Truth Archives - TinaOLife

Tara Caffelle VLOG#2 – Netflix, Men and Relationships

May 26, 2016

Intro from me, TinaO:

Okay… I know legendary actor John Cusack crosses generations of fans. If you’re over 40 and you’re a woman, you probably had his TigerBeat picture on your locker. If you’re under 30, I bet you know who he is, and I’m almost positive you’ve seen his iconic Say Anything boombox scene haven’t you? And if not, you’ve witnessed his rainy romantic, heart fluttering scene replicated in multiple movies since, you just didn’t know it. It’s true, Say Anything slayed us children of the 80s women in the same way The Graduate and Love Story did in the 60s and the 70s, and When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle did in the 90s and then Love Actually, Knocked up and Juno in the the 2000s. We LOVE our RELATIONSHIP MOVIES don’t we?

Today, in 2016, not only do we get to witness lots of gritty love drama in our favourite shows like: House of Cards, Scandal and The Walking Dead (btw we are in a gruesome era of love aren’t we?), but we can also access the progression of LOVE and RELATIONSHIPS over the decades on NETFLIX.

Hmmm… here’s what our Relationship Guru lady Tara Caffelle has to say about it in her very own new love-mobile (no, not mobile like mobile phone, but mobeel as in vehicle).

Enjoy…

WATCH HERE:

Tara Caffelle is a Relationship and Communication coach. She is passionate about creating connected, almost-uncomfortable-to-watch relationships that are based in Sexy Communication and Big Lives worth rolling around in.

Tara is based in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver and offers custom-designed coaching programs. To claim your free 90+ minutes and see what might be possible for your own super coupledom (or persondom), find a time here.

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

Intimates in Colombia

March 9, 2016

I spent the last week and a half of February in Colombia: I attended a dear friend’s wedding, and then I relaxed at a tiny resort where the biggest decision of my day was choosing a hammock in which to have my afternoon nap. It was glorious. And quiet. In more ways than one.

See, Colombia isn’t a country that speaks a lot of English. And I am not a traveler who speaks a lot of Spanish. You do the math.

What I learned: People in Colombia wanted me to eat, to be safe, to have a good time.

I survived with big smiles, excited clapping, pointing at menus, Google translator (when I had wifi), listening carefully for familiar words, and speaking loudly and slowly. (Oh yes, I did.)

My last morning in Colombia had me feeling stressed; I had complicated transfers beginning at 4 am from a somewhat-remote resort via taxi to the nearby town where I would connect with two different buses before reaching the airport that would take me to a major city for a connecting flight back to Canada.

WHEW!

Add to the stress the fact that I didn’t have quite enough cash to pay my various drivers along the way and would need to find a machine somewhere early on. An English-speaking staff member at the resort had lovingly arranged my entire trip for me, but I knew it was unlikely she would be around at 4 am to translate any further.

I thought ahead: I packed and was ready the night before, set a couple of alarms, and translated phrases I thought I might need into my phone and took screen shots that I could show them along the way.

Here’s what happened: I accidentally ordered a bottle and not a glass of wine at dinner the night before I left, and not wanting to waste it, I drank a lot of it and basically passed out. I woke up in plenty of time for my alarm, in my clothes, with the lights still on. I checked out of the resort with ease, met my driver, showed him my translation that said “Can we go to a cash machine so I can pay you?” and off we went.

I felt completely safe and taken care of. When the first banco machin-o didn’t work for my card, we looked for another, and each time, he stood outside the door and waited for me. We were a team.

Soon, I wasn’t worried about making my connections and even grabbed the tiniest of cat naps once I was safely on the bus.

It’s like I always say: we are in relationship with everyone we interact with.

For those brief moments, with my gruff, Spanish-speaking driver, we shared an intimacy that I am still talking about a week later.

I think that universally there is desire to connect, the same way our bodies want to maintain health. If we shoot Botox into our face, our muscles actually work around it and want to get back to what’s normal. This is why, if you use poison to still your beautiful facial expression lines, you need to repeat the treatment over and over again.

Similarly, we humans crave connection. When we don’t have it, due to language barriers or other zany circumstances, we find our way back to it.

Relationship wants to happen.

Stop fighting it. So many times, we get in conflict with each other and don’t realize that things just want to run smoothly. Rather than get in the way of it all the time, I invite you to consider what you can do and say that will create more intimacy with the people in your life. How can you join with the people around you to become team mates?

Try it and let me know what you discover. You don’t even have to go all the way to Colombia (although you could—they are lovely people and they will be very amused by your excited clapping when you finally decide what you’d like to order for dinner!).

Tara

Get Real, like Sexy Real

Have a question for Tara? Have an idea for a Hump Day conversation? How about just some thoughts about this thing called life? Let us know here. We’ll answer back. We promise.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOGHFkXP3Rs

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.

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 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

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

January 1st – Ten Reasons Why

January 2, 2016

What have I done? Did I really decide to share my life with you every day? Doesn’t that require writing? A commitment? You see, I have this issue with ‘have to’s’, even when they start out as a ‘want to’. No kidding. Oh no… and then there’s that grammar and spelling thing. I’m a pretty good speller but I’m not a detail gal. Damnit, I’m going to have crazy ass mistakes out there for the world to see. Okay, well, the world is a big place so, correct that: I’m writing a blog post every day for the next 365 days for a lot of people to see.

Yes I do care if it’s read.

Yes I do care if it grows.

Yes I do care if there’s an audience for this.

Come on now, if I wanted to write for myself, I’d write in my journal or I’d go for a hike and talk to myself (and yes I do these things too). This is for you as much as it is for me. So here goes: I am writing a post to you, sharing my life with you, my insights, my stumbles, my FU’s, my ridiculousness and depth for the next 365 days because:

TEN REASONS WHY…

#1 – Having the world as an audience means there’s nowhere to hide, and with that, the gift of honesty continues to give generously – and likely more to me than to you.

#2 – I know that I can’t say that I actually KNOW anything, as in for sure, as in take it to my grave, and I’m so tired of the expert industry – of the insanity of people thinking they know what’s best for people they don’t even know. I mean, really? As if they could. Yeeeeesh. Nope. This blog is an invitation for you to come on in and engage with what I think, what I notice, what I want to put public. There’s freedom in being seen, and I hope my style stirs up a sense of wildness inside of you.

#3 – I do my best thinking when I’m not. Writing, speaking and doing gets me out of my head so that what I think can just show up. You’re my open stage for words to find my experiences. Thank you for listening.

#4 – Okay, that’s the fluffy truthful stuff, now on to the crap that dogs my trail: it’s a monstrous challenge for me to commit to any kind of a daily action. Yes I brush my teeth and sleep daily too, but even these I try to negotiate at times (spank me now). Hands down, I’m a gold medal champion at resistance. I even resist my resistance. This bloody blog is going to bring all the stuckness in my resistance story up to the surface. Blech. At newly 45 years old though, it’s probably about time. I wonder what I’ll find.

#5 – Chopping wood and carrying water is and has always been my most fulfilling accomplishment – because it isn’t one. Do you know what I mean or have I lost you? Chopping wood – like showing up simply because it’s what needed. Carrying water – like doing the do because it’s what’s asked for. It never occurred to me that I could set a goal (I hate goals) to chop wood and carry water. The adrenalin that goes with setting, striving and reaching goals has cost me dearly in my life. Sure I have a long list of accomplishments but who cares when there’s been little fulfillment. 365 days of blogging will become my daily practice. I might even be re-writing my story about goals by living them in a new way.

#6 – Inspiration is exhausting, but fulfillment is not. I’m not even exactly sure why this is on the list, I just know it needed to be said.

#7 – I like to write. Correction: I love to write. I love to listen to the words that come out of my fingertips. That’s joyful for me.

#8 – Words matter, and this is my way of saying so do I, so do you, so do we. Our stories are our past and our future. Oh boy, did I just say that I matter? I did didn’t I? That’s the name of my first book.

#9 – I am very comfortable being ‘seen’ in glimpses, you know through photographs or on stage etc…, but over time, not so much. Being seen is very different than being known. What would my life be like if I was known?

#10 – After 365 days of being in my own witness protection program: I suspect I’ll be more of who I came here as, and more of whom I designed to be. That’s cool. That’s really cool to me.

Here’s to 365 days of Joy. Oh wait a minute, I’m ahead of myself. That’s for today. Yes I am writing yesterday’s post today. Yesterday was January 1st, a holiday and I don’t believe in working on holidays. I need downtime too. So this list of Ten Reasons Why is for yesterday, today. Today I will also write today’s.

Still with me? Awesome. Stay.

xxT