional abuse and neglect because her core belief in her own value and goodness was never breached.  That “golden childhood” of parental love, appreciation and delight inoculated her, for a long time, against the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune.  The wickedest adults could not make her bitter, angry and resentful, her soul shone in the darkest times, because she had a bone-deep belief in and memory of love.  Her youngest years protected her soul from shriveling under the heaviest hammer blows of adversity.  THAT soul is what the prince/king could not live without, and which gave him the courage to “become his own man.” 

That shining soul is the gift that those of us who’ve had a golden childhood carry with them, the armor that keeps them safe forever after.  The rest of us have to work harder – for years or decades, depending on the damage – to build that same deep, shining soul, that has courage and kindness as its north star.  When we do, we don’t have to battle against resentment, envy and uncertainty any more.  When we know, at the deepest level of our hearts, that we are lovable, then whether others do or don’t doesn’t determine our own behavior.  And then we become the hero/ine of our own glorious story, inspiring everyone around us.  We become the candle that lights up all the dark, scared candles around us. 

If you wonder if you’ll ever have Ella’s kindness and courage, know that there are healers like me in the world, who have the skills and the determination to help you become a person who can light candles all around you, a person with a genuine, rock-solid certainty of their own value, and the deepest humility about themselves.  You can do it.  We all can.  For those of us without a golden childhood, it can be a long, hard trek, but the mountaintop is reachable.  We really can all be Ella.  Blessed be. 

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.

You Don't Need a Date for Valentine's Day!

The Best Business Advice Anyone Ever Gave Me

New businesses take time to build and setting an expectation that it will all be effortless and happen immediately just sets you up to drive yourself relentlessly, and always feel like a failure.  Immediate, effortless success does happen occasionally, and the whole world can hear about these outliers thanks to the Internet,  a mental bias that psychology is very familiar with [hearing about crimes constantly convinces you that the crime rate is high, even though stats say that it has actually been dropping].  That constant repetition of outlier after outlier is enough to keep everyone invested in the idea that this outlier of immediate, effortless success is the outcome that they can force, if they just use the right Secret or the right vision board or incantation.  This is the way our brains work.  Rational statistical reasoning doesn’t come naturally.  We are worried about a terrorist attack – not the million times more likely danger of a car wreck, or even an earthquake or a volcanic eruption if you live where I do in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

So we worry about terrorists and we think we’re failures because dreaming and visioning doesn’t bring us what we want in 3 weeks.  Even hard work plus visioning doesn’t always get us what we want.   We don’t consider market forces or just plain bad luck.  But they are the real reason why one heck of a lot of stuff happens or doesn’t happen.  Analyze your marketing.  See what tweeks you need. 

Spend more time doing Reiki or exercising or taking walks in the park with your dog – all those “not trying to force or control things” actions that lower your stress levels and allow you to look at yourself with eyes of love and appreciation.  It is only Truth that sets us free.  Consider the potential truth that you can’t vision yourself out of what God, your karma, or global business forces want for you.  Consider taking your stress down a notch by letting it all be enough – you are enough, your effort was enough, your faith in yourself was enough – everything that you are is just enough. 

And if what you are so determined to have isn’t happening, maybe you need to give it more time.  Or maybe, if it’s been two years and the business still isn’t giving you a livable income, the truth is that you need to do something else.  Not in a spirit or belief that you are a failure, just in a belief that it’s time to get new guidance.   Take a long, slow deep breath and widen your vision.  [When you want something desperately, you get tunnel-vision with your intensity.  Read Scarcity.]  Ask the universe where it wants you, without the deep emotional agenda of what you want poisoning the quiet voice of the eternal.  Listen.  Quietly. 

And remember – all the world’s spiritual traditions have some version of “Be of good heart.”  Ask yourself why that is.  You might conclude that it’s because being happy and at peace with What Is, is the real road that you are on.  Paradoxically, the more content you are on the What Is road, the more your vision can expand to see other roads that intersect with What Is.  You find it when you’re not looking for it.  [Byron Katie’s books are a big help in making this make sense.]

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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.]

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Avoid the Short Cuts that Don't Work. Sometimes Truth is just Truth.

We've all heard the joke about the efficiency expert who thinks waiting 9 months for a woman to produce a child is a process that can be improved; just get 9 women to work at it for a month!

Doesn't work that way.

Neither does the new craze for shorter, more intense gym (especially weights) workouts.  The reasoning goes that we are all stressed for time, why waste time?  So far, so good.  But you have to understand that some truths are Truths; they are not a matter of personal opinion, and you cannot use willpower, vision boards or any other mechanism to overcome them.  

Good:  Warm up with a treadmill or other slow, rhythmic, aerobic moves for at least 10 minutes.  Then do your shorter, more intense workout, realizing that intense HAS to use perfect form and correct placement of limbs and weights, because if you are too heavy or too intense and you make even a small mistake in placement, you are going to get injured.  Injured removes you from workouts anywhere from two days to the rest of your life. 

Bad: Jump right in and start pushing and pulling at high intensity.  Muscles and fascia that have been over-stretched or over-tense during hours of work and worry, usually in the same position, are really ripe for a major injury.

So - impatience can kill you, just like your parents told you oh so long ago.

Take your impatience and treat it like the problem that it is.  Breathe deeply for a full minute.  Allow your muscles and connective tissue to relax a bit.  Pray.  Reiki.  Meditate.  State into the abyss until the urge to think that you can overrule the physical rules of nature, what your physical self needs, dissipates and you are returned to sane, rational humanity.  

If you only have 10 minutes, don't go to a gym.  Walk up and down the stairs at your job or home, at a walking pace.  Don't run.  You only have 10 minutes and you're not loosened up yet.  Or do yoga.  Cats and cows, boys and girls.  You can do it in a dress, in a cubicle, so you can surely do it at home. 

If you only have 20 minutes, walk on a treadmill to warm up for ten, then do intervals of rapid or hard work, with a slower pace. for another 10.  Cool down by walking for a few minutes.  

Any strategy is better than going from overstretched and over-tense straight into an intense, especially weights, workout. 

ANY time you feel "I have to" preceding something that violates the laws of physics or biology, know that as a signal to change your faulty thinking, not those natural laws.  

Two plus two will always, always equal four, not twenty four, no matter how busy or important you are, or think you are.  I permanently crippled my hands by exactly this kind of crazy decision-making, and it took me five years of rehab and you don't want to know how much pain and suffering to regain most of my function (and life), but the life lesson has left me with a permanent twerk toward a sane approach to facts.  Truth exists, apart from opinion.  Much of what we think of as fact, is truly opinion - but not everything.  

Slow down.  Breathe.  Make a sane assessment of what is truly possible (Truth) and commit to that.  Let go of everything else

The Real Cost of Over-Focusing on What is Lost

My cats are incredible teachers. They teach me patience - because they haven't got any. They teach me not to let my heart get hardened by betrayal and unfairness - because their hearts are always open.  And this month they reminded me of the importance of looking outward and forward.  The only part of my life that wasn't turned upside down by a remodel was my office. [That awful fate comes next month, god help me. ] So while the abode was in chaos the cats spent the day in a large open crate on the back porch. They had vistas of forest to behold, squirrels to squint at, birds to bedevil.

        What did they do? None of the above. Orono curled up into a ball and refused to emerge.  Gabriel spent the entire day staring inward at my office, intermittently meowing. There were birds eating from the porch railing (seed had fallen from the feeder above) not two feet from his head - and he is a mighty hunter and a great bird-watcher, ordinarily - and he was staring and crying fitfully, focused on what he had lost and no longer had. What a dork, is that what you're thinking? I was overwhelmed with compassion for them both, poor souls, because I know how many times I have done the same, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours or days or (ouch) years.



The temptation to bemoan the lost past is so strong.   We know the value of what we have lost.   We don't really know the value of what we have to gain. Our amygdala has been set by evolution to the "worry about it" setting, and we DO, as a matter of biology, tend to come down on the side of caution when approaching the unknown.   With good reason, if you have read Man the Hunted and know the reality of the lives our ancestors faced.  It's darned inconvenient now, though, when we are truly safe most of the time.  Only meditation and other inner retuning can tame that automatic fear-caution filter. 

 So, my poor kitties are a model and teacher for me once again.  I look at them and resolutely focus on the future.... letting go of losses and resolutely lighting candles to dispel the darkness.


[This is adapted from Chapter 16 of my upcoming title Red State, Blue Heart, due for release in June 2016.  Want to get an announcement of the release?  Email victoria. leo.reiki@gmail.com.]

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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