Tina Overbury Archives - Page 2 of 3

Don’t Die Living Someone Else’s Story

January 26, 2016

I was insanely nervous. No kidding. I had decided to show up and speak from the stage fully alive and semi-prepared. Well, not true, I was fully prepared and by choice, only semi rehearsed.

I had an idea of what the beginning would be and I had a thought about how how the story would end, after all, I was connecting the dots between various moments in my own life plus, I understand the structure of a great ending: it has to be surprising but inevitable (thank you Roger Larry for your film-making tip that stuck).

Surprising but inevitable…

Well, how just like life that is isn’t it? It always makes sense when you track it back from the end. That’s easy. Ha ha… but did you know that everything makes sense as it unfolds too – only that’s the hard part because it requires trusting the process.

Watch this clip about how I came to trust my own living story as I shared a powHERtalk with an audience.

If only I had remembered to breathe at the beginning, perhaps my voice wouldn’t have dropped quite so far. Ah well, if that had happened, sure I would’ve ”sounded” better, but that’s not how this piece wanted to live.

Hello again Hello…

Why die living someone else’s story? How about living yours instead. Click here for our upcoming workshop.

xxT

Tina Overbury is the founder of the Live Your Best Story weekend Retreat and facilitates the Living Story portion of the weekend.

Is Your Knowledge on Ice?

January 16, 2016

Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice, or so they say. This success strategy has served me well for a long time but has cost me dearly for an even longer one.

My whole life I’ve been a dive into the unknown kinda gal. I do my best work in anything and everything I do when I know the least. I race to the top in whatever I do and faster than most because I am very comfortable wearing Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field and keeping my head down, my eye on the prize and look only at what I’m doing.

When I don’t know what I don’t know, there’s nothing to tell me that I can’t leaving only possibility. This has been a brilliant results oriented success system for me. From the outside everything looks great: I do, I achieve, I am applauded, and then I move on. Wait a minute… that’s the kicker right? The trap of this kind of success formula is that there’s little desire further the work once I’ve nailed the goal. Why? Because I’m no longer ignorance on fire. I’m now knowledge on ice, with no motivation to get warm. And then it gets cold, freaking cold, like anxiety driven, worry filled night kinda cold as I sort out:

What do I do now that I know what I know?

How do I feed this success animal I’ve built on ignorance when my eyes are open to the whole picture now?

You may have heard this before too because I didn’t come up with it, and the person who taught it to me probably didn’t either:

Stage one = Uninformed optimism Stage two = Informed

Stage three is usually = Informed pessimism.

Why usually? Because it takes walking the double edge sword of all things in order to get to informed optimism. It takes converting informed on both the positive and the negative side of it to give you wisdom. Most of us just want the shortcut. We don’t want wisdom. We want results. We serve the bottomline or the adrenaline of achievement, or the satisfaction of belonging because we’re ‘worthy’ due to our accomplishment. Come on now, ‘fess up. Why do you go for challenges and incentives? Why do you take risks? What is usually your motivation for diving into the unknown?

You might say: Because I’m curious Tina. I’m a life-long learner.

I say: Cool. Then what? How do you let that learning LIVE?

For most of my professional life (up until now), I’ve been happily doing and achieving as ignorance on fire. Wow… what a rush. There’s always something new to learn, the excitement of the unknown and then the reward of figuring shit out. You could feed me this recipe for breakfast, lunch and dinner and all deserts and drinks too. I EAT THIS UP!

But then I get a stomach ache. I’m frozen by what I’ve learned. I can see the pot holes, the areas of growth that are needed, the dark corners and the stinky stuff that if cleaned up would make things even better. Oh mannnn why do that when ignorance on fire has such a higher return? Why implement anything I’ve learned when I can just go on learning new stuff?

I’m in the network marketing industry and this is a slogan that is thrown around at every ‘getting started’ training out there. As organization builders in a sales and recruitment based business, our bottomline and our team’s confidence go up when we have new people starting their business with us. We WANT FRESH FACES because it reminds us that this opportunity rocks, and you know what – it freaking does rock. Ten years in, with all the knowledge I have and very little ignorance left, I can say without a shred of holding back, this is the best industry going out there if:

you wanna make lots of money with low risk or overhead.
you wanna work part time.
you like people
you’re a life long learner.

But here’s the deal: You gotta let go of the ignorance on fire thing and ditch the knowledge on ice thing too if you really want to enjoy the fruit. Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours to mastery. Well, that’s about 7 years in a 15 hour/week network marketing business. You sure as heck ain’t gonna be ignorance on fire for seven years.

Like any long term venture be it business, friendship, marriage, career, personal growth, whatever… the TRUTH of that story will always out over time and that means that the veil of ignorance will lift and knowledge with set in. Nothing is without dark corners. Nothing is without improvement needed. Nothing is perfect and that’s what makes the whole darn thing worth investing in.

So… if you buy this whole Ignorance on Fire is Better than Knowledge on Ice thing, I challenge you to step into WISDOM and see what kind of satisfaction, freedom and true wealth lives there instead.

My wish for you is true freedom, is peace, is long term success and feeling good about what you do.

What to check out my network marketing business? You totally can. Click here for an electronic business pack. Why not? You’re ignorance on fire for such a short time… wink.

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

I’m Walking… Still Walking…

January 15, 2016

Goals stink so says I. Why? Because you can’t just order them off a menu like they don’t belong to you. In order for them to work, they have to mean something. While placing your mouth watering want with the waiter in front of you might feel like a big deal – the reality is once the food is gone so is the meal.

A goal has to has to be rooted in a yearning in order for you to keep going. Lets face it, none of us would tread through snow up to our knees with our cheeks, ears and nose screaming cold from the wind, unable to see more than three feet in front of us if we didn’t believe that the promised warm cabin just 100 metres away wasn’t really there. We just wouldn’t do it – well, we wouldn’t do it by choice.

Goals are choices.

Goals are destinations.

Goals are stakes in the earth, in our mind, and on our calendars.

Goals are decisions.

This morning I set a bunch of mine in motion because I put them to the page. I’ve been self-employed for almost three decades and goals make me nauseous and angry now, yet try as I might I can’t seem to ditch the word. When I pick up my pen and my auto-pilot goal-setter kicks in, she writes: My Goal for TinaOLife…. My Goal for LYBS…. My Goal for my Network Marketing Business… My Goal for Me…

Man oh man… I just can’t ditch the word goal even though I don’t believe in them.

I believe in story.

I believe in walking.

I believe in direction fueled by a yearning.

and then I walk. as I listen. as I follow and lead, and move in the direction of the story of which I’ve chosen to be the main character.

I just keep walking.

Where do you walk? Why? Do you care? Are you willing to?

xxT

I Love You – She said Quietly

January 14, 2016

So I’m reading Olympic Medalist Clara Hughes’ book Open Heart Open Mind this morning at 4:30am and something interesting happened. I’m up that early because I’m a hockey mom and I gotta get the boys sorted as they hit the rink before school: put something in their tummy for breakfast, pack a lunch for school, and throw in all the stuff into their pack that they’ll likely forget about. This is the to do list of a forever in training mom for sure. Our youngest is still in bed – he’s not a hockey kid yet. I’m crossing my fingers that he falls head over heels in love with the arts so we can skip the third round of early morning family insanity. We shall see. Passion is as passion does.

The boys and their dad are off by 5:30am and by then I’m too awake to sleep but not quite ready to take on the day, probably because it’s Thursday and I’ve already put in three mom mornings this week so I crawl back into bed and crack open Clara’s book. My husband bought Open Heart, Open Mind for me for my birthday, probably because her story is coloured with dark corners, her triumphs have sharp edges and her drive is fueled by fire, unstoppable, wild, raw, and almost retchingly honest fire. Okay so honesty can’t retch, but maybe that’s why writers have been known to say things like: I just gotta barf it out first, get it on the page, get into the guts of it…

Thank you Clara. You clearly got into the guts of it and that’s why it’s carrying me away.

I’m only half way through the book but if I had to sum up your message so far I’d say it’s all about ‘self-love’ instead of ‘self-loathing’ right? Hmmm… such a universal quest to heal the scars of so many. It’s almost as if getting to that place requires understanding your own Escape Room: an insane past time where people are willing to be pushed, screamed at, and even terrified as they scramble to escape simulated life-threatening situations. The crazy part about escape rooms is that we get locked into them knowing there is always a way out. What makes it so intoxicatingly addictive is the adrenaline pumping through our veins as we question whether or not we’ll actually find it. The self-loathing to self-love conundrum is just like that. The only way to rewire our brains out of self-loathing is to step into our darkest blindspot: self-love.

That’s the thing about blind-spots, they’re bloody obvious once we see them and then they vanish as if they were never there at all.

So there I was at 6am, about a half an hour in to Clara’s book , when, as I’m all curled up and warm, out of my mouth tumbles: I love you Tina.

I love you Tina.

I’m like: What?

I love you Tina.

Oh. I thought that came from you.

Okay so I’m no stranger to the self-help world. I’ve read Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. I’ve affirmed my way into a happier disposition, I know how to talk to myself when I need to pull my sorry behind out of a crap load of poor me, or a give my brain an etch a sketch shake and redraw a nasty perspective into a positive one. Oh yes, I get the whole self-talk thing but that’s not what happened. I wasn’t standing in front of the mirror talking into my own eyes, or reading a magic yellow affirmation sticky, or even writing in my gratitude journal (I don’t have a gratitude journal shhhh..). Nope, I was in the fetal position, feet tucked under the covers, ankles crossed with one fist under my right cheek and the other cupping the edges of the book. I was in lala land and then out of nowhere, my inner me, the one who feels the same now at 45yrs as it did at 7yrs blurted out I Love You Tina just so I could hear it. It tumbled easily out of my mouth, and out loud.

My next thought was: ‘uhhhh… how did that happen? Ohhhh… and I do this to my kids all the time. I tell them I love them just ’cause. It’s not a daily do, or an affirmation, or a mindset reset at all, it’s just because it’s true. I love them.’

So Clara – that may not have been the goal for your readers by page 112, but that’s what happened to me.

I love you Tina, I said to myself without any agenda at all. I love you – probably because it’s true. I do.

How about you?

p.s. I’m at the top of chapter 14 – Salt Lake City Olympics are next. Mmmm… can’t wait.

xxT

Still Waters Run Deep

January 13, 2016

This is a pic of my husband. He’s not as public as I am, thank God. Can you imagine if we were both wired to want to share everything? What a mess that would be? Oh boy… I mean really, where would this firecracker of a mouth and mind go to just rest for awhile? And where would his ‘still waters’ go to get all wavy and stuff? We’d be a walking party – the perfect silly string storm. It might be fun for a few weeks but a lifetime? Ummm no. How exhausting.

Why do I tell you this?

Because I want to add a perspective to your ‘I wonder if only I had…’ mindset, and let’s be honest, deep breath, we all do this, as in wonder sometimes.

I wonder if I married the right person?

I wonder if we have anything in common anymore?

I wonder if we’re soul-mates or if I’ll ever have one? Do I even believe in that? I don’t know…

I wonder…?

These are the best and the worst questions. These are the topics that can drive a room full of pajama party women (do men talk about this kinda stuff? As far as I know, most don’t but I suppose it’s possible) into a frenzy of self-doubt, or mild to major panic and even start up some boyfriend/husband envy. We’ve all seen it or experienced it at some point. The first time I got married (whole other story – see I can speak to this topic honestly), during my month of pre-wedding prep, my best friend at the time (this should’ve been my first and last hint to quietly close this friendship) said to me “So, who’s your ONE THAT GOT AWAY?”. Wait a minute, I was getting married – there should be no ‘one that got away’.

Yet there it was and with every question comes an answer whether we consciously do it or not.

Who was my ONE THAT GOT AWAY?

Should I have one?

Shouldn’t I have one?

Am I doing this right?

What if there is one and I don’t know?

What does that mean about my marriage? About my life? About my my my… Oh my now what?

So I answered this ‘best friend’ of mine with the names of two old boyfriends that I still had lingering flickers for. Even saying that ‘flicker thing’ out loud seems weird. Not wrong, just bizarre. They were flickers of unrealized dreams, of stolen moments, of non-replicable touches, gazes, thoughts because they were unique to us, they were pangs of rejection that still had fire in them, zingers of physical attraction, of wonder… that’s all, of just wonder.

Wonder is rapturous.

but Wonder can also be distracting.

You know how I talk about the double edge sword of every single truth? Well, this is what my sword of wonder looks like: rapture and distraction. Two sides. Both are true.

In the world that I live in and the rules that I play by, every layer of the story is welcome to be heard because no layer is more ‘honest’ than the other. Our Living Story is how they all weave together.

Did my first marriage end? Yup. Because of the flickers from the ‘ones that got away’? – Nope. Did I date one of those flickering dudes again? Yup – both of them actually. Did either of them end up being my second husband? Nope.

Why?

Because they were flickers. Fun, fabulous hot flickers but not the right fuel for my life.

Mr. Todd and I (the still water guy in the pic and yes, that’s what I call him) were blissfully married for two years before the veil of marriage lifted and we realized we ‘chose’ each other and that meant for ‘life’. Crap really? Now what do we do? Yes indeed, over the last fifteen years or so we have had our share of marital nastiness, brokenness, detachment, resignation, deep regret for choosing each other and lots and lots of ‘I wonder if…’ questions.

The truth for us didn’t come from simply answering the questions, but rather from hearing the stories that we found in our answers.

Many times I thought my marriage (yes, not our marriage in these moments) should be over. Many times I wondered if I chose the right man.

I used to say to myself “He’s a good man, but maybe not the right man for me. He’s quiet, he’s private, he’s so black and white and he doesn’t really like people all that much. We have nothing in common anymore. What are we doing here together?”.

And he would say to himself: “She’s crazy, I can’t build a life with her. She spends money like there’s always more coming. She’s a dreamer, everything is grey with her, she’s a moving target, she’s public, loud and likes people a lot, sometimes more than me. We have nothing in common. What are we even building?”.

And then, over time, a lot of time we would take on the massive task of answering the real questions with each other. Patiently painful at times, yet always stunningly beautiful at the end of each story. We decided to answer our real questions instead of hold on to our observations.

My question: What are we doing here together?

His question: What are we even building?

And it was in the answers, and yes, note the plural: in our many answers where we found our commonality and our lifetime marital, soul-mate/life-mate connection. The answers surprised us because they often had nothing to do with being married and everything to do with being together. Silly right? We just happen to be married too.

He’s my Mr. Todd and still waters run deep.

I’m probably his – Mrs. T – and crazy hair makes me smile. (okay, so I made that up, but if I had to guess… that’s what I think he would say).

What questions might you be holding on to instead of listening to the stories of truth that live in the answers?

xxT

Yearnings Ignite, Goals Fade

January 9, 2016

We’ve all done it: Set a goal. Some of us have even reached that goal, but most of us don’t, or we do but it takes longer than it should, or we kinda get there, or when we do get there we wonder: What was all that fuss was about?

I’m a recovering goal setter because I’ve been a firey one for years. Oh man how I love both January and September. Mmmmmm cracking open a fresh journal, plotting out my quiet time to map out what I’m doing next, buying a new pen or finding just the right one with the best tip… oh boy. Who needs sex when you have goals? Truly, it’s weirdly almost that good for me. Did you catch it though? It’s the SETTING of the goal that’s intoxicating, not the doing of it. That’s why it’s knocked out a morning romp or an evening of candlelight for me – oh my poor partner, if he only knew when he married me that he’d be upstaged by a journal and a pen.

Why do we like to set goals more than achieve them? Because they’re fired up by the heat of our yearnings.

Why do we attend conferences and trainings and retreats only to come home and stay the same just different? Because possibility is a re-chargeable battery pack.

Why do we achieve goals, feel happy and then start all over again? What’s with this empty-full-empty-full cycle we all seem to crave? Because we’re feeding our external story instead of being nourished by our internal one.

I say all of this because today (as in right now) I’m in a retreat for my network marketing business and it’s January. Guess what we’re doing tonight? Yup… setting goals except I don’t call them that anymore, they’re targets instead. They’re focal points. They’re intentions. Why? Because goal fatigue kills business, and rah rah rah-ing some people’s pinnacle achievements creates a divisive culture, fractures teams and sabotages the very essence of what makes a team work: a common drive, togetherness and not individual achievements or goals.

Could I be talking semantics here – sure, but words are insanely important to me and I do my best to choose them wisely. The living story of the word goal these days shows up like a ‘line in the sand’, a ‘set point’, a measurement of ‘accountability’ – think the super popular S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Everything here is externally motivated. A SMART goal of mine for this blog might be:

It is January 10th 2016 and I am happily celebrating having shared this blog with 100 people.

So let’s say that all of the above happens. I wake up on January 11th, I’ve done my due diligence and I’ve nailed my goal. What happens now? How do I feel now? What is my take away now? What is fueling my next ‘goal’ now?

Well, I’m back at the beginning again aren’t I? I am starting all over. My take away is that I probably feel pretty good about myself for having ‘achieved’ my goal, but now, if I slow down enough to actually feel anything at all, I’m a bit empty, daunted and let down. How come I just achieved that goal and now I’m back at the beginning again? Damn these goals, they’re so elusive. Will I ever get there? So then the fuel for my next goal becomes hope, possibility, and the drive that one day, maybe, just possibly, I will arrive. It will stop because I will reach a celebratory finish line. I will raise my arms in the air, someone will notice this incredible moment other than just me and I’ll be handed a lifetime gold medal of having done ‘my all’ and I never ‘have to’ achieve anything again. I will be done.

As if right? And frankly, how boring and how demeaning to this incredibly complex and beautiful human experience.

Here’s my suggestion. Switch your goals to your yearnings. Focus on the deeper wants, the heart beat that comes without you trying, the dreams that wake you up at night with desire, the fire that never goes out instead. Here’s my example and creation:

Y.E.S. Goal: What is it you YEARN for? Make it your most EXCELLENT of work, and always SITUATE it for SUCCESS (or do-able).

again…

Y.E.S. Goal:

What is it you YEARN for?

Make it your most EXCELLENT of work,

and always SITUATE it for SUCCESS.

Here’s my rewrite: Today I write a passionate and honest blog about goals vs. yearnings and I am personally committed to reaching 100 people by Tuesday January 12th because what I write, I care about, and what I share, I live.

Here’s the original: It is January 10th 2016 and I am happily celebrating having shared this blog with 100 people.

Which one would be worth your heart, effort and energy to achieve? Which one isn’t an achievement at all but rather a compelling decision to live fully?

Here’s to you and all that fires you up.

xxT

A Face, Heart and a Dream

January 8, 2016

Tonight a handful of team members from my network marketing biz are gathering at Xenia Retreat Centre for a Mastermind Retreat away into their business and their lives.

We’ll eat (always). We’ll talk (of course) about how we can live more healthfully and passionately. We’ll dig in (needed) to the areas of our business that are clunky and beg for attention. We’ll get clear about what goals/targets/intentions really matter to us and what we’re willing to truly show up for this year. We’ll sharpen our skills (stretch always) and we’ll take on this live/work balance conundrum that is so personal to each of us. We’ll lift each other up because it’s often easier to see greatness in others before we can see it in ourselves.

It’s just another day at the office – rich and challenging because none of us ‘have’ to go to this work, we choose it instead. Wow, it’s so much easier to procrastinate our way out of that isn’t it? It’s a business of people, as in we get paid when we sell stuff to people and when we nurture and coach people too (which isn’t everybody’s natural skill set and it takes time to learn) – makes it complicated. A lot of us struggle with getting paid when there’s ‘people’ involved! ack! How can that be fair or honest? Here’s the thing I’ve learned over a decade in the industry, it’s actually the most honest work I can do. When there’s a face, a heart, a dream, or a family on the other side of what I do, it is my deep privilege to show up. These are people after-all, not faceless ‘team members and prospects’. Crazyyyy but my best friends have come from this business. These are the people who have walked through personal and professional fires with me and I with them. I don’t need to get paid for that, but wow, what an illogical bonus that I do.

Whatever you do for a living, my wish for every single one of us is that wherever you are Monday to Friday and beyond, that you’re part of a community, you belong, you love and are loved. That’s real wealth.

xxT

Give Your Mind a Shower

January 7, 2016

No doubt about it, my work this year is all around mindset. Okay, so I have more than just that to do: catch up on my taxes (oh gawd again?), sleep more (still), let my guard down (melt melt melt), keep listening, write my books, grow my network marketing business by 20% each month, make love a lot, oh yeah and train for a triathlon. How did taxes, business, sex and a triathlon all end up on the same to do list? Life. It’s awkward isn’t it?

Integration is my thannnnng and so as not to muddle you up, I don’t mean that I throw everything all in together and call it the same. I’m not saying that all roads are the same road and that every path leads to Rome. I’m not suggesting that integration is about being a big pot of stew with old carrots mixed with new potatoes tossed with reaching stalks of celery, rounded bumps of barley, organic garlic and crowned with a dumpling. No. That would suggest that I think our brain is a soft mushy floury globby topping to our perfect mess. Hardly a way to represent the control centre that it is. No, integration to me is identification, puzzle clicking, communication, implementation and then flow. Ultimately, it’s an exercise of living trust.

Why do I say mindset? Because in our four engines of alignment: Mindset, Soulset, Skillset and Body, I tend to lead with the soul which means I follow my instincts. I ask quesitons to the powers that be and then follow what is peaceful. My gut leads instead when my brain thinks it knows the answer (it never does by the way) and I tend to let decisions make me and not the other way around. I certainly haven’t lived most of my life this way, but over the last three to four years I’ve realized that the best steps I’ve ever taken I’ve done this way, and that living by my soul-story is what brought me home to myself again. All that said, when my mindset is locked into some old pattern of fear, let’s be honest, for me it’s wayyyyy bigger than that, it’s more like sheer panic most of the time, my soul story, or what I call my ‘living story’ stumbles. I get bruised. I have to pick myself up more times than is probably necessary and why lay face down in the mud more often that I need to right?

The mind is the control centre of the body. While I am not a brain doctor or specialist and I’m not a master of EMDR (eye movement desensitization and re-processing connecting the right hemisphere and left hemisphere of the brain for re-patterning thoughts and reactions) like my good friend Dr. Carolyn Nesbitt and by no means am I an expert on neuroplasticity like Shad Helmstetter, I have personally experienced the difference that adopting a possibility mindset can make.

I’m a leader in a network marketing business and as my husband says, I’m also become one of this life’s ‘social leaders’ which means that what I say and do matters greatly if only to me – because I bare some responsibility (frankly I think we all do) for how the way I live affects the world. Here’s the thing, while I’m not wired to think ‘negatively’ – truly, I’m probably as deeply, and authentically positive as they come, my life’s experiences have developed a ‘seek and prepare’ or ‘stay alert and rely on no one’ neuropathway that I habitually walk when my auto-pilot runs the show.

The mindset is all about your auto-pilot.

The mindset is the thinking you do when you’re not actually thinking.

The mindset is the tape that you hear to without knowing you’re listening.

When I was going for my final promotion in my network marketing business I had one simple rule in my house: No negative talk – period. No Debbie Downer moaning, I wouldn’t even let Todd tell me that it was raining, or that the toilet was plugged. Oh boy, I was a sunshine and lollipops drill sergeant back then. While putting a taught shiny bubble around my thinking may have been effective for reaching my goals, it drove a wedge between my soul and my expression of it, plus it alienated me from my family – the very people I claim to be myself with. This to the very circle I love and want only for them to be who they fully are.

Positive mindset = good.

Positive mindset at all costs = bad.

Positive mindset that doesn’t have to protect itself from itself = healthy.

I had a nasty reaction to all the sunshine and rainbow messages I lived by because it sliced away my underbelly, my vulnerability and my deep connection to people and to myself. Truly… how could my children feel ‘heard’ or ‘known’ by me if I wasn’t willing to listen to the darker shades of their stories. All the years of attachment parenting just got thrown out the window for a few months of working towards a goal.

I had a positive mindset hangover. I felt guilt and shame and even embarrassment for having shadowy thoughts. I didn’t connect with my circle of achievement based, goal centred happiness friends anymore. I was sick with positivitis.

My mindset needed a shower. And showers are neither positive or negative – just wet and wonderful.

I do my best realizing when I’m in the shower. Truly. There’s something about just hanging out in hot water gushing over my head that wakes me up somehow. It sets me to neutral. It opens up space for my next ‘aha moment’ and connects me back home too.

I’m giving my mindset a shower these days because I know that all the panic driven, alarm bell ringing neuropathways that I habitually walk are of my own making. I can create new ones that are honest, unthreatened by the truth, and serve me as real until that’s not so anymore.

Take a shower. It’s a delicious thing to have clean water and a safe place to reset the control room that runs our auto-pilot. We’re blessed no?

xxT

Truth Tuesday – Listening so as to Be

January 5, 2016

The truth is subjective right? I mean, I have one idea and I KNOW it’s true, but you do too and you KNOW it’s true as well. Okay, so if that’s the case, then which is it? Why all the fuss and fighting about it? And why are we on this incessant pursuit of knowing it? Why the pre-occupation with ‘finding our truth’?

Because we’re unaccustomed to living it.

And that’s perfectly natural.

We are born as itty bitty babies relying on those around us to be there, to take care of us, to make sense of us, to be the bubble that is our world. Our first conscious exposure to our living story is a completely EXTERNAL one. Our truth is based on what others do around us.

We see our mother’s face, feel her touch, hear her voice and that’s how we know we’re not alone. We don’t even know what alone is, we just know that we’re more than one.

We hear, smell, taste and sense our environment and that’s how we know where we are.

We are born without words, without context, without place, yet with a soul story to know and to give away, but we can’t yet because we haven’t developed the tangible tools like language to do it.

It’s as if it’s a set up! Life positions us to meet who we are through how we’re received. Now this is a beautiful opportunity to grow if our ‘truth’ is always reflected back at us which is probably why we call this life thing a magnificent journey. There’s so much to learn. But come on, it sure seems wildly inefficient though. Doesn’t it? That we should come in to the world perfect, whole and living our ‘truth’, only to spend the first 40 years of our life (usually) living on auto-pilot then waking up during a mid-life crisis, or a 20-something existential emptiness, or our 30-something drive to ‘be someone’. And then Some of us just skip it all together by playing the ‘acceptance game’ which isn’t acceptance at all, but rather resignation. Ewwwwww. I’ve seen it and so have you. I’ve even lived it a few times.

When my husband and I couldn’t stand each other for about ten years of our first fifteen together (yup no kidding), the only way I knew how to cope was to say to myself: Okay well I guess he’ll just watch TV and I’ll live in the kitchen (I’m simplifying but you probably get it). No wonder I crash and burned. Resignation ate me up and spit me out.

Here’s the thing, once I took the dangerous step of actually LISTENING for whom I’ve always been, I realized, I’d never actually left. I wasn’t lost, I just wasn’t found.

Did you know that we can’t ditch ourselves? There is no where we can run to lose ourselves either. It’s not like we get to shed our ‘truth’ on the floor as a rumpled outfit as we reach into the closet to wear someone else. We’re not a costume nor a wardrobe. We’re not inter-changeable, well, at least not on the inside.

All the self-help books, personal growth workshops, inspirational wall-art and lit up catch phrases that we devour as a way to ‘find’ our truth is the habitual way we’ve moved through world since we arrived. It makes sense right? We think: I am because you see me, I do because you know me, I say because you hear me, I love because you love me… There’s beauty in this ‘we’, in this interconnectedness. There is. I get that, but it still has nothing to do with the ‘truth’ quest we all end up on.

Today I ask you – Who are you in relation to only you? Who are you beyond what fills your mind all day? Who are you outside of where and how you live? Who are you and who have you always been?

Oh mannnnnn big questions and you’re probably feeling the desire to skip it. I mean, why ask when you can’t ever truly know. There’s no proof, no check mark, no enlightened someone to say: Yes, you’re right, that’s who you are. There’s only you and all you can do is listen for you. Listen to the story that has been telling YOU since you arrived.

A life and business coach I once worked with Isabelle Mercier Turcotte said to me in a day long session together: “That’s not your gig” and she wrote it on a yellow sticky and stuck it to one of the many massive post-it notes on the wall. For months I walked through my life with two imaginary yellow stickies: one that said THAT’S MY GIG, and another that said THAT’S NOT MY GIG and in every single interaction I would figuratively hold up my two stickies and decide which one was true: my gig, or not my gig. If you’re interested, here’s a quick video in my own words that I made for Isabelle about it.

I had a good life five years ago when I was holding up those stickies, in fact, most would’ve thought that I was at the top of my game. I was at the pinnacle of my profession, by all accounts I had a great life: two kids, a house, husband, career, passions and my health. My truth however was that a lot of that good life wasn’t actually mine, I just lived it like it was.

Today, I ask you: What’s your gig? What’s not your gig? The truth will always always always tell you, you need only listen for it.

I challenge you this week to hold up your two yellow stickies and see what answers come back.

Many thanks to Charlene Sanjenko and PowHERhouse women for the opportunity to host and moderate Truth Tuesdays. So cool.

xxT