Mindset Archives - TinaOLife

Super Couples Can Change the World – BLOG

November 13, 2016

After the election, I needed to hear about Super Couples. It’s been one hell of a week and I do mean hell. To me hell is what happens when our unspoken, sacred rules of humanity are broken. In this case trashed, burned, buried and even mocked but this is not an article about the election and the demise of trust. No really, it’s not. It’s about love, kindness, relationship and Tara Caffelle.

I bordered on becoming a dangerously sad drunk these past seven days and I’m not talking about booze. As a kid I endured sloppy holidays with intoxicated and teary uncles cornering me between the fridge and the chip dip begging me to never give up on my dreams. Go to school, they said, and don’t turn into me, they begged. Guess what? I grasped their drunken despair this week. I drank a few too many glasses of wine and I ate a lot of chip dip. Still, this is not an article about the election but I can’t seem to get away from it. Neither could Tara or I when we spoke earlier this week.

Tara Caffelle, a relationship coach and a good one – great one – balls to the wall – best one. She likens herself to being a couple’s fairy godmother who with her magic wand of good honest work is here to change the world one Super Couple at a time. In unpredictable times such as these, we all could use a fair godmother don’t you think? We can skip the glass slipper/glass ceiling or whatever…, ditch the carriage that goes poof into a pumpkin at midnight, but let’s keep the wand shall we? Tara’s kind of fairy dust teaches us all how to turn toward each other. We need that. She believes that when we turn in to each other we begin a ripple of loving kindness that can be felt by all. Her message is timely.

I needed her this week and badly. Not because my personal relationship was in trouble, rather because my relationship with the world had it’s teeth kicked in and I found myself feeling gobsmacked reading the ‘I left you and btw I took the kids’ on the American electorate kitchen table. We both felt it. How could we not?

Tara – Helloooooooo… How are you?

TinaO – Oh f*ck… I’m okay. I’m recalibrating you know?

Tara – Yeah, me to. Me too.

TinaO – And all the positive spin spin spin on social media out there, we’re all just coping because it’s all we can do right now.

Tara – Mmmm…. yes, we need to make it understandable for ourselves. Last night I read an article and I thought maybe this will be okay. I’m trying to make sense of this, I’m trying to make it be okay but there’s so much shadow between ‘here and it’s okay‘ and I don’t know that I’m ready to do that. I was humming along just fine before all of this, and now what??? It’s exhausting.

We both realized: How like a relationship this is.

I’ve had my fair share of relationship smack-down moments. I’ve been in love many times which means I’ve also been left at the altar so to speak more times than I care to remember or admit. I don’t believe in soulmates. I don’t believe in the Lord of the Rings version of marriage with One Ring to Rule them All. I don’t believe in ’til death do us part’ – What do I have to die to get out of this? And some people do. I believe in love and I believe in freedom. Love is a renewable resource and freedom is the mother who never dies, who never abandons, whom you can always come home to. I’m a sensible Canadian, but even I can hear the Nationalistic pride in my personal values.

USA = the land of the free and home of the brave.

Canada = our charter of rights and freedoms

and then Love = Love knows no bounds

We are fueled by love. We build countries on it.

Tara – I just keep coming back to the only thing I have control over is what I put out to the world and I think compassionate, loving, soft people who feel at home is what is going to save us.

We’re going to be living in a world where we need to be looking out for everyone. To look around and recognize we don’t take for granted anybody’s safety anymore, we actually have to look out for each other now. We are now all together in this. That’s the invitation. It’s the ultimate in self-care.

In the past, when my relationships have blown up, sometimes I’ve been the one holding the detonator and that’s a hard truth to accept. I have pushed the big red button of blame, of sabotage, of distance, of incrimination and justification. I’ve lashed out. I’ve also hidden from love behind the self-care mask and it sounds like this: What is wrong with you? I expect more. You let me down again. How dare you do this to me. Don’t you know how stupid…? I can’t do this anymore, I’m outta here. Sound familiar?

This kind of self-love is actually self-protection and not love at all, but it’s not exactly fear either. It’s the ring of survival where love and fear meet and duke it out until one is laid out against the ropes and going down and then what do we say? I’ll live to fight another day. Why are we fighting?

This is why Tara’s work is so important. I am you and you are me.

When we actually prioritize our relationships, when we care about our relationships like we would ourselves, when we think about self-care (which btw is the most annoying phrase I’ve ever heard in my life), as our own care, being compassionate to ourselves, we have a full cup to give from and when everyone is feeding from that same giant pool of water, there can be enough. It’s only when we focus on the periphery of our lives, that’s our water source gets empty, and it all starts in relationship. I take care of you, and I take care of us to take care of you, to take care of me. I agree to treat you like you are the most precious being in the world, because you are. …That part just makes me cry.

I’m thinking, oh boy, are we talking about fusion here? This is gonna be pretty dang triggering for those in therapy world so I asked her, is this what your definition of relationship is? I am you, you are me? She thought about it for a quick countdown of five seconds. I could hear her wheels processing, feel her scales weighing, and watch her truth-ometer kick in. Yes, she said. Yes, it is.

I’m stealing from Dan Savage here. He calls it the cost of admission. His cost of admission is having a partner who is a slob in the kitchen. It makes him nuts. Everything is everywhere: the bread, the mustard, the entire kitchen blows up but that’s one of his costs of admission to being in relationship with him. We have different prices to pay and our most challenging and triggering cost is just giving your partner what they need. Asking what does your partner require right now? What do they need, that needs you to give it to them? Just give it to them. I know you don’t want to. I don’t care. Do it because they are asking for it.

I can feel my own personal freedom alarms going crazy as I think: where in our marriage vows does it say I agree to give you what you need simply because you ask for it.

Tara responds:

We take things personally. We get triggered. We react. Let’s not collapse and forget that we manage ourselves by asking and staying in charge of our own needs. It’s as if the relationship becomes a third person in your home and for them to feel welcome and safe, sometimes you have to step over your own bullshit, your own triggers, ego, resentment, and get ACTIVATED by saying NO, my relationship needs this from me right now.

After fifteen years of marriage I can honestly say that I have been in places where the resentment was so deep and the pain was too debilitating to know what to do so I asked, what happens when the ‘love tank’ we talked about above is empty, rusted or has a hole in it? What if you can’t find the energy to step over your ego as you say?

Sometimes the cost of admission here is to be really fucking gentle right now, to not get triggered… even though you do feel triggered, to just to AGREE that we are going to be really, really kind to each other. We can ask, how can we be a little more gentle and caring? How can we hold each other? Sometimes it starts with the smallest things like shutting off netflix to cuddle or have a shower together. We can ease into making tiny threads of connection by turning towards each other on our way back to centre.

We riffed on the question, What if your relationship was a guest at a Christmas party, who would they be? The drunk uncle on a soapbox? The clingy girlfriend? Are you sulking in the corner? On the make? Playing an instrument by yourself? Gorging at the buffet? Or are you still standing at the front door waiting to be asked in?

At TinaOLife, Tara writes a regular column called Where Relationships Get Real and there’s no denying that what we witnessed in the USA over the last year and a half was pretty toxic and yet dangerously real. We watched it all and not just the two leaders in survival mode throwing jabs and sucker punches at each other, but we saw a huge section of the population changed sides. They went from silent to outraged, respectful to hate filled, and contained to dangerous. It’s as if the land of the free and the brave left their marriage for the promise of power and domination. So I asked about betrayal. Is this what we do when our needs aren’t being met? Is this how affairs happen?

Yes, we begin to look outward. When needs aren’t being met, when we’re feeling injured, when there’s disconnect, when we feel distanced in some way… It’s so easy for a fracture to turn into a big crack and then grow into a gash between. When the relationship bank account is at bedrock we will look for other ways to fill it.

We can do that for each other, and things don’t have to be ‘hard’ or ‘wrong’ to start. We all need a little extra cushion for these exact reasons and kindness costs us nothing.

That really resonated for me.

Kindness costs nothing.

There’s a graffiti tag I’d like to see more of.

The bottomline for me is that great functioning relationships ripple out and change the world. I’m here to support those ripples in all the ways I can. I’m an empathic person and I feel all the shit that’s going on in the world, I feel it so heavily, and this is how I can take action, it starts with you and me.

I can hear it again: I am you, you are me.

Tara has a workshop coming up on Nov. 19th for the day (10am-5pm). It’s called The Super Couple Tune Up and let’s be real here – if Barack Obama can meet with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, turn in to him, talk, and then shake his hand, who are we to deny ourselves the deepest most delicious and rewarding connection with the person we continue to choose to be with? For heaven’s sake people, we LOVE our partner. Just get there would ya?

When I asked her what happens there she answered me as the Fairy Godmother that she is:

It’s pretty simple. You’re hanging out with your most beloved for a whole day and getting to learn a few things and have some lightness and sweetness between you. There’s no dancing bears, no walking on coals. It’s a relationship workshop because we know, living in the same house doesn’t make a marriage or a connection. And it’s okay to have conflict, part of the workshop is WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR EACH OTHER? LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT? What do you need from me? How can I actually support that for you? I’m here to serve you as much as you need to, and I hope that after a day with me, you don’t have to come back because sometimes all you need is just a little tune up.

Come as a couple. Come as a pair.

It’s like the Arc you can only get in two by two.

Tara Caffelle and TinaO After the Election 2016

It took one and a half years to bring the divide of the United States to the surface so we can all see and hear the reality of the division. As a Canadian, as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a community member, as a person in traffic, someone who orders coffee, shops in stores, signs paperwork, makes agreements, pays bills and spends money, as a human being who lives in an ever constant relationship with the boring and painful, ecstatic and joyful, as a body whose bare feet are in communion with the earth and a spirit who touches the sky, relationship is the only bond we all share, like it or not.

I needed Tara Caffelle this week because my faith and willingness to show up again shook. My marriage with humanity brought me to my knees and I wanted to take my ring off. I believe her. Healing starts at home. When we are blessed with a home where love lives because we nurture it in the face of our own shaking vulnerability and we practice, daily, turning into one another, we show up with the Big S on our chest for Super Couple and we ripple love and sexy kindness out into the world.

You can’t hate, fear or divide from someone when you know them. I am you and you are me. Thank you Tara.

Tara Caffelle is a relationship coach who was married, then married in an open marriage, then divorced, then single, and now is in a happy and fulfilling monogam-ish relationship with a guy she seems to never get tired of. She’s a writer and is currently working on her first book about grief and love and intimacy which she found when she lost her best friend, her dog and 3 other people in the span of one year and 20 days.

She believes that sometimes we have to be brave enough to break our own hearts that our relationships set us free and that good ones, SUPER COUPLE ones, can, and will, change the world.

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimy and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

After Trump – TinaO’s Kind of Love – BLOG

November 10, 2016

Today, two days after the election where Trump reigns, I find myself watching the news looking for something, anything. Ridiculous of me really… it’s still shock, not surprise, but shock. The bully won, the media blew it, the oppressed got angry and reacted, the comfortable went further into the bubble, the armchair warriors lathered up their pontificating and the positive thinkers stepped up their affirmations – the deal is, the bully still won. All of our making sense of it is how we cope with what hurts. And this hurts. Our ship of humanity just took a shot across the bow.

We’ve been called to action.

I suggest a different way to love today and it starts with being bravely and gravely honest.

Drop the spin.

It’s time for some mother bear kinda love. It’s lion king time. This kind of love protects their young, their family, their community. This kind of love isn’t violent but it can fight if called to. It does not start a fight nor does it need to. But make no mistake, that bear, that lion has it in them.

This love is active, it’s courageous, it has muscle. This love is conscious, it readies itself, it causes sustainable impact. This love has a voice and uses it. It names a threat as a threat. It calls out the bully. It respects all sides of a situation and that includes the dangerous side.

This kind of love copes by healing the cause of the wounds not just licking them.

I am reading a re-reading Michael Moore’s To Do list particularly #4 & #5 since I’m a Canadian as it’s the only truly fully integrated message I’ve read in the last 24hours helping all of us to know what the F to do when the marbles shatter, so here they are.

#4 Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!”

Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

#5 You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane, 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want.

You live in a country where a majority of citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen. Let’s try to get this all done today.

Thank you Michael Moore… This is what I needed to hear today.

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Yes Tina the First 20 Minutes do Suck

May 18, 2016

I’m training for my first triathlon and when I decided to actually commit: hook line and sinker it was because the decision made me, and not the other way around. Don’t believe me?

Have you ever done something without knowing why?

When you tell the story about how you met your best friend, or spouse, have you ever said “I just kinda stumbled into him/her…”
When you’re choosing what you’re going to order off the menu, how do you land on what you really want?
Ever commit to something you can’t afford yet somehow make it work?
Have you ever been in the right place at the right time with the right people resulting in the luckiest happenstance ever?

That’s what I’m talking about. See, when the decision makes you and you’re able to tune in to the process, as in, you are able to S L O W down enough to follow each individual impulse: listening to how your mind responds, noticing how your body reacts and then following through with a decisive action rather than just chalking it up to ‘lady luck’, that’s what decisions making you looks like.

You might call it a ‘gut’ choice. Fair enough, now we’re talking semantics yet we’re both on the same page.

That’s how saying YES to my first triathlon happened. A good friend of mine sent me a Facebook post about Vancouver’s first Ironman branded Tri and without skipping a beat, my body said yes and opted not to block the insanity of that decision.

Today I am two months away from the damn thing and I’m in the thick of it. Training and preparing that is. I started with The Vancouver Sun Run last month, nailed it and celebrated. Check.

Next…

Then with the help of the good people at Spin Cycle Bike Store, I acquired Rosebud, my first real road bike and began to train on two tires instead of two legs. This where it gets hard – and not physically difficult (well, okay, yes physically too), but really, it is more about the mental game. Why?

Because hills stink and I live in a place with lots of them. I see cyclists coming off the boat to enjoy my island home, and I think: “Oh Dude… you have no idea. This ain’t Tofino. We’re not all about tourists, offering a cute little bike path along a flat, straight-away with sweet coffee shops dotting the route”, no, that we’re most definitely not. We’re an island for cycling athletes who are super happy sweating and grunting.

That said, when I’m in the right frame of mind, I totally dig it. I have this kinda ‘I’ll show you road‘ mindset. ‘Just watch me fast cars! Take that hill number eight! I am UNSTOPPABLE!’

But when I’m not in the right frame of mind. Oiiiiiiiii. It’s no fun at all. And the really frustrating thing is that I can’t seem to predict which mindset I’m going to be in when I climb on my bike.

But then I had an insight.

You see, I forgot.

The first 20 minutes of doing anything NEW usually sucks.

It’s awkward.
The body freaks out.
The mind goes ballistic. The self-talk ramps up with self-doubt.

Oh yeah… that’s normal.

The invitation for me, for you, for all of us is to stay with it, to grow stronger, to trust the process, to build the engine, to re-frame our thoughts away from doing what is easy, to doing what we feel compelled to do regardless of our skillset.

I felt drawn to say yes to doing my first triathlon only eight months out of radiation treatment from stage 3 tonsil cancer. It makes no logical sense, yet it’s the decision that made me, and it has felt dramatically ‘right’ the whole way.

Today I am in the thick of it and what I’m noticing, is that in this place, is where my reasons for saying yes begin to materialize.

When things are easy, what’s to learn other than ‘look what I can do’? When things are hard, that’s when the real learning kicks in:

Resilience
Courage
Tenacity
Depth of character
Physical and mental strength
New neuro-pathways of yes I can to replace the old ones of no I can’t
Knowing myself beyond whom I’ve believed myself to be

Why did I say yes to my first Triathlon? Well, I have some ideas, but the race hasn’t even happened yet and so there is so much more to come. I’ll be sure to fill you in on all I’ve learned once I cross the finish line on July 10th.

There is gold in them there hills.

Ride ém TinaO. Ride ém.

xxT

Yes you can support me by making a pledge to CAN TOO – supporting my very first triathlon.

Yes you can support my RIDE TO CONQUER CANCER too!

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and with her Tall Poppy Living for Network Marketers Coaching Program, she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Trump – We are Part of the Problem

February 27, 2016

Yes, like you, I have multiple opinions about whether Donald Trump is worth even a second of our consideration… but that is not what this post is about. I appreciate the video below for a number of reasons but in brief, here is why:

I have a real bee in bonnet about selling and the insanity in both the sales/marketing/branding profession and how we interact with it. Part of my focus on TinaOLife is to bring up this conversation again and again, calling out those of us in the sales and marketing industry to get better at what we do. In short, I’m asking if you are willing to fix something that is incredibly broken. We are indeed a blister in the sun. And something tells me we’re about to burst.

A lot of factors are contributing to the rise in popularity of Donald Trump as a contender for the Republican nomination, but I’m only going to address ONE of them – because it’s the one that makes me itchy. Yes I do squirm just a little bit, biting my cheek on the inside and jamming my toes into my shoes trying to keep from screaming. Bwahhhhh Grrrrrrahhhhhhhh!!!! It’s like I want to throw up violently but I can’t.

So I’m going stretch us a little k? I’m connecting the dots between sales, marketing, branding, message and our relentless chasing of the illusion of STATUS (and that’s all it is folks, an illusion).

We as sellers position ourselves and our message to you this way:

I know more than you.

I have more for you.

I sell more than anyone.

You want more.

I’ll give you more than anyone else can.

And then there’s the weird status thing we do around the pricing of our product, and the stories we make up to justify why people do or don’t buy our stuff:

When you say you can’t afford it – it’s not true.

When you say, I’m not sure yet – you’re just hiding.

When you say, I need time to think, – you’re making excuses.

Status. We have such a magnetic pull to it. We want it. You could say I’m doing it now by calling bullshit on sales tactics, and maybe I do. It’s still worth examining don’t you think?

Status. So then we decided that we live in an abundant universe, and that anything we want we can have simply by naming it, writing it down, and ultimately, manifesting it. Therefore, all of the customers who aren’t reaching our pricing structure are the ones who are living in a false reality. It’s their fault, they simply aren’t thinking abundantly enough.

I’m not saying that this perspective is all hooey, and that The Secret, Lisa Nichols, Jack Canfield and all the others are wrong – I’m adding to the equation another question which is: What kind of a charge (like an electric zap in the belly) do you get when you hold that perspective as true? Here’s what I mean:

Wouldn’t it be interesting to get to the place as a seller or a buyer where there is no ‘charge’ at all around a price. It’s neither expensive or inexpensive, it’s just a number. It either fits a budget or it doesn’t. It either matches the buyer/seller’s values or not. What if price wasn’t about STATUS at all? I wonder how much we would be willing to charge and/or pay.

Why am I here when I’m talking about Trump, marketing and selling?

Because money is LOADED with electric charges and then fueled by our stories.

Because how we price our products often informs how we sell, market, and brand them. Here’s a kicker, most products are sold at the price of ‘what the market will bare’.

Yet we are the market.

And we set it by what we’re willing to believe in.

Connect that back to Trump. What are we willing to believe in and why?

So let’s talk about honesty and marketing shall we? We’ve become so ‘skilled’ at positioning, so ‘smart’ at messaging, so ‘strategic’ with our choice of words, colours, audience, timing, logos, hooks, offers, calls to action, reach etc… that when somebody shows up like Trump, and just speaks ‘his truth’ – it staggers us for a second, and we’re drawn to it. It catches us off guard. And then when ‘his truth’ gets louder, with less restraint, and with more Alpha-Dog in him, it comes off kind of refreshing somehow because he’s cutting through the noise – never mind how costly his perspective may be (again, think back to pricing – same story).

We are all so EXHAUSTED from being sold to by slick campaigns with sensational promises that this guy, because he’s ‘not a politician’, because he’s ‘not packaged’, because he IS ‘impulsive’, because he DOES ‘show his true colours’, becomes appealing. This guy has STATUS because he’s being ‘himself’ and lots of people are gobbling it up.

Again, you may ask, what does this have to do with sales and marketing… well, it’s the underpinning of our mistrust because we simply can’t get away from it.

Here’s my suggestion: when people in sales, marketing and branding stop strategizing and start simply TELLING THE STORY of the PRODUCT or the STORY of their SERVICE – by SERVING THE STORY instead of the SALE, then we just may begin to trust voices of ‘reason’ again, and dudes like this won’t be given the time of day.

Imagine if we didn’t ‘sell’ being honest, we just were.

Imagine if we didn’t need to be ‘clever’ to attract an audience but instead, our straight goods became so crystal clear that the ‘right’ people could find us.

Imagine if sales people weren’t trained to overcome objections, if marketers weren’t taught how to ‘get inside the mind of consumer’, if branders didn’t ‘position’ the sale.

Imagine if the products we sold were good enough and our belief in them so deep and strong that we didn’t need to figure out the ‘formula’ to successfully sell them?

When we can all give up the insanity of trying to out play one another, perhaps bombastic, self-serving, opportunists like this guy, Mr. Trump, wouldn’t be so appealing. It’s not funny. It’s not entertaining. It’s not even scary (well, maybe it is), its really quite sad. Our culture has lost touch with it’s humanity, with our heart beat of being seen and known.

It’s time to be courageous, reclaim our power by being honest.

What do you say people in the sales, marketing and the branding industry… you with me? I’m not suggesting that we’re ultimately responsible for people like Trump getting to where he is, but I am suggesting that we’re part of the problem. The truth never needed to be clever. Good products never needed to be louder than everyone else, and consumers shouldn’t have to read between the lines in order to figure out if they can trust you and your brand or not.

Trump, with his blatant, boundary pushing and now rise to popularity is a lesson for all of us. He can cut through the noise because he’s just being him. Like him or not, he’s Trump and he’s pretty darn comfortable being that. If only we were too.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

What was I Thinking?

February 19, 2016

Another list. Another ridiculous guffaw I frequently have with myself – usually when I’m driving. Sorry gang. I try not to drive after 6pm because I’m too busy laughing at how insane I am to be considered ‘safe’ behind the wheel after six.

Who needs a phone to distract you from driving when you have a list like this? Want to have some fun? Come up with your own top ten – but fair warning, don’t drive when you’re thinking about it.

Here’s how it starts:

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

As I flung my eight year old yelling self over the staircase banister desperate to be heard through the double doors where a boy I was teasing stood. J E N S E N ! ! ! I screeched until I fell ass over tea kettle down two flights of stairs. Cracked my jaw too (just a little but enough that there’s still a bump). Thanks Laverne for dragging my blacked out self to the office that day.

with Laverne 36 years after the banister incident.

As I claimed bankruptcy over $20,000 in debt when I was only 27 years old. Oh gawddddddd… really? If only I knew my own earning potential back then.
As I believed that guy who said he was only sleeping with me. Jeeeeeee Whizzzzzzzzzz.
As I had a freakin’ thirty-something temper tantrum and threw a chair into a wall – yup, the kids and I still laugh full out about that one. …we can still see the legs sticking out of the wall.
As I hung the family Christmas lights without a ladder, without a step stool, without anything but the back of the couch (you know, the really skinny part that’s for BACKS and not FEET?), only to quickly scramble down in order to change a poopy diaper, land on the baby’s ukulele, twist my ankle and not be able to breathe for 30 seconds because of the pain. ‘Don’t touch me I seethed. Just let me lay here for a minute.’
As I believed my college drama teachers who said I wasn’t an actor. I believed them. I actually believed them. Dumb dumb dumb dumb powerless and ahhhhhh done. Sometimes I wonder if they were right only because I believed them. What would’ve happened if I had believed in myself more?
As I made three short films with no budget. Funny how not knowing what can’t be done usually translates into doing it.
As I talked on my cel phone, pumped breast milk and DROVE all at the same time (pre-hands free driving folks just sayin…).
As I pretended that I wasn’t sure if I believe in God because it was easier than having a faith I didn’t understand.
As I almost gave up on being me as if I could ever run that fast or that far.

Here’s to you and being all that you are in whatever form you’re currently showing up as. You’re funny man. Ridiculous even. Welcome to the club.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

30 Days to Loving Yourself

February 17, 2016

Okay, so February is kinda the new January because those of us who didn’t get on the detox, shed weight, eat clean, sweat more track last month are now looking around at everyone else who is either shakin’ it or have already given up, and thinking… Why didn’t I go for it?

Here’s what I think about that:

30 Days to fitness, 30 Days to health, 30 Days of clean eating, 30 Days of sweating, 30 Days of detox, 30 days of organized living, 30 days of sleep, 30 days of meditation, 30 days of yoga… blahbiddy blahbiddy blah blah blah… WILL NOT STICK for 60/90/120/365 days if it doesn’t start with the seed from which all else grows. Ready? It’s simple. Now don’t cringe all you skeptics and brooders out there (of which I’m one btw). Don’t turn your nose up at this. Don’t skim past it because you think it’s overly simplistic and stupid (again, I’m a mega resister too), and for heaven’s sake, CONSIDER just BREATHING while you READ THESE TWO WORDS.

Ready?

SELF-LOVE.

Here’s the deal, when we throw ourselves into 30 days of anything to ‘better’ ourselves, to ‘escape’ ourselves, to ‘change’ who we are – as if who we are isn’t already ENOUGH, we’re already screwed and we haven’t even begun yet.

The habit you’re working on WILL NOT TAKE – and instead will become that new thing on your list of ‘what didn’t work’ – and it’ll hammer another nail into your coffin called ‘what doesn’t work for me’. Really? Does it not work for you? Really? I’m pretty sure clean eating works for everyone, as does exercise, as does yoga, as does being more organized. Yes, I just fish smacked you a little bit (that’s a cold fish across the face fyi…).

The habit didn’t take because we did it (and I say we because I have done this numerous times myself) because we were trying to fix ourselves as if we were broken.

Nobody’s broken.

We might be off-course, not honouring our body, not loving our psyche, not paying attention to the needs of our body, mind and soul, but we’re not broken.

Here’s what I suggest: Start every 30 day ‘fix it’ program with 30 days of SELF-LOVE first. When we make choices for self-growth from a full cup, guess what happens? We do the do for the betterment of who we are, why we are and what we’re all about. These habits DO stick. These habits are easy to return to when we get off track later on. These habits are infused with EMOTION, which transforms the ‘challenge’ into a ‘choice’. Bottomline: We do what we love.

30 Days Activities — Photo credit Debra Stringfellow

Here are 30 Days of Self Love Activities to start you off:

Make a list of 10 things you love about yourself. Just start writing. Don’t think about it and if you can’t think of anything, consider the compliments that others have given you – start there, or think about what you loved about you as a child, those things don’t leave us you know.
Take a nap – because you want to and without justification to anyone else.
Book off a Sunday afternoon for pleasure – sheer pleasure. This may be foreign to you, which of course is a sign there’s something lovely to learn here.
Spend five minutes in the mirror this morning and compliment yourself. Feels weird, but you’ll soon feel the shift as it lifts your self-esteem.
Go through your day and everything you touch, ask yourself: Does this nourish me? Does this bring me joy? Do I love this? Does this have a purpose that makes my life better or brighter? And if not, consider tossing it.
Pull out a class photo of you from elementary school. How many names can you remember? What playful memories come back?
Choose ONE task in your house that makes you crazy because NO ONE ELSE cares about doing it but you. Then here’s a novel idea, DO IT for YOU. That kinda passive aggressive ‘waiting until someone thinks you’re important enough to do it for you’ kinda thinking eats away at your self-love tank. For heaven’s sake, OWN IT. If it matters to you – do it for you.
Take yourself out on a date. Splurge if you never splurge. Be thrifty if you are never thrifty.
Climb a mountain – okay, go on a hike to some VISTA and throw your arms up in the air toward the sky. Pull them back in as if you are holding the wind, wonder and welcome of the universe in a massive HUG. Exclaim something if you feel brave enough like: I frickin’ rock!!! and I’m loved too!!!!
Lay in the warmest spot in your home with your favourite blanket and/or any other comfort items you may have. Just lay down.
List TEN meals that you drool over. Figure out how to make them. Do it. Love it. Eat it.
Skin on skin. Love. Tingles. Intimacy. Connection. Enough said, do that.
Go to a book store and run your fingers across the spine of many many many books and see what happens. Be conscious to what lights up your mind. Pull out the book(s) that chooses you, sit down for a few minutes and read. Discover what your mind LOVES to devour.
Use the word DELICIOUS ten times today.
Throw away all of your shoes that leak.
Look at the part of your body that frustrates you the most and find three things this part of your body does FOR YOU (like allows you to walk up stairs, lift your children, digest your food) and say thank you.
Use the word DEVOUR ten times today.
Before your coffee touches your lips, open your front door, take 3 steps OUTSIDE and feel the weather on your skin. Breathe. Look up to the sky. Notice the magnitude of it’s reach. Remember that this place called Earth is home. This is your home.
Write the words I BELONG with an erasable felt pen across your bathroom mirror.
Pet an animal. Pet a few. Look into their eyes and put your head on theirs. You are part of their world too.
Write your childhood dream down in the middle of a piece of paper E.G. ‘to be a pilot’. On a scale of 1-10, how true is that dream to you now? If it’s a low number, ask yourself: What does being a pilot REPRESENT to me? E.G. Freedom. If it’s over 8, then simply leave it as is. Then turn the page over and on the back side of your ‘dream’ page, write five things you can do this week to see that dream come true. Listen up, time goes by anyway. The Q is, how do you want to spend that time?
Make your bed. Get back in it – just ’cause you can.
Finish this sentence: When time and money are not an issue for me and I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, the first three things I’m going to do are: ________
Now act as if… How can you start living that LIST today? Maybe you won’t be moving to Hawaii – or maybe you will, but how can you live as if you did…?
Move your body today. Sweat if you can. Breathe deeply if you can’t. Say thank you to your lungs for breathing. Say thank you to your heart for beating. Say thank you to your brain for thinking. This happens without any instruction from you. How cool is that?
Smile at yourself. You look gooooooood!
Finish this sentence: I am proud of myself because _______________.
If you were your own lover, what gift would you give to express your love to yourself? Go out and buy, create, or give that gift to YOU!
Finish this sentence: I need _______________ to feel peaceful. What do you need? Figure out how to give those necessary needs to yourself.
Add this to your vocabulary and say it when you’re in the shower, when you’re driving to work, when you’re driving home and before you go to sleep. You rock (insert your name here) and I love you.

30 Days of self love is the foundation to any other 30 day program you start, including mine which is 30 Days to Healthy Living. Don’t even bother checking this out until you’ve given yourself the self-love list first.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry. She teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Walking the Long Road of Red Tape

January 21, 2016

musac playing…

I have a problem with red tape.

I think I’m above it.

I’m on the phone. Waiting. wa wa wa w a i t i n g. A small wave of impatience is building. Tone Loc’s Funky Cold Medina is playing in my ear. What the hell is that doing being played on the ‘hold’ button of the hospital’s billing department. Is that song even old enough to be musac? Maybe it is.

“So, I gave some to my dog when he began to beg
Then he licked his bowl and he looked at me
And did the wild thing on my leg

I’m a little entitled. White chick, artist, living by the water, mom to three boys, hockey boys at that – the gear stinks, like S T I N K S, wife to a tall drink of water – surely being and STAYING MARRIED is like enough right? I make cookies, but only the ones my kids will eat. Nobody eats peanut butter cookies so guess what? Now I don’t either. I mop the floor, make the beds, write, try to be innovative, raw, authentic blah blah blah… just frickin care, sometimes just FRICKIN CARING feels like that’s gotta be enough too you know? I wash my face, stave off aging, use my eye cream, read ingredients, cut down on sugar, fucking survive, thrive find a voice through the insanity of cancer, BARF, rinse repeat. I sign up to do a triathlon, make friends with old friends and gal pals I said dumb things to, read up on leadership – so many bloody books on leadership, when do I ever get to say with a CLEAR HEART that I AM A LEADER? I stay current on the news – be mindful of my crush on Peter Mansbridge, collect the dust bunnies, get gas, sign permission slips, REMEMBER to sign permission slips, feel GUILTY because I fucking forgot the god damn stupid pink, no green, no blue, no BAHHHHHH what the hell colour was the permission slip this time? Oh right… it didn’t have a colour, it was online… oh… I didn’t check my email. I check my email, grocery shop with just the right list so I don’t spend too much, plan organic, buy bulk to save, think… think… think… let go of anxiety, get my ass to yoga, well, I say I’m going to do that, okay, so I say I’m going to get my ass to yoga, go to choir but not when I have a cold (like last night), feed my business, work my business, nurture by business… drink kombucha….

surely I don’t have to deal with the stupidity of RED TAPE too? Surely I don’t have to SIT ON HOLD to deal with this STUPID BILLING THING!

S U R E L Y ? ? ? ?

I’m entitled. I have a problem.

I’m on the phone with MSP (Medical Services Plan) to find out why my son who was born in 2009 did not have coverage in 2014 for a procedure done at the hospital just a year or so back, yet he received his shots in 2010 (no charge), went to emerg. for something dumb in 2011 (again, no charge), saw the doctor in 2014 (no charge), but only two months later he HAD NO COVERAGE? And now I have a $2200 bill that is going to collections? Are you kidding me? WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED????

Hello Mary speaking…

Hi Mary so this is what happened…

yahta yahta detail detail story story boring boring what are you going to do about it? – Don’t say that you’ll start a war and you’ll never get what you want – be prepared she is going to stonewall you – just say with it smile – and be nice – she can’t see you but if you smile then your voice sounds friendly.

What do I do Mary?

Hold on she says.

K.

There you are it’s all done.

What?

I just backdated him to his date of birth. It’ll take 24 hours but…

That was it. Done. All I had to do was call. No redtape. No waiting. No fighting. No nothing. I just had to call.

I’m entitled.

I have a problem. Clearly.

TinaO, chill man, we’re all on this planet together. We get free stuff. We pay for stuff. We get crap mixed up this side of Wednesday. We fix it. You ain’t special, you’re human.

Oh yeah. I forgot.

Ya know what I’m sayin’

That Medina’s a monster, y’all

xxT

GRIT. Got some?

January 21, 2016

I didn’t know that my kids would be like other people’s kids. My eldest two are in or approaching their teen years and motherfudrucker are they ever doing what teens do. It’s a nasty stage to parent through yet such an important one for them because this is where they either grow grit or not, and then they suffer the consequences of not knowing how to pick themselves up out of the mud later in life.

And as we know, there’s a lot of mud to come.

Here’s a snippet of what happened in my family this morning. I wrote it for my ‘downline’ (network marketing jargon for team) because I recognized how insanely similar this is to the lessons we’re called on to learn in our business. I hope it speaks to you as it seems to have spoken to my team.

Very interesting experience with my teenage son this morning. It made me think of our business and what it takes to design, get, and live a life we love. Here’s what happened:

We have a rule in our house, ‘as soon as it gets too hard to get up for hockey, hockey goes away’ – and right off the hop, since the boys were 7/8yrs old, they’ve been able to get up, sometimes as early as 4:30am to get on a 5:30am boat for a 6am practice. No kidding. Cold, tired and hungry… Yet off they would go.

So flash ahead 6 years and my eldest is now 14yrs and is in high school. He is often home later after his games, like 10pm and then the next morning he’s up for school at 6:30am to catch the bus at 7:05am. This morning (and multiple others this year) he had refused to get up saying ‘I’m too tired’. He’s 6’2 and 180lbs with his own mind, his own convictions, and his own chutzpah. I don’t believe in ‘making kids do anything’ anyway (unless the issue is human decency), but the truth is, I couldn’t make him get up now even if I tried.

Soooooo… I realized, this kid CAN get up, he does it all the time. He has a TRACK RECORD of doing what is challenging, he’s simply choosing not too because he doesn’t WANT TO. The REWARD or the REASON isn’t compelling enough. So… Given all of our ‘What’s your WHY?’ training, I decided to up the ante on his ‘why’. On my 5th attempt to get him out of bed, I said, ‘Mister, this has to stop. Here’s the deal, for every morning that you are like this, you lose a practice. You have two minutes to get up or there’s no hockey tomorrow.’

He didn’t get up.

What the Truck?

I go back in and do the thing I would NEVER DO in a coaching conversation. I implore with him: ‘Why would you do that? Why would you choose being tired over playing hockey? It’s worth so much to you. Why would you choose to be right about how stupid it is to go to school when what you’ve worked so hard for over the last six years hangs in the balance? Why would you do that??? Help me to understand because I don’t LOVE hockey, I love you.

He says to me: because I’m tired.

Classic.

In our business, the response is different but the same, it sounds like this: ‘Because it doesn’t seem to work for me’

Also Classic.

His dad has now been texted in because he’s on his way to work already (now 6:55am). He sends this: No school, no Maple Ridge on Friday (Game).

I walk back in to his room (which I often do in our our biz too… I walk back in) and tell him the news. – An exasperated GROAN comes from under the covers as he knows he really has no choice now. Well he does have a choice, just not one he’s willing to make. He’s backed into a corner because IT JUST GOT REAL.

The phone rings. It’s his dad. I hand him the phone.

‘I don’t want to talk to dad, he’s just going to yell at me’.

I say: ‘Listen dude… You made this bed, you don’t get to opt out of respecting your father. You don’t have to like what he has to say, or even agree with it, but you do have to listen.’

I leave the room.
He listens, hangs up, gets up and in 9 minutes gets himself dressed, packed and fed and out the door.

No he’s not talking to me.
No he’s not happy.
Yes he is honouring his CONVICTION to play hockey by doing what is least pleasant to him.

Here’s what I see, some of us are pleasers, others avoiders, some are team players, others loners, we do what we do for personal reasons and we choose to get back into the ring to go another round FOR WHAT MATTERS TO US, but only and I mean only WHEN IT GETS REAL and unfortunately, as is the way with the human experience, the magic only happens when our backs are against the wall. Oh boy.

Sooooo back to business… What we have is the brass ring. There is NOTHING and I mean NOTHING else out there like this that MOST PEOPLE can do to get the kind of return that comes with this biz model.

High pay for low time
High freedom for low responsibility
High friendship, lifetime friendships, deep meaningful walk through fire kinds of friendships without having to give up who you are.
A life first job without having to give your own life up in the process.

No education needed
Low investment needed

So when it feels hard for you to ‘do the do’, ask yourself, ‘what would have to happen before I was willing to REALLY do it? When would I cross the line into true LIFE LEADERSHIP and be willing to be the last person standing to make this business a success?

Unless of course you don’t really want what you said you came for… But I doubt it.

I said to Todd when it all blew over, this lesson were in with our son right now has NOTHING to do with HOCKEY, and everything to do with building the GRIT it takes to DO THE DO in order to LIVE YOUR LIFE on YOUR TERMS and not the terms of others.

Sometimes you have to get in to the ring with yourself in order to win.

Thinking of you.
Thinking of your grit.
Seeing your magnitude.
And holding you accountable to your WHY.

And the same with me.
Me too.
I’m just like you.

Some days I’d rather just say I’m too tired. But where will that get me?

It’s okay to be tired when you are. It’s not ok to be tired when there’s still life and will and Fire and a want inside of you. Some days you just gotta dig a little deeper.

Xxxt

So, I ask you. Do you have grit? Are you willing to be the last one standing to have what really matters to you? What is it going to take?

xxT

Even my Resistance Resists

January 15, 2016

This is not a deep post. It’s brief and to the point.

Do you ever resist yourself?

Imagine making a soulful decision. Drawing an honest line in the sand. Answering a quest whole-heartedly. Doing the 100% thing and really stating what your mission is. Putting some guts into it. Knowing what you know and saying it like you know it. Setting your course. Being totally ready to rock it.

All you have to do is show up.

But you don’t.

Has that ever happened to you?

Me too.

Sometimes even my resistance resists.

Oh well, at least there is another undecided moment after this one. What will you and I do now?

xxT

What I Love About You Is

January 14, 2016

I turned 45 this year. My birthday is on Christmas day so my family does a really bang-up job of making it special. People often think that my birthday is overlooked because of it being Christmas and all but you know, that’s just not the case though it’s a reliable ice-breaker conversation that I’m dumped into regularly. The truth is, I feel for people who are born on the 27th or 29th because those are mucky days where everyone is still eating leftovers, dealing with gifts half in half out of plastic, mulling over what worked and what didn’t, starting to think about the credit card bills that are coming… and of course, the mindfulness that once again another year is ending. People are busy man! Birthdays that fall on this transition week have more guck to wade through.

The funny thing is, celebrating my birthday isn’t even that important to me, but being remembered is. I suppose that’s tied into my history and understanding that this moment, as in right now will change in less than a second and we can’t stop it. Time moves on. People leave, tragedy happens, aha’s change our perspective, cars turn left instead of right… we don’t get to run that show – so really, who cares about birthday cake and beautifully wrapped presents? The paper is going end up in the trash because most of it can’t be recycled (insane isn’t it?), and the cake is likely some store bought thing because most of us aren’t willing to learn how to pour ourselves into food anymore… so really what is special and memorable about that?

I’m not a birthday downer I promise. What does matter deeply to me – is that PEOPLE, as in RELATIONSHIPS, as in our UNIQUENESS, as in our STORY is seen, recognized, honoured and shared. That’s what birthdays are about for me. It’s loving this thing called life and our connection to it.

We have a tradition in our house that on birthdays during cake time, we go around the table, or the couches or whatever and each person has to finish this sentence for the birthday person: “What I love about you is…” and we usually do a few rounds of it. My boys are 14, 12 and 6 right now (2016), and we’ve been doing this since they were wee. It’s old hat to them. It started out feeling kinda weird and exposing, and at various times in the boy’s development they got shy and even sensitive about it, like sharing their feelings about a family member was a bit too personal, and we’ve also been through years where ‘what I love about you’ is a silly poop, fart and bum joke (what is it about 5-7yrs old?), and now we’re in this funny mix of recognizing that this ritual we do for each other really matters, I can see on the boy’s faces. They ‘get it’, but they’re so pre-occupied with themselves (welcome teen years) that what they love about each other is what the other can do for them. “What I love about you is that you make my lunches every day… what I love about you is that you take me to hockey… that you do my laundry...”, thankfully there’s still a six year old in the mix sharing poop and fart gratitudes…

My husband totally gets it. He’s never been a birthday guy either. Neither of us grew up having birthday parties with friends over, loot bags and crazy amounts of gifts. Neither of us grew up with any kind of birthday rituals either, but we come from a time where our distractions were painful ones: my mom died when I was little, his family divorced and both of us grew up fast. It’s the relationships that matter. That’s the gift of birthdays. We remember how lucky we are to have the person sitting in front of us who is about to stuff their mouth full of cake.

This year for my birthday, we were up in a cabin away from home. We did this on purpose – opted out of the bigness of the holidays (though I’m a Christmas cracker and one could say I did it big anyway), it was quieter. The pic above is what I woke up to after having a nap on the couch by the fire. While I was sleeping after a long birthday walk in the snow, Mr. Todd and the boys hung streamers and balloons for me and while we all recognize that stringing pink crepe paper is ‘wasteful’ and ‘environmentally stupid’, this was their way of saying I Love You Tina, Mom, Wife, Cheerleader, Friend.

When we did our ritual of “What I love about you is…” for me, it was simple and silly and irreverent and kinda teenager/elementary school impersonal, and guess what? That’s what made it totally perfect.

What I love about you is…

xxT