Look inside yourself for guidance and direction

Our culture encourages us to look outside of ourselves on how to be. What direction are things moving? How do I fit? What is socially acceptable? But maybe our culture is more lost than you are. We look to each other and patterns of behavior and trends are formed. Someone declares that this is the new way to be. It has no anchor. The blind are leading the blind.

True direction for your life has to come from inside of you. This is the only hope for fulfillment or true happiness. What is important to you? What are you passionate about? What special talent do you have to offer to make the world a better place? These questions cannot be answered by someone outside of ourselves. Yet, that is where we tend to look.

It has to start with finding a way to look inside yourself. There is something inside yourself that is trying to guide you. You can access it though your feelings and dreams. You can pay attention to what you are drawn to and go explore it. You can mediate or pray. You can journal or express yourself through a project or art. You do can what you really feel like doing. You can trust your instincts.

But is has to start by looking in the right place... inside you. Only you knows what it feels like to be you. Why would you look to another?

Anger is always self-directed

Whenever we are angry, we are ultimately mad at ourselves. It could be for putting ourselves in a situation. For allowing someone to treat us poorly. For investing in someone that does not care about him or herself. For getting talked out of listening to ourselves. For doing things when we know better. For drawing ourselves back into an old behavioral pattern with someone or something.

But it is easier to project our anger onto someone or something else. We know how someone is, yet we choose to interact with them anyway. We allow them to treat us poorly. We get angry at them for the way they treat us.

But aren't we angry with ourselves for allowing them treat us poorly? Aren't we really angry at ourselves for interacting with a selfish or abusive person? Are we angry at ourselves for putting ourselves in another no-win situation?

We betrayed ourselves. Our issue is with ourself. The only way to heal it is to forgive ourselves and promise ourself to never do that to ourselves again. And then to care about ourselves enough to follow through.

So next time you are angry at someone. Look at yourself. Did you let yourself down? Can you commit and determine to not do that to yourself again? Do you care about yourself enough?

Personality is a choice

Our personality has a lot to do with how we respond to things. It is often based on our behavioral patterns, belief systems, and identity- the things we think that we are.

Wouldn't it be cool if we could go beyond these illusory and reactionary things and find our true personality? Then our personality would be an expression of our heart and who we really are.

Our personality would then be about how our soul is expressing itself at any given moment. Our personality would likely be more fluid and dynamic. It would be a pure expression of how I honestly see things at any given moment. What we stand for would remain consistent- so people can count on us and trust us.

So then our personality would be a choice. If I am tired of being cynical or intellectual, I could change it. If I am tired of always being nice and not rocking the boat, I could change that too. These things are likely not who we really are anyway.

So what do you choose your personality to be? Does it serve you? Maybe it is time for a personality make-over.

Feeling "Unlovable" on Valentine's Day weekend?- Don't believe it.

One of the most common and self-destructive self-beliefs is, "I am unlovable." We come by it honestly. When we were a child, if our own mother or father cannot love and accept us the way we are- we assume we are unlovable. Children, after all, are developmentally narcissistic; they make everything about them.

But the reality is, it had nothing to do with us. It had everything to do with the people that were not able to love us.

Anyway, if we carry this belief into adulthood (and most of us do), we keep recreating scenarios to reenforce that we are unlovable. We create self-fulfilling prophesies. We unconsciously love people that are unable to love us back. We push away people that are able to love us (see previous blog). We feel lonely on Valentine's Day.

Maybe it is time to scrap the "unlovable" belief system. If we become consciously aware of our patterns of loving people that are unavailable and/or pushing people that do love us away, we can make different choices.

By allowing people to love us, we disprove and eradicate the unlovable self-belief.

So this Valentine's Day, I invite you to look for signs that you are loved- rather than signs that you are not. I am willing to bet there are people all around you trying to love you. Can you see them?

Happy Valentine's Day.

Blessing the Lesson

We just experienced a painful lesson. We realize we did some damage. We hurt someone's feelings. We pushed someone away. We missed an awesome opportunity. We neglected someone or something that is precious to us. We cost ourselves or someone else a lot of money.

We are now beating ourselves up. "How could I be so careless? What was I thinking?"

Rarely do we see this as the opportunity that it is- to learn something. If we made this mistake, there is a good chance that we have made it before. It might even be a behavioral pattern that we keep doing over and over again. If we learn this lesson now, we never have to experience this pain again. We could actually welcome the opportunity to learn from this experience. I call this, "blessing the lesson."

If we had learned the lesson before, we would not have needed to experience it again. Unfortunately, it often takes some pain or damage to get our attention. And... how long do we have to punish ourselves before we are willing to let it go? Just make sure we learn something before we do- no need to do this one again. Why not have some compassion for ourselves? What brought us to making such a mistake? Anyway, what are our choices? We can continue to beat ourselves up or we can try to glean value from it.

"Blessing the lesson" is promising yourself to never make that same mistake again. That ought to be a good enough reason to forgive yourself. Don't cha think?

Help bring back New Year's Resolutions

No one likes New Year's resolutions anymore. They may be getting close to extinction. This year, I've already heard several people say, "I don't like resolutions. I never follow through with them anyway." Maybe the problem is not with the resolution- but the follow through. I like New Year's resolutions. It is right after the new light of the summer solstice. It is the perfect time to reinvent your life. It is the ideal time to make change.

So this year my thought is we could bring back New Year's resolutions. Of course the best way to bring them back is to make them and follow through with them. Then we can use all this social networking stuff to make resolutions so we can create motivation and momentum for each other. So I invite you to list your resolution after this post on Facebook, Twitter, or Blogger. Hopefully, together we can start a nice list.

I will start. I have three resolutions this year: 1. Aerobic exercise three times a week; 2. Meditate every morning (I am hitting about 4 times a week now); and 3. Do what I call "closure" every evening. Closure is asking yourself a series of 6 questions for each significant, impactful experience of the day- usually about 2 to 4.

Then our first goal is to make it through January. They say if you can do something for a month that you will create a new pattern for yourself. Once you get into February it is part of your routine.

So Happy New Year. That is, make a New Year's resolution and make it a HAPPY and NEW year for yourself.

Are you a giving person? Allow the circle to complete itself.

Generous, giving people often allow themselves to be taken advantage of. Sadly, when people do not appreciate your gift, it has limited benefit. It is wasted effort. "Completing the Circle" (below) is a technique to give without being taken advantage of and to have your gifts make a difference:

1. Detach from the outcome of what the person will do with your gift.

2. Give a give a free gift that has no strings. Lay out your best.

3. Objectively observe if the person offers a "put back" to complete the circle. It could just be a sincere thank you. It could be valuing what you gave and using it to help their life or other's lives. It could be reciprocating. It could be payment for services. It could be taking you to lunch. It could be making you a pie or giving you some of their canned peaches. It could be ordering pizza when you help them move. It is their intent that counts here. It does not have to be of equal weight to what you gave them.

4. Look for patterns. Usually there will be behavioral patterns that happen over and over again. Are you the giver, and they the taker? Do they find something wrong with your gift. Do they expect it? Do they appreciate it?

5. If the circle completes itself, you know that it is good place to give. If the circle does not complete itself, it may be time to discern if this is a good investment of your time and energy. There are likely other people who would gladly complete the circle with your gift- if you gave them the opportunity.

Happy giving and May the Circle be Unbroken (written by the Carter Family in 1928).