Chez Fabulous

Experimental Phase

2009-05-18T14:33:00.001-07:00

Apologies for the radio silence last week. As Fab Towers is plagued by technical difficulties, ie another dead laptop, we’re throwing caution to the wind and becoming even more techie by joining the flock of Twitterers.

As a bit of an online experiment, I Am Fabulous is going rather zen-like by becoming short-form for a while. You’ll find the updates here in on this page in the Twitter bar or you can follow on Twitter itself. There will be more mini-updates sharing things that inspire and delight, raising questions and sometimes just making you laugh, rather than offering a lengthier one-off piece every week.

Let’s see how it goes. Feel free to join in the debate, raise points of your own or demand a return to the old ways. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, mix it up yourself. Do something different, even if the way you’ve always done it still works for you. Who knows what you might discover?

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Heart Of The Matter

2009-05-04T15:24:00.000-07:00

This week, folks, we’re dealing with the universal question of self-esteem and the way it manifests in relationship. I could just do a riff on that, but having received a really touching message asking for some inspiration, it reminds me that some questions apply to us all. You may not be experiencing exactly these circumstances, but somewhere, somehow there’s a good chance that your own self-worth isn’t entirely weatherproof. If we take a look at one person’s story, we’ll see our own reflected there too. Time for a Coach Fab moment ...

Dear Coach Fabulous

I’m really not lucky when it comes to affairs of the heart. I’ve had two failed relationships and it really pains me, because until now, I still have nightmares. I was traumatised by the bad experiences that I had and could not move on. My first relationship was a failure, the man I married left me because we couldn't have a child and his mother was affecting all of his family decisions. It was extremely painful and left me wondering if I really deserved it.

After him, I met the second man in my life. I loved him so much, accepted him for what he was and we had two children. I have to admit that I fell in love easily with a person I really didn’t know. I lived with him for a year and was able to see his worst and best attitudes. I gave him my best and helped him financially to sustain the growing needs of our children.

Suddenly, I felt that he was trying to control me, trying to take away all of my money which was hard-earned and he was becoming jealous of my children. I felt his coldness, felt that he didn't care. He came home late and only talked about me being always wrong, criticizing my every move.
I almost lost my self-esteem entirely, and I felt extremely humiliated, even by his family. What’s worse is that I've heard from his sister that he didn’t love me and he informed them that I couldn't give him the things that he wanted. Unfortunately, those things he wanted were just material things that would make him happy and make him stay with me. I couldn't help but cry because I know that it's my fault that I fell in love so easily. Most of the time, I easily trust others.

I'm living as a solo parent now, with my mom who has been constantly helping me a lot, and somehow I feel I’ve lost the ‘spark’. I feel the stiffness of my heart and it shows in my eyes. I’ve been lonely for the longest time. Lonely not because I don’t have a partner in life, but because even now, I'm not completely healed from the bruises of my past relationships. He just left me, broken, no sorry, no apology, no nothing.

I need you to shed some light for me - please help me move on and forgive. I love my children more than my life and I hope that I will be able to give them love at all times even though their father left us and doesn’t even think of giving financial support.

Broken

Dear Broken

First of all, let’s clear up some terminology. You might be heart-broken, but you’re not broken. Not by a long shot. You’re a mother trying her very best to hold it together and provide for your children and even after all you’ve been through, you’re looking to find a way to forgive. That’s nowhere near broken in my book.

What shouts loudest to me from your letter is the heavy dose of blame you’ve laid upon yourself for the circumstances you’ve experienced. It’s not helping. Yes, it’s absolutely about taking responsibility for the part you’ve played in how you got to this point, but responsibility recognises that you did the best you knew how at the time and now seeks to find a way to learn from the experience. If you stay in blame (of yourself, the other person or fate), nothing is going to heal anytime soon.

It’s a really important step that you’ve chosen to ask for an outside viewpoint, because you know you don’t want to keep doing the same thing and getting the same results, or take a ‘why me?’ victim stance. It means that while you feel your heart is hardening, there’s a part of it that’s still open to possibility. Take great pride in the fact that your experiences have not made you bitter. You’ve struggled with them and they’ve challenged your trust, but you’re still willing to try to stay open-hearted.

Without blame, let’s look at the fundamental issues here. First of all, no relationship is a failure. We don’t always know why we get together with people. Sometimes they bring us joy, sometimes we learn tough lessons in relationship and not all of them are meant to last. The relationship you thought was the worst might well have been the one that taught you the most, even if it simply taught you that you’d never put up with that again.

There is a paradox going on here that we all fall prey to – that of like meeting like, but in a perverse way. We think that if we give all the time, that will be rewarded or met by a partner who is equally giving. Wrong. That kind of giving – which is in essence low self-worth manifesting as a way of ‘earning’ love – is actually energetically matched by someone who holds you in similar low esteem and is more interested in taking than giving.

There’s a comedy skit on YouTube called BadMatch.com that perfectly illustrates this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k2q1LQBwhg). The woman says to camera “I don’t think I’m worth very much” and her boyfriend chips in “She’s not”. That’s exactly the dynamic we’re talking about – the people in your life will reflect the deepest feelings you hold about yourself. At heart, whether you know it consciously or not, a part of you does not think you deserve any better. This is the part we are going to love into submission.

We all have that issue, to a greater or lesser degree. Don’t think that this is something you’re doing that’s different to or worse than anyone else. You think you fall in love too easily, but I suspect that your battered heart just wants to rest somewhere and feel loved, because there’s precious little love going on inside for yourself. Not having the deadbeat dad around to criticise you and make you feel even worse about yourself is a gift. Use this time to heal and don’t try to escape into another relationship too soon. I know you’re lonely, things are tough and you could really do with some comfort, but while you’re feeling so bad about yourself you’re unlikely to draw someone into your life who would treat you well and you certainly don’t want more of what you’ve already had.

The recipe to heal and ultimately to forgive, is to really get that it’s not about blame but about realisation. Think of this as relationship 101 – we are really only ever in relationship with our deepest opinion of ourselves. On a spiritual level, our partners hold up a mirror for us in which our own self-love is reflected. If we want better relationships, we need to hold ourselves in better esteem so that others will too. When we really get that our partner was matching some part of us where we feel unlovable, undesirable or unworthy, then we can get on with the business of healing and eventually forgiving. Don’t rush to forgiveness until you really feel it. That’s another detour where you can mask pain by pretending to have healed before you’ve actually let go of the hurt – sooner or later it will burst open again and it won’t be pretty. Clean the wound thoroughly before you put a band-aid on it. Be honest with yourself and don’t try to be ‘good’ or forgiving when you don’t feel like it.

What’s enormously hopeful here is that you have it in your power to make very different choices for yourself. Your spark has gone because your love for yourself has gone. All you’re seeing is failure and you’re blaming yourself for it. To move on from this, look at what’s gone before with clear vision. See the ways you abandoned yourself, kept on trying to please someone who treated you badly and then blamed yourself for not receiving love in return. Yes, you chose someone who didn’t know how to love, but we’ve all done that. The real issue is that you don’t know how to love yourself. Sacrifice is not love. There’s a reason why they tell parents to put on their own oxygen masks first in the event of a plane crash – you’re no good to anyone unless you take care of yourself.

How do you start loving yourself? That’s probably one of the toughest questions on this earth, but the answer comes in a million little ways. Self-worth is built stone-by-stone, moment by moment, in the way you speak to yourself, in the way you treat yourself, in the choices you make that help you to feel good about yourself. Here are some basic building blocks to be getting on with:

Every time you look in the mirror, find something to like about yourself. Cut the criticism dead. Just stop doing it. If it happens, make yourself find something to like. It’s just a bad habit you need to break. Just cutting out the self-attack will take the heat off. If someone else criticises you, don’t collude with them by believing it. For the most part people’s criticism says more about them and their fears than it does about you.
Watch how you abandon yourself and say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no’. Make a new habit of not doing things to please others when you don’t really want to do them. This is a big one. No excuses – just say no. Don’t be afraid to say ‘no’ to your children either – their self-esteem comes partly from how you model your own self-worth. Show them you value yourself so they will learn to do the same for themselves.

Start doing things you love, that make you feel really yourself. They don’t have to be expensive, but they do have to be fun.
Hang out with people who like you and show you that. Get your close friends to tell you what they love about you. Maybe you have some great qualities you don’t even realise you have.
Give yourself treats. Make them small and make them often. Make them treats of time, of luxury, of joy, of creativity – whatever it is that you need and value most. Each little gift to yourself sends a message to your deepest self that you really value it and honour it.
Get a mantra that you can roll out whenever you’re feeling a little flat. You already know the ‘I Am Fabulous’ one and you can make up one of your own. Even something as simple as ‘I love and value myself’ or ‘I am loving, lovable and loved’ will work. You can up the ante on a spiritual level by saying ‘I am beloved of God and beloved on this earth’ or go for a bit of a spark with ‘I’m a hot, sexy, lovable babe’. If you want to really go for broke, this one can have you turning heads in the street if you work it with focus and attention: ‘I am a goddess – a radiant, creative, magnetic being of divine beauty, divine love and divine power’. Get creative and work up one that suits you. Whenever self-doubt creeps in, roll out one of these.
Start a self-worth journal. Write up all the good stuff you’ve done, the things you like about yourself, the compliments you’ve received, what you really know to be true about yourself and return to it often when you’re not feeling at your best. Do the same with the things you’re grateful for – the more you focus on what’s good about you and your life, the more the spark will return.
When you’ve done the mental makeover, get a physical one. Re-jig your wardrobe, try a new hairstyle, commit to exercise, buy some new make-up – do whatever it takes to start feeling good about yourself and your appearance. Swap clothes with friends if money’s tight. We all have something lurking in the back of the wardrobe that would look a hell of a lot better on someone else.
Stay in your body and in the present moment. Your pain is in the past and you don’t want to live there. Exercise, massage, sitting in the sun, being in nature – all these things make us focus on how we feel in the here and now. Sensory and sensual things ground us and keep us out of head-spin. Resist the temptation to awful-ise, by projecting past pain into the future. Stay present and keep your focus on positive things.

The ways to love yourself are myriad and every single one of them is a choice – a choice to believe you’re worth taking care of, worth loving, worth giving time to, worth treating well. The more you make those kinds of choices, the more you build a kind of inner radiance that casts off those who don’t recognise your worth and draws to you those who do. You become lit from within and that’s totally irresistible.

Don't stay lonely waiting for Prince Charming to rescue you – get very clear that you are absolutely adorable and there will be no shortage of mirrors in the outside world keen to reflect that back to you. That’s not a fairy tale, it’s how attraction works. When you can truly see your own beauty, others cannot see anything else.

Coach Fabulous

So, Fabulistas, this week take a close look at your own current experience. If you’re having a tough time in a particular area of your life, take this opportunity to examine your beliefs about yourself. Could the people involved be reflecting back some unconscious belief you hold? What could this be showing you about your own deepest beliefs about yourself? Let this be the week you commit to giving yourself the love you deserve.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

When The Spirit Moves You

2009-04-27T14:22:00.000-07:00

Whenever things turn tough in my life, the only way I can get through it with any semblance of grace is to go within and re-connect more deeply with spiritual practice. Yeah, I love a good party and I’m shameless when it comes to shopping, but bottom line I feel most myself when I’m connected to something greater than myself. Holy paradox, Batman! It’s just the way it is – too much worldly focus and somehow we become less ourselves. By returning to an inner connection we come to know who we really are at heart.

And nothing entertains me more than getting a dose of sage spiritual advice – apart, that is, from a new episode of The Mentalist, featuring the world-class hottie, Mr Simon Baker – but I digress ... the point is that I found a fine collection of wisdom on matters of the spirit lurking about in an Oprah newsletter a while back and it seems timely to write about it today.

Most of all, I love the common thread that runs through these pieces of advice that transcends religion or background. Each of the spiritual leaders is speaking from his or her own point of reference, but the emphasis on stillness, awareness and compassion is shared by all of them.

Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth – the book much-touted by Oprah herself – says “To be spiritual is to be in touch, connected with that dimension of depth in yourself ... increasingly you become rooted in the aliveness and the fullness of the present moment. That’s to lead a spiritual life.”

Marianne Williamson, celebrated author of A Return To Love, talks about compassion, saying “The most important thing is that we learn how to forgive each other and that we learn how to love each other. How to live in the spirit of blessing and not blame.” She adds, “The spiritual path doesn’t always mean an easier path, but it means a choice – a choice that we’re making to try our best and be as loving as we can be.”

From a Jewish perspective, Rabbi Irwin Kula notes “You have to practise becoming alert, becoming more conscious, becoming aware. And you have to practise becoming kinder, more compassionate and more caring.” He encapsulates those principles beautifully by adding “You have to develop your head, your heart and your hands.”

The advice of the Christian minister, Rev Ed Bacon, is to use the world to bring you back to the stillness within. He prescribes, “To be in nature, to connect with the arts and to connect with ritual. It is in moments of serenity, stillness, that we experience something much larger, transcendent, more cosmic than we are.”

The final blast of inspiration comes from that ace spiritual dude, Rev Michael Beckwith. For him, spirituality is all about soul. He says, “When one really begins to feel into the spiritual dimension of their beings, they bump into love. They bump into beauty. They bump into compassion.” When that happens, and you become grateful, then, he adds, “You see potential. You see possibilities. Then you become an open vehicle for more inspiration, more wisdom, more guidance coming from the spiritual part of your being.”

I love that thought – bumping into love, bumping into beauty, bumping into compassion – and the idea of becoming an open vehicle for inspiration. I’m going to throw in an added bonus here of a great phrase I picked up from Sandra Anne Taylor’s show on Hay House Radio the other day. She suggests you use this to summon up any quality that you feel is lacking in your life right now or that feels like to much of a leap for you to believe is possible for you. Add anything you like to the end of this mantra: “I open to my spirit’s capacity for ....”. Go for it and call in love, joy, peace, stillness, serenity, abundance, confidence – whatever you need.

This week, it’s a no-brainer. Try getting quiet and bumping into love. Or dial it up with the new ‘I open to my spirit’s capacity’ mantra. Give it a whirl and you could get fabulous results. What are you waiting for?

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Can't Stand The Heat?

2009-04-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

Some characters loom large in the public imagination for reasons we cannot always explain. Just being a bad boy surely isn’t enough to hold our attention over time, so it was fascinating to take a closer look last night at the persona presented by the culinary world’s enfant terrible, Marco Pierre White, currently giving his best Don Corleone impression in the latest series of Hell’s Kitchen.

For those of you who aren’t obsessed with foodie reality shows, Marco has taken over the reins of the programme from his one-time protégé, Gordon Ramsay, injecting it with new vigour and his own particularly curious taste in PLO-style headgear. Whereas at one point the student had become the master, now the master is back with a vengeance, striding the set like a culinary colossus – albeit a notably quirky one. When leading his team of celebrity rookies in the kitchen, Marco’s speech takes on a strange and heavily-laboured dramatic intonation, as he attempts to imbue himself with gravitas via the most extraordinarily ponderous pauses at the oddest of moments. It’s like he’s attempting to read autocue while trying not to pass out, and comes off as just plain weird, rather than the threatening mafia don impression we have to assume he had in mind. Coupled with the Yasser Arafat style of head-scarf he sports, it’s so not a good look.

However, to give him credit, the man is obviously one hell of a teacher in the kitchen. He’s managed to whip a motley crew of celebs with no discernible culinary skills into a cohesive team capable of preparing restaurant-quality meals for sizeable crowds in under a week. It’s an amazing job he’s done. Having seen previous series at this early stage, my hopes were not high for what would be on the menu last night or even that we would have been served at all. Quite frankly, I’d contemplated eating before I arrived and, time permitting, would probably have done just that. So it was an extraordinarily pleasant surprise to sit down to an amazing foie gras, followed by perfectly well-cooked veal. Best of all, though, was the theatre unfolding at the pass, liberally sprinkled with classic MPW expletives, incessant chivvying and general berating of his raw recruits.

Some handled Marco better than others. My money’s on Ms Dynamite to win. She’s cool-headed, knows how to stand her ground and seems a genuinely lovely person to boot. It takes guts to give it to MPW straight and she’s stood up for herself (and the team) calmly and assertively, stepping forward when others have stayed silent in self-preservation. It’ll be a travesty if she doesn’t pick up the prize at the end.

So what have I gleaned from the experience, apart from a fun night celeb-spotting and the chance to get up close (but not quite personal) with the rock star of the restaurant world? Simply put, attitude is everything. I watched a good friend of mine go up to the pass to talk to Marco and saw him try out his best intimidating act on her, which didn’t wash at all. It was very clear in the moment that his was an act, a bit of theatre, but one that he does exceedingly well. She wasn’t phased at all, so it was rather like watching the irresistible force meet the immovable object. Not a clash, but a moment of respect between two forces of nature. Now that was definitely worth the price of admission.

Later on we saw the more relaxed, charming off-camera Marco and that was a whole other person – with a whole other (natural) way of speaking. Of course the on-camera and off-camera split personality is a function of show-business, but it reminds us just how we create personas for the various functions in our own lives – work, home, friends and family. We are rarely the same person in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes this is a necessity for professional reasons, but largely it’s because we become adaptive to our environments, creating personas that we believe will be helpful in keeping us safe or advancing our desires in the world. Sometimes these personas help us on to great success and sometimes they trap us into inauthentic relationships and experiences. Even the ones that have helped in the past can become outmoded and limit our ability to express ourselves authentically as we grow and change.

This week, folks, I’d suggest you take a look at the theatre going on around you. What roles do you play? Do they serve you or do you feel restricted by them? Are you falling for the myth of a persona someone else is projecting? Are you allowing yourself to be intimidated by someone or are you the intimidator? If you step back and look carefully, are you experiencing people as they are or how they would like you to see them? How do you think the people around you are experiencing your persona? Are you aware of how differently you behave in different circumstances or around different people? Which of the roles you play feels more authentically you? Can you feel relaxed simply being yourself, rather than playing to the crowd? What would it take to make that happen?

Put your outmoded personas through a baptism of fire and burn off anything that’s not authentically you. This week light a bonfire of all the vanities that hold you back. We all love a good show, but never at the expense of sacrificing who you truly are.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Venus Retrograde

2009-04-14T14:57:00.001-07:00

Due to a rather busy schedule and a slightly over-enthusiastic appreciation of Stoli and cranberry all-too-recently, this week’s I Am Fabulous will be necessarily brief. To wit, I am shamelessly plagiarising the work of Robert Ohotto, the rather fabulous (and rather hot) intuitive astrologer. Well, I say plagiarising, but quite frankly I’m just going to pass on some sage insights from his newsletter, duly credited. Can’t be too naughty, even when it’s late and I’m on deadline …

For those not up with the astro-lingo, Venus retrograde is the period when the planet that symbolises self-worth, money, relationships and values appears to move backwards in the sky. It’s not actually happening that way – it just looks like it from our viewpoint on earth. When that happens, symbolically we experience what the planet represents through a kind of filter where things seem to be less clear in the outer world and we become more reflective about those issues. It’s a collective experience where we all get a chance to have a re-think and re-focus about who we are and what we value.

Ohotto sets out what’s required of us during this period, saying that this time “demands that you come to know what is personally right and wrong for you as you continue to mature into your authenticity and how that is measured against the values that society and culture feeds you daily. Thus, this retrograde period brings with it a time during which we all must reassess where in our lives our values are in need of refreshing. I think it's important to recognize the ways we are continually told by our media and culture that we should continue to find value in the same thing for the whole of our lives. For example, we are told to keep valuing our youth and fight aging; keep valuing your wedding vows, though they were taken by an older version of yourself that has grown beyond them; keep valuing the stability of your job though it has become claustrophobic; or keep valuing your purpose as equating your job though you just lost yours.”

He adds, “Each Venus retrograde asks us to take forty days and deeply look at our values and their relevance to our soul's current needs in a certain area of our life. And with Venus currently retrograding back in Aries, the discord we may be feeling signifies the amount of distance that has formed between our ego and the fundamental core passions, values, and higher creative inspirations of our soul. It's time to risk for new beginnings and take courage.”

The good news is that this cycle started in early March and will be over by the end of this week, so if you feel like your self-worth has taken a beating during this period you can relax because the finishing-line is in your sights. What would be a total waste, however, is if you experienced all the pain without finding the gift hidden in the dark. So here are a few questions that Ohotto suggests you take the time to reflect upon to gain insight on the issues this period was meant to highlight.

Do your relationships allow you to keep your own individuality to participate in interdependent dynamics of loving yourself and others?

What affirms your life and gives you a sense of personal value, fulfillment, beauty, and pleasure? What do you find attractive? What turns you on? Are these things being challenged for review?

What kind of experiences do you tend to attract in love relationships? How do you like to be affirmed in relationships? What is your ideal mate like? What archetype would that be defined as and do you play the opposite role in your relationship myths (Like the Knight and the Damsel?)

What do you value most in friendships? Are you finding yourself competitive and jealous of others that seem to possess what you feel you lack or would like to have? How do you manifest that urge? Have you been scapegoating others with your issues or have others been doing the same to you?

How do you respond to being ignored? Are you currently discovering that you need a lot of external attention to validate your own worth?

Are the choices you make in life in alignment with your values? Or do they betray what you say you value and reveal something else?

What do you consider to be your worth? What will you sell yourself for? What can buy you? What defines your honor code?

Before Venus starts heading direct again on Friday (which, interestingly enough, is traditionally known as her very own day of the week), make sure you take a few moments to reflect on your experiences with others over the past six weeks and how you’ve dealt with that in terms of your own self-worth. Those experiences – for good or for ill – should also have shown up what’s important to you and how much your life is in alignment with those values. Where it’s out of kilter, get on it – make those changes you know you need to do. Mythologically speaking, Venus is one hot babe, with a pretty clear understanding of her own beauty and worth. A rather fabulous approach worthy of emulation, I’d have thought.

For a little extra inspiration, here’s a translation of the Hafiz poem, Venus Just Asked Me, by Daniel Ladinsky …

Perhaps
For just one minute out of the day
It may be of value to torture yourself
With thoughts like,
"I should be doing
A hell of a lot more with my life than I am
Cause I'm so damn talented."
But remember,
For just one minute out of the day.
With all the rest of your time,
It would be best
To try
Looking upon your self more as God does.
For He knows
Your true royal nature.
God is never confused
And can see Only Himself in you.
My dear,
Venus just leaned down and asked me
To tell you a secret, to confess
She's just a mirror who has been stealing
Your light and music for centuries.
She knows as does Hafiz,
You are the sole heir to
The King.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Change Begins Within

2009-04-06T14:27:00.001-07:00

This weekend Radio City Music Hall hosted a most unusual benefit concert, staged by the David Lynch Foundation, with headliners Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Moby, Sheryl Crow and Ben Harper. The funds raised will support the DLF’s aim of teaching one million underprivileged children how to meditate. As the director David Lynch himself says “The more you meditate, the better life gets … it’s really the most fantastic experience to meditate, then out of meditation in whatever you’re doing – that just gets better, more ideas flow. Negativity inhibits creativity – it squeezes the hose, the big conduit of ideas. So when negativity lifts, we expand consciousness, negativity starts going away. All these things that are restricting us become less – you work in freedom with all these positive qualities growing.” He wants to make the Transcendental Meditation – made famous when the Beatles met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 60s - that has made such an impact on his life “available to any student anywhere in the world who wants it”, so they can begin the process of change within themselves. George Harrison – also a lifelong meditator –who staged the first major musician’s benefit, Concert for Bangladesh, in the 70s would be mightily proud of this one.

Another celeb doing their bit for a greater sense of self-awareness was JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, who gave the Harvard Commencement address last summer. With easy humour and a total lack of pretension, she reminded the privileged Harvard graduates of the fringe benefits of failure. Her rags-to-riches story of impoverished single mother on welfare becoming a multi-millionaire is well-known. Less well-known is the value she places on the difficult times and how much she credits them with shaping who she later became.

She recounted “I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairytale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to redirect all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter I whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

Telling the students that some failure in life is inevitable – unless they live so cautiously as to not make it worth living at all – Rowling added “Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected. I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies. The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

At a time when we have all been challenged by failure and loss, it’s a timely reminder that something stronger and more beautiful grows within when outer circumstances are challenging. As the French philosopher, Albert Camus, said “In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer”. You can only know the terrible beauty of those words when you have experienced that winter personally.

In our collective winter, it helps to see a purpose behind what we’re experiencing. Leaders in new thought, Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra, are about to run a workshop on weathering tough times, entitled ‘The Soul of Success’. As they describe it, “The economic recession offers us a unique opportunity to understand the difference between money and wealth. Money is a symbol that expresses how we value ourselves and others and also represents society’s values at a particular time and place in history. Wealth, on the other hand, is a state of consciousness that represents generosity of spirit that translates into material abundance.”

So, with a stellar line-up of musicians telling us change comes from within, JK Rowling reminding us that the gift of failure is clarity and the Williamson-Chopra event stressing wealth as a generosity of spirit, what else can we do this week but go within and ask ourselves what we really value? How wealthy are we in what we already have? If failure or loss is stripping away the inessential, what needs to loom large in your life? How can you find the gold in the dark, the gifts in the loss, the peace that arises from having survived the winter? We’re not going through this to come out the other end exactly the same. We’re collectively going through a value-shift, so what is it that you may have thought important that you now need to release? What needs to take its place? Redefine your own experience of wealth this week. Honour what is truly fabulous.

Just as I finished writing this, I opened today’s Note From the Universe, from www.tut.com, which is spookily on-message …

These are the times when hopes are dashed and chaos abounds, that golden opportunities, prized ideas, and new friends emerge into the view of all, but are only seen by the few who look.

Let's go crazy,
The Universe

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Play It Forward

2009-03-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

You got the science bit on Tikkun Olam, ‘repairing the world’, last week and now it’s time for the fun part – playing it forward. Random acts of kindness have been around for a while now, immortalised in celluloid in the film Pay It Forward, but now entrepreneurs are finding new ways to formalise the process and make it easier to join with others for the full internet-savvy virtual experience.

In Canada, there’s a new site in beta called http://www.akoha.com/, where you can buy a set of cards with missions on them, like ‘buy someone a cup of coffee’ or ‘donate an hour of your time’ or ‘give someone a book’ and then start handing out those missions to your friends. As the mission is completed, you and your friends get karma points and the cards stay in play, as the recipients are encouraged to play it forward to others. As they do, they can blog about how they’ve done it, so you can see the entire history of a single card and who it’s affected on the Akoha site. It’s a genius idea that’s still in its early stages of development, but it concretises a move towards greater compassion for others, particularly at a time when we all realise we’re in the same boat.

On this side of the pond, Danny Wallace started http://www.join-me.co.uk/ to create a karma army some five years ago, with the intention of creating a network of people to give random acts of kindness. Now a worldwide phenomenon with thousands of members, it promotes where members are encouraged to do good deeds on Fridays – as well as any other day of the week.

ARK clothing is another socialpreneur enterprise, set up by an 18-year old Irish guy who got the idea to create clothing with acts of random kindness (hence ARK) written in to them. Beyond the small acts which wearers are asked to perform each time they use the clothing, ARK also encourages larger acts of kindness in communities and will consider supporting them financially too through a profit-related fund.

This week, become part of this new groundswell of compassion and do something spontaneous and kind. Here are the fabulous rules:

· Do something nice for yourself. It doesn’t happen that often.
· Surprise someone you love with something that doesn’t cost money – time, kisses and recycling gifts are all permitted.
· Shock someone you don’t know at all with a small act of thoughtfulness – pass on a ticket you can’t use, share some food at lunchtime, buy a coffee for someone sitting on their own, chat with someone who looks like they could use a little support.

Be creative. Be kind. Play it forward.

The Light Divine

2009-03-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

Here’s one I meant to write earlier. This notion has been floating around in my mind since I watched the deeply impenetrable and totally frustrating film, Bee Season, a couple of weeks ago. In it one of the main characters is a lecturer in Kabbalah – played by the world’s most famous Buddhist, Richard Gere – who is obsessed with the work of the 13th century Spanish Kabbalist, Abraham Abulafia, whose work focused on striving to attain mystical experience through intense focus on Hebrew letters. Through special breathing and repetition of these letters, the mystic then opens the gate to prophecy and a form of illumination in the body and the sense of another spirit presence, which he describes as “and you shall feel another spirit awakening within yourself and strengthening you and passing over your entire body and giving you pleasure”. Sadly, I know this through my own research, not from the film, which raises more questions than it answers.

A key theme in the film is Tikkun Olam, meaning ‘repairing the world’, attributed to 16th century Kabbalist, Isaac Luria. Luria taught a creation myth where God formed vessels to hold the Divine Light, but when it poured through them, they shattered. Our world consists of myriad shards of these light-bearing vessels, and our role is to reunite the scattered light, by raising the sparks back to Divinity and restoring the broken world. Tikkun Olam embraces both inner and outer aspects – embodying the divine light by liberating the spark within and sharing that light in service to others. Our work of transformation is to build a soul strong enough to carry the Divine Light and aid in the repairing of the world.

Kabbalists have, for millennia, sought to invoke this Divine Light, meditating on and opening to the light of the Shekhinah, the feminine spirit and ‘dwelling place’ or ‘spirit of glory’. By raising the quality of our own personal energy, we begin to affect those around us even before we take action. Tikkun Olam places the emphasis firmly on the spiritual aspect of our lives, as the strong centre from which we first take in the Divine Light in order to then share it with others. With every small act of kindness, with each small moment of presence and practice, with every heartfelt prayer, we are offering ourselves in service to the reparation of the world.

However we may come utilise the Divine Light, it is clear that it is best evoked in a peaceful and meditative state, rather like the courting of the muse. As with all mystical energies, the Shekhinah must welcomed fittingly. Metaphorically, she is embraced and received as a bride. In the Zohar, we are instructed that “One must prepare a comfortable seat with several cushions and embroidered covers, from all that is found in the house, like one who prepares a canopy for a bride. For the Shabbat is a queen and bride … one must receive the Lady with many lighted candles, many enjoyments, beautiful clothes and a house embellished with fine appointments”. This welcoming of the divine presence as Shekhinah, the Shabbat Bride, continues to this day.

In Islamic culture, Sakina is found in the Qur’an as the spirit of tranquillity and the peace of reassurance – God’s presence the world. One verse reads “He it is who sent down his Sakina into the hearts of the believers that they might add faith unto their faith”. Christianity speaks of a similar indwelling spirit of the Lord, generally known as the Holy Spirit. As in Judaism, this spirit is linked with prophecy. In 2 Peter 121, we find “For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”.

So our Judeo-Christian culture is redolent with the imagery of an indwelling spirit of God, that – when it descends upon us – brings illumination. It may seem a little confusing that this spirit both dwells within us and descends upon us. If it helps, I find it easier to imagine that the descending spirit lights up the divine spark which is already within us. When we invoke Grace, we allow what is divine to be illuminated within us and another shard is joined together in the healing of the world.

This week, try getting spiritualised and adding some Grace to your own inner light. Be peaceful and imagine the descent of Divine Light illuminating the spiritual beauty of who you truly are, as you share that light with others. Then take it to the street and share your grace in small kindnesses. Live your practice of Tikkun Olam in small ways every day and watch how your light brings out the light in others.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Wipeout

2009-03-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks, some random bug has wiped me out this week, so it’s about all I can do to type a few words. By way of apology, here are some of my favourite recent Notes From The Universe – you can subscribe to daily updates of inspiring messages at www.tut.com.

- Just curious, when was the last time you looked into a mirror and addressed yourself as "Gorgeous," "Magnificent," or "Sublime"? It matters.

- Never underestimate how many friends you have, how close you are, and how much fun you're going to have. Because, as you've seen throughout your entire amazing life, one usually gets exactly what they've been estimating.

- Sometimes when you're ready for a change, and you kind of know it but won't admit it, when it comes, not only are you surprised, but it hurts. Yeah, I know that doesn't help much, unless you remember the "ready" part. Because there is simply no change that might ever transpire in time and space that happens before you're fully able to use it for your own growth and glory.

- If you look closely enough, intent upon understanding those things that cause you great pain and consternation, ultimately, I promise you, you'll find great joy and illumination.

- Simply imagine happiness, your own happiness. Feel the smile stretching across your face, notice the lightness in your step, hear the sparkle in your voice, and all things, material and spiritual, will dance to the beat of your drums.

- Haven't I always shown up with the right idea, at the right time, to spin your head and rock your world, when you least expected it? Give yourself this rest you've earned. You're my butterfly.

- Until you dream there isn't a mold. Until you speak, there isn't a promise. And until you move, there isn't a path. Yet do these simple things and you totally own me.

- No one ever regrets raising the bar, ever, ever, ever. Scare yourself.

Normal service will be resumed next week. Be fabulous.

Sweat The Small Stuff

2009-03-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

Day-to-day, we all know it’s the small pleasures that make up a happy life – and apparently it’s the small joys that make all the difference in relationship too. I’ve seen a few interesting pieces crop up recently giving men’s perspective on relationship and, in each, case it was always the small stuff that lit them up when thinking about their partners. It reminded me that life is about the details, the small kindnesses, not just about the big picture.

In one particularly adorable article about ‘What Men Aren’t Telling Women’ for O magazine, Chris Abani writes “We are very insecure about how we look and and what you really think about us, and we are excited when you do small, nice things for us like make coffee or come with us to the barber or just buy us a good book. We’ve been trained never to show this side to you, but it is there.”

It’s not exactly a cause for celebration to know that the opposite sex is as insecure as we are, but it is certainly charming to see the same level of vulnerability at play on both sides. He adds, “We are desperate to please you because we know you are far sexier and more beautiful than you will ever admit to yourself, and we’re confused (but extremely happy) as to why you like us. Here’s the thing: you rescue us every day in small, quiet ways, so why not in this way? Let us into your mystery, tell us how you would like to be loved, show us how to see you, really see you.” I bet he had them queueing up at the door after that one.

Esquire’s Editor in Chief, David Granger, waxed lyrical on a similar theme, when asked what men like most about women, saying “Oh Jesus. We love it when you sit down on the side of the bed and kiss us for no reason. We can’t get over that. We love it when you ask us for advice on something that really matters to you. We love the way you smell. We love the way you smell right after exercising. We love the way you look just before you wake up in the morning. We love it when you argue with us about something – movies, sport, politics – that really doesn’t matter. We love the way you will fill a silence at a dinner party, and we love the way you give us guidance when it comes to our mothers. We love the way you look when you’re half-dressed or half-undressed. We love your certainty, even when we’re sure you’re wrong”.

At no point in that list did I spot any reference to weight, fake boobs or any of the million other contrivances we women think will make us more attractive to men - doesn’t that just make you want to hang up your body fascism and general neurosis about how you look?

I love this comment from a woman with a much younger husband, when asked about the thorny issue of aging. She responded “When you’re with a younger person, you have to think ‘What’s going to happen in five years? Ten? Is he going to leave me?’ Your answer could be ‘I’m going to get a facelift’. My answer is ‘I’m going to be such a beautiful person inside that it’s going to shine through to the outside’.” Right on, sister.

This week, ladies, we’re taking a holiday from neurosis and deciding to be kind and appreciative to ourselves and the ones we love. We’re going to do small, kind things for us and for them. Let’s sweat the small stuff and get happy.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Spiritual Liberation

2009-03-02T13:56:00.000-08:00

There aren’t too many writers I absolutely adore. There are great books I’ve really enjoyed, but to be honest I’ve not always been blown away by the writing style. Then there are those people with a turn of phrase that’s so economical and sparse yet they manage to make every word highly evocative – Alice Sebold is top of my list for that skill – and there are writers who manage to convey great depth and soulfulness yet still remain accessible. That’s why I love Michael Beckwith’s work. I’d read a few of his essays long before The Secret made him a household name. Even in a collection of works by much more well-known spiritual writers, his words stood out. There’s something in the way he writes that makes me feel he’s the real deal.

Having taken a sneaky peak at his latest book, Spiritual Liberation, I’m starting to understand why he gets his message across so well. The man has been there and done it, suffered and screwed up, had a life-changing mystical experience and gone on to make a real difference in the world from his own authentic experience. That’s what makes his spirituality so attractive – it’s not pious. He says himself, “My central message is not about religiosity or churchianity. It is about aspiring toward spiritual liberation, which I define as becoming free from the narrow confines of fear, doubt, worry and lack, and living instead from a conscious awareness of one’s Authentic Self, one’s true nature of wholeness”.

He adds, “Spiritual liberation results from discovering and expressing the intrinsic qualities of enlightened consciousness that have been ours since the moment we came into existence. Simply put, all that is required to live up to our highest potential is already inside us, awaiting our conscious activation. Living up to our potential is about becoming more ourselves, more of who and what we are as awakening beings … Growing into spiritual adulthood has to do with understanding that we are here to attune ourselves to the evolutionary impulse that governs the universe, which is infinite, conscious, and seeks to articulate itself by means of us. We live in a universe where nothing remains static. All that exists has an observable impulsion to become more fully itself. An acorn seed, when planted in good soil and provided the proper nutrients, ultimately evolves into its fullest potential as an oak tree. Likewise, in order to fully evolve, the Spirit-seed at the core of our being must be cultivated. We too must till the soil of our consciousness with spiritual tools and inner nutrients that enable us to fully deliver our gifts, talents and skills.”

Bringing forth the Authentic Self is rarely a straight and narrow path – providing plenty of twists along the way – as Beckwith amply demonstrates in his own life story. In his younger days, he dealt drugs to pay for his own recreational use, until a mystical experience plunged him into an exploration of Eastern religions and the metaphysical, at which point the desire to carry on with that lifestyle left him. However, he decided to sell off a final delivery and was busted. Intuitively – despite all evidence to the contrary – he knew he wouldn’t end up going to jail, which proved to be the case when the charges were dismissed on a technicality. From that point on, he was determined to serve the spiritual force he calls ‘Love-Beauty’ in the world.

I have great admiration for those who are willing to lay their lives bare in order to help others. Too many people in the spiritual arena portray themselves as saints and are all too often found to have feet of clay. The reality is that if you’re human it’s a bit of a no-brainer to realise that you’re not perfect and – here comes another realisation that doesn’t require you to be a rocket scientist – perfection is pretty much unattainable anyway. Striving to be perfect just adds more layers to the mask of persona and takes you further away from authenticity. Allowing yourself to reveal the beauty that lies within you already is a far more healthy – and far less pressured – approach.

This week, give up trying hard and start letting yourself be who you really are. Spurn impossible standards and get a sense of humour about your own cock-ups. Embrace being human and love your divine spark. Give yourself an opportunity to discover what makes you feel more ‘you’. Give yourself the good soil and proper nutrients that it takes to unveil your true potential. Take a load off - you don’t need to be anything other than who you really are. That’s got to be a relief!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Universal Responsibility

2009-02-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

Due to some rather pressing deadlines, this week’s I Am Fabulous is brought to you by the Dalai Lama, from whose book, Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, these words are taken:

“As human beings, we are all the same. So there is no need to build some kind of artificial barrier between us. At least my own experience is that if you have this kind of attitude, there is no barrier. Whatever I feel, I can express; I can call you 'my old friend'. There is nothing to hide, and no need to say things in a way that is not straightforward. So this gives me a kind of space in my mind, with the result that I do not have to be suspicious of others all the time. And this really gives me inner satisfaction, and inner peace.

“So I call this feeling a 'genuine realisation of the oneness of the whole of humanity'. We are all members of one human family. I think that this understanding is very important, especially now that the world is becoming smaller and smaller. In ancient times, even in a small village, people were able to exist more or less independently. There was not so much need for others' co-operation. These days, the economic structure has completely changed, so that modern economies, relying on industry, are totally different. We are heavily dependent on one another, and also as a result of mass communication, the barriers of the past are greatly reduced.

“Today, because of the complexity of interdependence, every crisis on this planet is essentially related with every other, like a chain reaction. Consequently it is worthwhile taking every crisis as a global one. Here barriers such as 'this nation' or 'that nation', 'this continent', or 'that continent' are simply obstacles. Therefore today, for the future of the human race, it is more important than ever before that we develop a genuine sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. I usually call this a sense of 'universal responsibility'.”

There’s so much to explore in these three short paragraphs – and wish I had the time to do it – that I suggest you really savour them. They might make you wonder if our current crisis is actually leading us toward that greater understanding of how we are all one human family. With that in mind, how could you share your own burden with others or help them share theirs? With whom could you be more honest or more straightforward? How could you extend your trust? Have a week of greater vision, looking beyond the purely personal into how your actions contribute to the greater whole.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Creative Genius

2009-02-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

Oh, I do love finding a new resource to plunder. This week it’s www.ted.com, which has loads of inspiring talks from people in the fields of technology, entertainment and design – ie creative – people, which grew out of an annual conference of the same name. As they say themselves, TED is “a clearing-house that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and others”. Get thee to TED post-haste for mucho inspiracion.

Of course the talk that caught my immediate attention was one by Elizabeth Gilbert, writer of Eat, Pray, Love. If you’ve not read it, you’ve missed out on one of the most charming memoirs of the modern age, recounting her haphazard journey - post relationship breakdown - through Italy (to eat), India (to pray) and Indonesia (where she found love). Her book has been an enormous international success, leading her to discover just how fear-based most people’s reaction is to what might come next for her. The question she is now most asked is “Aren’t you afraid you’re never going to top that?”. As she remarks with searing honesty, “It’s exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me - that’s the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine in the morning”.

As a coping mechanism, Elizabeth decided it was necessary to create some psychological separation between herself and her work, finding inspiration in the creative process as it was viewed in ancient Greece and Rome. As she points out, in those eras creativity “was this divine attendant spirit that came to the artist from a distant and unknowable source”. The Greeks called them daimon and the Romans called them genius. They believed those spirits lived in the walls of the artists studios and gave them the inspiration for their work. The Renaissance shifted the focus of inspiration, making it a human endeavour, thereby endowing artists with genius rather than acknowledging a divine source. With the creative power now attributed to individuals, we have the birthplace of performance anxiety and the tortured artistic temperament. When the weight of inspiration passed from the divine to the human, we created a load far greater than any of us could bear.

Now, thankfully, we are beginning to make a reconnection with the ancient idea of a creative muse. It certainly helps to open the creative floodgates when you’re not torturing yourself with self-doubt and you realise you’re only responsible for part of the equation. You get to show up for the work and the divine gets to do its part with the inspiration. I think that’s a fair exchange.

Elizabeth tells a great story about having interviewed the musician, Tom Waits, who’d spent most of his career wrestling with the creative demons within him, struggling to bring forth what he believed to be springing from inside himself. As he mellowed, he started to take a different viewpoint. One day, as he was driving along the freeway in LA, he heard a fragment of a melody in his head, but had no way to write it down. At that point, feeling the old anxiety, wondering if he was going to lose it and feeling the usual self-doubt, he took a different tack, looking up to the sky and saying “Excuse me, can you not see that I’m driving?”. He thought to himself something like ‘I have no way of writing this down, so if you want it to take shape in the world, either save it for later or give it to another songwriter’. At that point, his focus shifted from tortured artist to caretaker of a divine inspiration.

Elizabeth Gilbert says she felt something similar in writing her follow-up book to Eat, Pray, Love. One day, having a hard time writing – and hating what she’d written – she said to the divine “Listen, you and I both know if this book is not brilliant, it’s not entirely my fault – if you want it to be better, you’ve got to show up. For the record, I showed up for my part of the job”.

Those stories remind me a lot of the best book I’ve ever read on the creative process – The War Of Art, by Steven Pressfield. He covers very similar territory, stressing the importance of showing up at the keyboard, the canvas or whatever is your creative medium. We can’t wait for the muse to strike before we begin our part of the deal – we need to show up and be doing our part of the job for the creative spirits to kick in and do theirs.

So, this week, folks, decide what your art is and do the work. If you’re waiting for divine inspiration before you begin a painting, a novel, a dance, whatever – start showing up and doing it, trusting that the divine will play along with you. Remember that if you want to be creative, you don’t have to be a tortured soul – all art is co-creation and the beauty and success of it is not all entirely in your hands. Take some pressure off and play with the pure fun of exploring your relationship with your fabulous creative genius.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Feeling Lucky?

2009-02-09T16:37:00.001-08:00

As a regular reader, you'll know the writing process – as I experience it – tends to be rather serendipitous. If I hang around at the keyboard long enough, something tends to turn up. This evening, feeling rather frazzled from the first day on a new project, inspiration appeared to be in short supply. Still, using my tried and true technique, I hung around for a bit and exactly what I needed dropped in my lap.

First to arrive was this quote, from Roald Dahl, which I was mentally ear-marking for another day – “Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

Hmm … I knew this post was going to end up being something around intuition and the need to stay awake for new opportunities, but here was the first concrete evidence that would be the way it would go, apart from my own current experience. What I’m working on right now came through a conversation, rather than actively seeking it through the normal channels. It came from staying open to possibility. That I chose to pursue it further came from an inner knowing that this was somehow right for me, even if it didn’t tick all the boxes on the surface.

Before this happened, I found myself dwelling on a Sufi meditation from my training as a spiritual counsellor – one where you acknowledge the past, feel yourself grounded in the present and feel the pull of the future. I had asked for the pull of the future to make itself known and Voila!, it did. Some ancient magic in that practice, I think.

So, back to tonight. I was mulling over what to write, when I came across some research on making your own luck. Only a few days ago I’d read a charming story of a couple who’d dated in their teens, both relocated to the States and found each other again when the guy suddenly emailed out of the blue after 13 years. They re-connected instantly and are now engaged to be married. What’s fascinating about the story is that the woman had left a relationship she described as having “broken down to a level of unworkable disrespect” and decided to live a happy single life rather than be lonely in a relationship. Her fiancé-to-be had gone through a ‘life’s too short’ moment when his father had a cancer scare and decided to grasp the nettle on a connection he’d long felt was ‘the one’, despite years of no contact. Both had made choices affirming what they wanted from life and now they were reaping the benefits.

Then the luck research recounted a similarly charming tale of a couple who’d met in the dry cleaners because the woman was chatty and flirty, because she’d just secured a hard-won tenure and now decided it was time to live life rather than work. So, in case you aren’t already sensing a theme, it’s time to get with the programme by following hunches and anticipating that good things will be coming your way. Here’s the science bit, so concentrate …

Richard Wiseman PhD – who holds Britain’s only professorship in the public understanding of psychology – says “Luck is not a magical ability or a gift from the gods … Instead, it is a way of thinking and behaving”. He devised an experiment where two individuals – one who perceived himself as lucky and another with a self-perception of lucklessness – were invited to the same place on the same premise, with a number of staged ‘chance encounters’ to see if their experiences would tally. One of the possibilities was finding a £5 note left on the pavement and another was meeting a ‘millionaire’ contact. Unsurprisingly, the ‘lucky’ guy hit the jackpot by spotting the money and randomly talking to the faux millionaire, while the other walked straight past the money and talked to no-one. As Wiseman puts it, “Same opportunities. Different lives.”

He says “Lucky people create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives … Being in the right place at the right time is actually all about being in the right state of mind.” Wiseman believes that putting yourself out there – even in the most minor way – can exponentially increase the connections (and potential chance opportunities) available to you. If you meet even one new person, he notes – as the average person typically knows around 300 people by name – that you’re “only two handshakes away from 300 times 300 people, so that’s 90,000 new possibilities for a new opportunity, just by saying hello”. Those are some fabulous stats. Just one ‘hello’ could utterly change your life …

This week expect good things in your life and act accordingly. If you get a hunch, don’t ignore it – act on it. Smile at someone you don’t know. Engage a stranger in conversation. Anticipate a pleasant surprise and keep your eyes open for it. This could be your lucky day.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Creative Obstacles

2009-02-02T12:14:00.000-08:00

If you feel like you’ve signed up for the hurdle race in life right about now, what if you realised that actually could be the case? The very talented intuitive astrologer, Robert Ohotto, is currently doing promos for his book, Transforming Fate Into Destiny, including posting interviews on YouTube that shed a little light on all sorts of subjects, including creative obstacles and how to discern them from what he calls fated redirections.

Basically, when you run up against problem after problem, how do you know if that’s just par for the course in the grand scheme of things or if each block is a sign trying to redirect you to a path that’s better for you? Thankfully, we now have the Ohotto take on that question, which makes rather good sense. He speaks from a soul perspective, assuming that we sign up for certain fated experiences in our lives to develop the character traits to bring forth our destinies. As he puts it, some people start off in life, hit hurdle after hurdle and begin to give up, thinking they’re on the wrong path, but those hurdles could be exactly what’s required for them. Ohotto imagines that from a higher perspective “God says ‘ You signed up for the hurdle race – what do you think is going to happen? There’s hurdles on the race!’ Hurdles like that are about ‘you’re on the right path’ – it’s part of the race and the journey of life – but you’re going to have to develop the stamina and agility you need to get over that hurdle and keep going.”

He adds, “Creative obstacles aren’t there to stop you, but are there to say you’ve got to buoy up your soul and really work hard to get different character traits ready for the next aspect of your purpose. Fated redirections, however, come up when people are maybe on a path that isn’t intrinsically authentic to them, but believe it is because of a cultural spell or a wound in themselves”.

This is explains one of life’s greater questions – why do so many people go on American Idol if they can’t sing? For Ohotto, the answer is clear – they are acting from an inner wound that perhaps feels like they’ve never been seen, so they chase a larger audience, or they fall under a cultural spell which convinces them that fame is the only answer to the validation they seek.

That rather reminds me of the gloriously vacuous character Suzanne, played by Nicole Kidman in Gus Van Sant’s wonderfully dark film, ‘To Die For’. One of her teenage coterie of admirers remarks “Suzanne used to say that you’re not really anybody in America unless you’re on TV … cause what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if there's nobody watching? So when people are watching, it makes you a better person. So if everybody was on TV all the time, everybody would be better people. But, if everybody was on TV all the time, there wouldn't be anybody left to watch, and that's where I get confused”. I hear you sister – with that set of values, who wouldn’t be a little mixed up?

In Ohotto’s terms, you get sent fated redirections – rather than life’s usual hurdle race – when you’re chasing a purpose that “really isn’t authentic to the design that you contracted to from the level of your soul”. If it’s a fated redirection, he says “You’ll know because if you get honest with yourself you don’t really have a passion for it – rather you’re going through the shadow, wounded part of yourself to try to get something to make your ego feel healed and better.” The way to discern between the two is whether or not you have a genuine passion for the path you’re on and the life you’re living.

He stresses that life is cyclical and “as we move through life, different creative forces awaken and different passions show up that maybe we never thought we had before. Passion to me is when you connect to something that energises you that gives you a sense of meaning and purpose that makes you want to get out of bed to do, and that somehow allows you to expand yourself and bring something unique about yourself forward.”

Ohotto concludes, “Destiny is born out of honouring the most unique aspects of who you are and serving others through them. Destiny is ultimately about the service we were born to fulfil to other people through the unique aspects of who we are and embodying those unique aspects of who we are in the most satisfying way … Destiny is exploring the mystery of who you are, exploring what you don’t know about yourself, it’s being open to the unseen forces within yourself and allowing them to come out and transform you and other people at the same time. Destiny is never really fully done – just because you’re on a path that seems keeps bringing you obstacles, doesn’t mean you’re on the wrong path necessarily, what it requires you to do is discern what motivates you to do what you do … If you start to go within, that inner pilgrimage, and do the work of sourcing some uniqueness out of yourself into the world that’s when the universe rises to meet you, synchronicities happen right left and centre and the dream becomes much bigger than you thought it would”. Amen to that.

So, this week, take a good look at the hurdles cropping up in your life. Do they feel like road-blocks trying to divert your path or creative obstacles bringing you an opportunity to develop new or stronger character traits? Are you behaving like a classic American Idol contestant in some part of your life, trying to pursue something you have no real talent for? Or are you giving up too soon on something you feel really passionate about? Would you be on the path you’re on if there were no discernible reward in the outside world, ie would you do it without the money or applause? If the answer’s no, what are you genuinely passionate about? These are not times to resign yourself to taking the money – if you want all the synchronicity and help the universe can give, you’d better be engaged in something you really love. Passion is the word this week. Use it wisely.

If you want to see Robert Ohotto talk this concept through, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX7Ty1-ymw4.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Face Doesn't Fit?

2009-01-26T10:45:00.000-08:00

A couple of people I know are having trouble with ‘face doesn’t fit’ syndrome right now. You know what I mean – your personality, values, dress-sense, whatever, isn’t a match for the prevailing culture (be it corporate or social) and no matter how hard you try, nothing you ever do is appreciated. The short answer, of course, would be to advise them to high-tail it out of there with indecent haste, but that in itself wouldn’t address the deeper issue - if your face doesn’t fit, why exactly would you be hanging around there?

We can all drag out the usual excuses of economic reasons, convenience, duty and responsibility, but the bottom line is we stay somewhere that’s painful because a part of us cannot let go, even when we want to. We want to prove ourselves – to get have our skills, our talents, our beauty, our contribution recognised – but no matter what we throw at it, it’s all good energy after bad. It seems unfair – and it is unfair – yet the longer we get hung up on who’s right and who’s wrong, the longer we avoid facing the basic question of ‘why am I trying to get the approval of people who don’t appreciate me?’.

Life really can be like Groundhog Day if we don’t get to the bottom of the essential question. We can get on our high horse, decide to blame those who failed to appreciate us, then move on to somewhere else where we’ll just replicate exactly the same pattern or we can start to look at what remains unhealed in us that causes us to find ourselves in those kinds of situations.

When you’re still looking to an outside source to give you the approval you crave, you can only find yourself in yet another dysfunctional family. The bad news is all families are dysfunctional, because in our humanness the love and approval we give and receive is conditional. Unconditional love is the preserve of the divine. The good news is that some environments are less dysfunctional than others. If you want to start moving up the scale from ‘face doesn’t fit’ to ‘welcome on board’, you’ll need to start giving yourself the love and acceptance that the world cannot give you.

We chase love and approval in all our relationships – at home, at work, in friendships and even in the most passing of acquaintances – yet what we chase can never be fully received until we are accepting of ourselves. We seem hard-wired to run around trying to get everyone to love us, but it’s only when we genuinely love ourselves that they really will too. Yeah, paradox sucks, but that’s the way it is.

When we care more for the opinion of others than we do for ourselves, we keep showing up in places where we’re not appreciated, as though by getting someone new to approve of us we’ll heal the old wounds of when we weren’t accepted or loved for who we are. Nice thinking, but sadly it doesn’t work that way. More approval from the outside does not heal inner wounds. It papers over the cracks, but eventually those flaws will start to show again. That’s why over-achievers are never satisfied, regardless of the dizzy heights they may reach in their ambitions – absolutely nothing from outside can fill the gaping hole of unworthiness inside.

Tedious as it may seem, there’s no magic bullet – just constant vigilance to take good care of yourself and keep yourself out of harm’s way, to be kind and gentle in the way you treat yourself and to dwell more on the good things about yourself than the ones you think are bad. When you value yourself, your body, your time and your energy, others have no choice but to do the same.
When you don’t, and you stay in environments that you know are destructive for you, one of the first places to suffer will be your health. The specialist in mind/body medicine, Joan Borysenko, reminds us “If we say yes to something while our bones are screaming "NO!", we need to be aware of what that does to the body. The tension this creates immediately releases stress hormones whether we are aware of it or not. These stress hormones engage the body's fight or flight system. If we do this continuously (override our needs), we wear down our adrenals which then compromises the immune system."

Before it gets to that point, gather up your self-respect, realise that you’re chasing something you’re never going to receive and resolve to make a better choice. Sometimes it’s not even as dramatic as a choice between a difficult environment and a better one, but more that your time is done in a particular place and your further growth would be better served in a different environment.

The spiritual author, Henri Nouwen, tells of his struggle in choosing to leave a working culture that he had enjoyed, but was now no longer serving his greater purpose. He writes, “I liked teaching at Harvard and I made some beautiful friends there. At the same time, I didn’t feel Harvard was a safe place for me. It was too much podium, too much publicity, too public. Too many people came to listen for an intellectual understanding rather than spiritual insight. It was an intensely competitive place, an intellectual battle-ground. Harvard was not home. I needed a place where I could pray more. I needed to be in a community where my spiritual life would deepen in relation to others.”

He adds, “My decision to leave Harvard was a difficult one. For many months I was not sure if I would be following or betraying my vocation by leaving. The outer voices kept saying ‘You can do so much good here. People need you!’. The inner voices kept saying ‘What good is it to preach the gospel to others while losing your own soul?’. Finally I realised that my increasing darkness, my feelings of rejection, my inordinate need for affirmation and affection, and my deep sense of not belonging were clear signs that I was not following the way of God’s spirit. The fruits of the spirit are not sadness, loneliness and separation, but joy, solitude, community and ministry. As soon as I left Harvard, I felt so much inner freedom, so much joy and new energy, that I could look back on my former life as a prison in which I had locked myself.”

This week, observe yourself closely for where you are seeking the approval of others, particularly in places where you’re not appreciated. Are you locking yourself in a prison? If you’re a square peg, what are you doing hanging out with the round holes? Why aren’t you looking for a somewhere with a lot of other square pegs? If your face doesn’t fit, find somewhere that it does. And before you go, take a close look at the unhealed issues that landed you in a place like that. They’ve come up for healing, so don’t suppress them or you’ll just find yourself back in a similar prison some time soon.

Give yourself a lot of love this week. Speak kindly to yourself. Drop the criticism. Look in the mirror and smile – don’t count the wrinkles. Remember the good things about yourself and forget the rest. Take a holiday from self-criticism. Give yourself something you’ve been depriving yourself of for a while – maybe it’s a day out, a massage, some new clothes or time alone. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just let it be an action that clearly says you value yourself.

And while you’re at it, say ‘no’ to something you don’t want to do – strong self-worth is as much about saying ‘no’ to what you don’t want as it is saying ‘yes’ to what you do want. Be your fabulous self and love who that is. Dust off the ‘I Am Fabulous’ mantra and give it another whirl. Say it like you mean it – when you believe it, everyone else will too.

Finally, here’s an open letter from James Arthur Ray, author of Harmonic Wealth, to the newly-incumbent President Obama. You might find some inspiration and insight for these troubled times there …

http://blog.jamesray.com/2009/01/open-letter-to-president-obama.html?utm_source=president20090126&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=Blast

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

A Change Is Gonna Come

2009-01-19T10:13:00.000-08:00

By the time you read this, the American presidential inauguration will probably have taken place for a candidate who rode in on slogans of change. My guess is that he probably hadn’t imagined quite how much change we’d all be experiencing by this time – and not all of it feeling too good. But then again, unexpected change is rarely experienced as a joyful event. As creatures of habit, we don’t like it when the walls shake around us and we’re forced to open up to a new way of being. We try desperately to hang on – even to things that aren’t working for us – just to avoid change. Yet, as we grow and change within ourselves, we become totally incompatible with the structures – and often the people – with which we’ve surrounded ourselves.

While we’re feeling the impact of the collapse of so many structures in our collective lives, we’re bound to be experiencing similar breakdowns in our private lives, where relationships, friendships and work environments that no longer bring us joy are beginning to feel totally untenable. Navigating these times is going to take a little faith and a lot of intuition, as we work through our own individual renegotiation of our assets and liabilities, to balance the books on our personal lives.

There’s a sweet illustration of this in a book a friend lent me on the weekend, Petite Anglaise, by an English girl whose blog about her life in Paris became a cause celebre when she lost her job over it (and subsequently won the case). More interestingly, the book covers the impact on her personal life as her social life expanded when the blog became successful, ultimately taking its toll on her relationship. The subtitle tells it all: In Paris, In Love, In Trouble.

Having pursued her childhood dream to live in Paris, had a child – Tadpole – with her French partner, Mr Frog, her life had settled into the deadening routine of metro, boulot, dodo or tube, work, sleep that we all know so well. Her relationship with Mr Frog was as dead as that routine, but still somehow functioning. Then, through her blog, she struck up a conversation with one of her readers, who lit a spark of passion in her otherwise flat-lined life. That’s where the change (otherwise known as trouble) begins. The ensuing story is a real rollercoaster that highlights just how – even when we’re not willing to accept it – change can spread through our lives like wildfire. And just like fire, when it’s done with destruction, there’s an opportunity for new life to arise again.

That’s the bit we usually forget when faced with change. We focus on what we are about to lose, rather than what can rise up in its place – and that it could be even better than what we’re currently holding on to for dear life.
Problem is, none of us are overly keen on a baptism of fire, yet that does seem to be the way life likes to throw change at us. Or, more accurately, that’s how life has to throw change at us when we refuse to read the signposts along the way.

Of course I say this as a card-carrying, world-class, Olympic-standard avoider of change, utterly word-blind when it comes to reading the signs in my own life – although I am getting a little better at that. Let me illustrate.

Let’s see, it took being incapacitated by chronic fatigue so badly that I didn’t even get out of bed for six months (or recover for several years) for me to grasp the concept that the work I was doing (and the workaholic way in which I was doing it) was completely incompatible with who I was at heart, and that it was eating away at my immune system on a daily basis.

Ah yes, and then there’s a relationship that went on for six years when it was probably only good for about six months. We were fabulous friends, but in all honesty, that’s what we should have stayed. Did I leave in the early days when I realised it probably wasn’t going to go the distance? Nah, held on to the bitter end, as it all crumbled slowly and painfully around me.

So, those are some of my qualifications for the How Not To Do It club and there’s plenty more where that came from. Curiously enough, those kinds of experiences are precisely the ones that have given me the greatest growth and wisdom – even if most of it came after the fact. Don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather listen to someone who’d been through the mill, rather than just had a theory about it. Anyway, here we all are, going through the mill together in times of enormous change and my hard-won best advice is pay attention and act early.

This week, really take a look at the structures and patterns in your life and see just how well they’re working for you. If something’s feels stale and lifeless, investigate whether it’s DOA or capable of resuscitation. If there are no signs of life, start looking elsewhere. If you hang on to a dead thing, sooner or later it’s going to stink.

If something’s not working for you, but you can see a better way to handle it, speak up. This is no time to stifle your feelings or your opinions. Maybe the other person or the organisation could do with a new viewpoint. We’re all in this together and it’s a time to look forward, not get tied up in the constraints of the past. You can’t follow your intuition if you’re suppressing what it’s bringing up, so pay real attention to your all your feelings and those uncanny inklings that foretell the winds of change. It feels a whole lot better to be riding the wave than get dumped by it.

If you’ve outgrown something, have the courage to face it head on. Avoidance is not a helpful strategy. Having been the queen of that particular tactic, you have first-hand evidence that it’s not the way to go – and that it makes for a rocky ride. Get with the programme sooner rather than later, as the wisdom gained from taking the long way round does rather tend to come at a hefty price.

Be fabulous – bite the bullet and face things exactly as they are. When you do that, your intuition will kick in and help you find the path that really is right for you. Clarity is your security. When you know what you’re dealing with, you can handle it.

The Art Of Full Engagement

2009-01-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

Tough times necessitate creativity, so on some level perhaps the universe is stimulating us all to find more creative ways of living our lives – experiencing them in our own individual ways, as only we can. With that gauntlet thrown down, we need to explore new ideas that open up greater possibilities for us that might not necessarily involve the old paradigm of time and money. Jim Loehr, in his book The Power of Full Engagement, encourages us to think of our lives in terms of energy, saying “Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance”.

Loehr points out that, while it may seem obvious, we seldom take into account the impact of energy at work and in our personal lives. He adds “Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy, we are compromised in every activity we undertake. Every one of our thoughts, emotions and behaviours has an energy consequence, for better or for worse. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have.”

Before you moan that life seems to conspire to drain your energy, Loehr has that point covered too, saying “There are undeniably bad bosses, toxic work environments, difficult relationships and real life crises. Nonetheless, we have far more control over our energy than we ordinarily realise. The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. It is our most precious resource. The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become. The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be.”

Loehr asks “If you could wake up tomorrow with significantly more positive, focused energy to invest at work and with your family, how significantly would that change your life for the better? As a leader and a manager how valuable would it be to bring more positive energy and passion to the workplace? If those you lead could call on more positive energy, how would it affect the quality of service they deliver to clients and customers?”

Defining energetic full engagement, he notes “To be fully engaged, we must be physically energised, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. Full engagement begins with feeling eager to get to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening and capable of setting clear boundaries between the two. It means being able to immerse yourself in the mission you are on, whether that is grappling with a creative challenge at work, managing a group of people on a project, spending time with loved ones or simply having fun. Full engagement implies a fundamental shift in the way we live our lives.”

OK, so it’s not going to be as easy as it first looked. Full engagement is going to demand a commitment to playing full tilt at whatever you’re doing, not just going through the motions. It’s going to ask that you set the boundaries that allow you to say ‘no’ to what drains you and to say a whole-hearted ‘yes’ to the things that energise you. It’s going to require that you stand up for your life.

If creativity feels like it’s failing you right now and you don’t even know where to start, begin by looking at examples of lives you admire and at people you know who show up fully, whatever they’re engaged in. Creativity isn’t always about making something entirely new, but in combining existing things in new ways. Maybe you already have the building blocks of the life you want, but you haven’t quite got them in the right order yet.

The artist Michael de Meng – who makes extraordinary post-modern sacred shrines from the mundane items that make up our daily lives – says “In my view, creativity is rampant thievery mixed with reinterpretation … I see the act [of creativity] as being like a martini shaker, in which you add all those ingredients that you like or admire. Three parts Picasso, two parts Joseph Cornell, seven parts Mexican folk art, a splash of abstract expressionism and garnish with a twist of Dadaism.”

This week, what’s going into your cocktail shaker? What would it take for you to show up fully-charged in every area of your life? How can you keep your energy high in mind, body, heart and soul? Who has a life you’d want? Who has a way of being you’d like to emulate? What’s the purpose beyond your own immediate self-interest that you could get juiced-up about? Come on, it’s going to be a big year. It’s time to bring you’re A-game – do you know what that looks like? Even more importantly, do you know how to sustain it?

Pearls Before Breakfast

2009-01-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

Having taken the decision that this year’s theme for me would be joy, I’ve been swotting up on all things pleasurable. In a new book entitled Sex, Drugs & Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure, Paul Martin has a fine old romp through the history of pleasure and the science behind it, coming up with some useful tips for creating a more joyful life.

As pleasure-seeking creatures, we will naturally spend our lives in the pursuit of pleasure, although paradoxically that may not bring us happiness. As Martin writes “Put at its simplest, pleasure is the biological currency which evolved to guide our everyday behaviour. Pleasure and its dark counterpart, pain, are there to encourage us to do ‘the right things’. Pleasure entices us to behave in ways that are likely to be biologically beneficial, while pain discourages us from doing ourselves harm. To some degree, therefore, we are hard-wired to be hedonists, devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure.”

The fly in the ointment of the pleasure-seeking equation is, according to Martin, that “For pleasure to do its job as a motivational common currency, it must be short-lived … we habituate quite rapidly to pleasurable sensations, no matter how earthshaking they may be at the time, forcing the determined hedonist to keep increasing the dosage or to seek new thrills. Socrates likened pleasure-seekers to the damned in hell, who are condemned forever to keep trying to fill leaky jars. Psychologists today prefer to call the phenomenon ‘the hedonic treadmill’. And what keeps the treadmill turning? Desire – the force which compels us to keep wanting new things, new experiences, no matter how wonderful our present pleasures may be.”

Essentially, no matter how much you love getting or doing something, it’s going to get old pretty quickly. Martin notes “Solid research evidence shows that people who are highly motivated to acquire money, material goods, social status or celebrity are, on average, unhappier and have poorer mental health than those whose priorities are more balanced.”

The good news comes in understanding that while the intense pleasure of reaching a big goal will ultimately always fade – leaving space for desire to arise anew – we’d enjoy our lives more on a day-to-day basis if we increased the frequency of our smaller pleasures. It’s the little indulgences that are the bread and butter of a happy life, not just the big achievements. That’s not to say that you don’t keep chasing your dreams, but that you don’t forget to enjoy your life as it is now.

As Martin puts it, “Pleasure-seekers who want lasting happiness should therefore concentrate on finding more frequent opportunities for less overwhelming sensations. This means pursuing more of the pleasures in life that many of us take for granted.” He says those pleasures should be “readily available, repeatable at frequent intervals (preferably at least once a day), not too risky and cheap or free (pleasure is not the preserve of the wealthy)” and goes on to offer the following suggestions:

· Sex and chocolate: Should be high on any pleasure-seeker’s list. When used correctly, they deliver intense pleasure as well as improving your mental and physical health.
· Acquiring new information: Studies have shown that keeping the brain active by learning and processing new things stimulates the release of pleasure-giving endorphins.
· Use your nose: We are so pre-occupied with our other senses that the pleasure of smell is overlooked. For me it is in pencil shavings, damp earth after rain, vanilla and Chanel No 19. You will have your favourites. Remind yourself of what they are – and enjoy a good sniff.
· Sitting in silence: An increasingly unfamiliar experience. Besides being pleasurable in its own right, sitting in silence for a while is the simplest method known to science of alleviating mild anxiety.
· Trust people more: The idea that we can gain pleasure from trusting and co-operating with one another is not just wishful thinking. It is based on hard empirical evidence. Numerous studies have shown that it activates the ‘reward centres’ of the brain, leading to pleasurable sensations.

Martin concludes “There are countless other more obvious pursuits – from a spot of gardening or cooking, to appreciating an uplifting piece of music or an exhilarating view – that will work perfectly well to increase your harvest of pleasure. The point is that when it comes to happiness, many of us would do better to ignore the siren calls of desire that tempt us toward novelty or excess, and instead focus on doing more of the everyday pleasures that are familiar and available to all.” Right – that’s me down the bakery for a cupcake, then!

Lord knows why we need a scientist from the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious to point this out to us, but clearly a life made up of a lot of small, regular pleasures –with its own high points – is preferable to a lot of misery punctuated by the occasional peak experience. Now why is that so hard for us to learn?

Well, apparently the residents of Washington DC are no smarter than the rest of us when it comes to the little things. A couple of years ago, the Washington Post set up an experiment where the renowned virtuoso classical violinist, Joshua Bell, busked to a morning commuter crowd at L’Enfant Plaza metro station with his 1713 Stradivarius to see if anyone would stop to listen. They wanted to know if, “in a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”. In short, hardly.

It took three whole minutes of exquisite musicianship for even one person to turn their head and notice the music, even though they kept on walking. Six minutes passed before the first person actually stopped to listen and in the three quarters of an hour that Bell played, only seven people stopped, while 1,070 hurried by. Of those who did listen, few recognised the extraordinary quality of the performance and only one person recognised the musician. Before we label Washingtonians as total philistines, we have to realise that – given the same set of circumstances in the rush hour commute – we’d probably do the same. How sad is that? Our lives are not built with space for spontaneous beauty and pleasure unless we make them so.

This week, start as you mean to go on. Take pleasure in the small things. Make a list of the things that bring you joy and start scheduling opportunities to enjoy them into the diary – people you adore, places you love, scents that inspire you, food that makes you swoon. Cast your mind back to past pleasures and enjoy the memories. What were the real highlights for you? Were they big things you chased or small, spontaneous pleasures. Remember you can have both, just make sure that pleasure in small doses is a frequent prescription for you if more lasting happiness is what you’re really after.

If you’d like to know more about the Washington Post experiment you can read the full story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html and see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw.

Ringing The Changes

2008-12-29T08:32:00.001-08:00

This year, I don’t think just wishing the new year will be better is going to cut it. Something more is being demanded of us, so a few half-hearted resolutions aren’t going to do the trick if we want real change. 2008 has been a wake-up call for all of us, but the question now is what are we going to do now that we’ve woken up?

I’d hazard a guess that getting clear on your intention of who you want to be this year will get you further than deciding what you want to do. There’s not a lot of power in a random list of stuff to do. The juice is in the strong centre of beingness from which you decide which actions to take in the world.

Browsing the shelves in a local bookshop today, I came across a book by Robin Sharma – I think called Leadership Wisdom. Flipping the pages, I saw a line – heavily paraphrased here – about how success really gets activated when your approach moves from achievement to service.

For many of us, service is a charged word, conjuring up images of servitude and little reward. Yet if we see that shift for what it truly is – shifting focus from a self-centred attitude of getting what you want to a more spiritually generous approach of offering what you came here to give for the benefit of others – then we can really see the power of that statement. You can make big waves when you’re coming from a place of enthusiasm about offering your gifts and talents for the good of the whole.

Then there’s the added magic of how the universe conspires to make things happen when there’s a positive intent behind something. Don’t be surprised if things take on a life of their own when you align your purpose with an attitude of service.

So, this week, I think that’s about all you need to know to start making your own inner shift. What kind of person do you want to be in the world in the coming year? What really are the gifts you came here to give? Is there anything really standing in your way or is it just a fear that you might not be good enough? If you’re feeling blocked, remember this is about expressing your talents and bringing something into the world that only you can offer. There’s no need for performance anxiety and you don’t even have to have a master plan. Just start doing it on whatever scale feels comfortable for you. Who knows where that might lead …

As a parting gift of inspiration from 2008, here are a couple of Chinese proverbs that have popped up in my inbox most fortuitously today:

A man’s fortune must first be changed from within.

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

Have a fabulous New Year! May you be all you wish to be and live passionately on purpose in 2009.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Clean Pain, Dirty Pain

2008-12-22T09:06:00.000-08:00

If ever there’s a time to learn that most of the emotional pain we experience is self-inflicted, it’s Christmas. This is the time of year when we bump up against the ancient pain of dysfunctional family dynamics in technicolour, so it helps to have a reminder that we’re at choice about exactly how much suffering we experience in these encounters. We all know that it’s not what happens, but the story that you tell yourself about what happens, that determines how you feel about it.

That’s why one person can say something insulting to you and you’ll laugh it off, but when someone else does it, it activates an old dynamic and releases that charge of ancient pain that sends you spinning off into an abyss of self-attack. It pops the lid off the Pandora’s Box of stories we tell ourselves about why things happen to us. Let’s take the classic of any form of rejection as an example – maybe you didn’t get a job or you just got dumped. You are at choice. You can decide to observe that the job or the person wasn’t right for you and motor on regardless, or you can dust off an old story about how unworthy or unloveable you are and use it to sink yourself into a downward spiral of depression and self-recrimination. The choice is yours.

Psychologist Dr Steven Harvey has - through Acceptance & Commitment Therapy – defined ‘clean pain’ as the emotion we feel when something happens to us. It’s the direct experience of pain in the moment. ‘Dirty pain’, however is the result of the thoughts we have about that pain and what it means about us. It’s the story we tell ourselves about what that pain means – and this is where we endure our greatest suffering.

Coach Martha Beck notes that “The two kinds of suffering occupy different sections of the brain: one part simply registers events, while another creates a continuous stream of thoughts about those events. The vast majority of our unhappiness comes from this secondary response—not from painful reality but from painful thoughts about reality. Western psychology is just accepting something saints and mystics have taught for centuries: that this suffering ends only when we learn to detach from the thinking mind.”

She adds, “Learning to detach starts with simply noticing our own judgmental thoughts. When we find ourselves using words like should or ought, we're courting dirty pain. Obsessing about what should be rather than accepting what is, we may try to control other people in useless, dysfunctional ways. We may impotently rage against nature itself, even—perhaps especially—when that nature is our own. This amounts to mental suicide. Resisting what we can't control removes us from reality, rendering our emotions, circumstances and loved ones inaccessible. The result is a terrible emptiness, which we usually blame on our failure to get what we want. Actually, it comes from refusing to accept what we have.”

This is not a new concept for the Eastern mind, as Lama Surya Das, of the Dzogchen Tibetan tradition makes clear. He writes, “One old Buddhist saying tells us that pain is inevitable in life – but suffering, on the other hand, is optional. How much we suffer depends on us, our internal development and our spiritual understanding and realization. Our pain and suffering point out to us where we are most attached, and what we're holding onto the most; likewise, they point out how free we are. By recognizing this, we can learn to use loss and suffering in ways that help us to grow wiser and become more at peace with ourselves and the universe. Through meditation practice, we come to see that the necessary losses in life - aging, separation, sorrow and death -are inevitable. And when we learn to accept the inevitable changes, through a more graceful letting go called the wisdom of allowing, we will tremendously lessen our suffering and leave room for happiness to arise.”

This Christmas, give yourself the gift of awareness and allow yourself to only experience ‘clean’ pain, if it occurs. Give ‘dirty’ pain the week off. Pay attention to your thoughts and notice if you’re getting into ‘dirty pain’ territory. Watch the thoughts that come up when you’re dealing with old family patterns and indulge only the ones that deal realistically with the present moment. Notice where you’re reacting from old pain and projecting it into your current experience (and the future). When you see that happening, observe it and let it go. Acceptance is the key. If you can laugh at your own mental patterning, you’re heading away from suffering into the direction of acceptance, where you notice the old story but don’t give it airtime. Keep your mind as tidy as you would your house – no room for old clutter.

As an illustration of a clean mindset, here’s an extract from an interview with the musician and designer, Lenny Kravitz, from Elle Decoration. The dude has a pretty good take on life, if the answers to these questions are any indication …

What is your greatest fear?
Not fulfilling the purpose that God put me here for.

What is your greatest regret?
I don’t have any regrets. It’s all part of the journey.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I honestly don’t think I would. Not because I think I’m great, it’s just that it wouldn’t be me.

What is the quality you most admire in a person?
Soul. It sounds a bit vague, but I mean inner strength and integrity.

What’s your guilty pleasure?
If it pleases me, I don’t feel guilty about it.

How do you define style?
It comes from within. It’s someone being themselves.

And here’s a final treat to get you through the Christmas period – a slideshow of Simple Serenity tips from Oprah.com. They’re basic, but they do work - the oldies are the goodies ...

http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/spirit/emotionalhealth/slideshow2_ss_personal

Happy Christmas, Joyeux Noel and Feliz Navidad!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

2008-12-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

It’s official – women’s happiness is more recession-proof than men’s. The recent Nielsen Global Happiness Survey found that men are happier with money, while women are happier with friendships and relationships with their children, co-workers and bosses. Nielsen’s Consumer Research VP, Bruce Paul, notes “Because they are happier with non-economic factors, women’s happiness is more recession-proof, which might explain why women around the world are happier in general than men are.”

Of the 51 countries surveyed worldwide, women are happier than men in 48 of them. Only in Brazil, South Africa and Vietnam were men happier than women. Women are also more optimistic about the future, scoring higher than men on predictions of their happiness in the next six months.

According to the survey, the three main drivers of happiness globally are personal financial situation, mental health and job/career. Being happy with your partner is also important for happiness in many nations.

Interestingly, many of the world’s poorer and developing countries outranked developed countries for happiness and satisfaction levels in nearly all aspects of their lives. Nielsen analysed the survey results to find out if a nation’s happiness level was influenced by low income equality, low corruption or peace. Surprisingly, places which performed poorly on these factors were in many cases the happiest countries.

Here comes another science bit … in another study published by the British Medical Journal, an individual’s happiness was found to be related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends and their friends’ friends’ friends, ie three degrees (rather than six) of separation. The study also found that happy people were most likely to be the centre of their social networks and that each additional happy friend increases the probability of being happy by about 9%. In contrast, having an increase in income of $5,000 only raised the probable happiness by 2%.

The same authors – Christakis and Folwer – also undertook a Facebook study where they found that “people who smile tend to have more friends (smiling gets you an average of one extra friend, which is pretty good considering that people only have about six close friends). Not only that, but the statistical analyses confirm that those who smile are measurably more central to the network compared to those who do not smile. That is, if you smile, you are less likely to be on the periphery of the online world. It thus seems to be the case, online as well as offline, that when you smile, the world smiles with you.”

So, what have we learned? It’s not what you’ve got, but how much you appreciate it that determines how happy you’ll be. Valuing more things in life than just money gives you a more sustainable sense of happiness. Hanging out with positive people will improve your own happiness. Smiling makes you a more popular person and a happier one. If you’re happy today you’re more likely to be happy tomorrow, projecting your positive feelings out into the future.

It’s not exactly rocket science, is it? Still, it’s nice to have a survey or two to remind us that common sense still holds true.

This week, make an effort to up your smile ratio, be grateful for what you have and only spend time with upbeat people. Oh, and thank your lucky stars if you’re a girl – you’ve already got a head-start on the happiness biz thanks to your genetics.

Finally, here’s a freebie that’s a total treat. The authors of my favourite guided meditations of all time, Sanaya Roman and Orin, have released some new mp3s for free download to give us all some upliftment in these changing times and to help focus your vision for a positive personal future. You can find them at http://www.orindaben.com/home/wwmeditationpeace.php. There’s also a link on the same page to transcripts of Orin’s meditations, so you can read them beforehand to get a sense of which ones you might prefer before you download them. Enjoy!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Good You Already Know

2008-12-08T08:46:00.001-08:00

If you want to have enough juice to get the new year off to a rocking start, you’re going to have to take very, very good care of yourself over the next few weeks. This Christmas season seems to have an even more manic air than usual – if that’s at all possible – so keeping your own energy serene is probably going to be a bit more of a challenge than you might previously have expected.

Normally you might expect me to throw a few coping strategies your way, but when times are tough it’s best to rest yourself deeply in what you already know works for you. Ask yourself this question from the spiritual leader Michael Beckwith – “How have I practised the good I already know?”

We know what to do. The problem is we just don’t do it.

You know you have to take time out to refresh yourself. You know things turn out better when you listen to your intuition. You know doing stuff for others out of sacrifice drains you. You know when you’re taking on too much and your health will probably suffer. You know why your heart sinks when you say ‘yes’ when you really mean ‘no’. When are you going to draw the line and take care of yourself?

Start right now as you mean to go on into the new year. Before you frazzle yourself with over-commitment and busyness that you could actually avoid, start working on your ‘no’ muscle. Give it some exercise. It can’t get strong unless you work it out. Yep, the first time might be hard, but after that it does get easier. Don’t bother justifying why you can’t do things – just say no and leave it at that. Confidence is key. If you’re apologising madly, people are more likely to try to push you into doing things. Be straightforward and matter-of-fact and they’re unlikely to challenge your decision.

We really are in a time where we have to practise what we preach. It’s no good wanting things to change if we never do. It’s about aligning our whole selves with the vision of what we want for our lives and taking the steps we need to take to make that happen. As Beckwith says “For me it always comes back to practice. The beliefs that we hold become a basis for spiritual practice. And the practice becomes a basis for insight and revelation, embodiment of the truth that makes us free. Just merely having a belief about these principles is not good enough any more. We want to do away with believers and we want people to step into a greater embodiment through practice.”

He adds, “The idea is to say to yourself at the end of the day, ‘How have I practiced the good that I already know?’ If I throw myself into practice, now I'm making myself available – a candidate for greater insight, greater embodiment – and I continue to become more and never less than my true self, living up to the true meaning of my incarnation, which is to release life energy, to release sacred gifts and talents and capacities that I chose to release before I came here (which is another conversation). So the tip would be: find a spiritual practice that fits you and absolutely practise it, and then you will notice that you'll move from being merely a believer into actually having some real knowledge through the activity of your awareness.”

What goes for spiritual practice goes for any other practice that supports your physical, emotional or mental well-being. We know what works. We just need to practise it.

This week, think carefully about the things that you know to be true for you. What activities help you stay well physically? What practices keep you feeling centred and emotionally-balanced? What techniques do you know that help you to calm down your mind and give you clarity? What is it that makes you feel spiritually connected? Go with the tried and true and make life a little easier for yourself.

Finally, here’s a funky little graphic to propel you out of inertia and remind you to take care of yourself and put energy into creating the life you want to live. There’s probably nothing in there you don’t already know, but we can all do with a bit of a refresher on basic truths every now and then.

http://www.eightprinciples.com/

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Mystic Vision

2008-12-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

May you live in interesting times.” Apparently that’s an old Chinese curse. If the current socio-economic climate is anything to go by, it’s bang up to date. Which of course leads me to the question on everybody’s lips – what the hell is going on? If anyone tells you they have an absolute answer, I’d avoid them like the plague. This one’s too tough for anyone to call. We are in the uncharted waters of a massive transformation of all the structures in our outer world and the old ways (and certainties) no longer apply.

What the situation does require, however, is a flexibility and willingness to embrace change without assuming it’s going to be pejorative. One of the most potentially destructive human characteristics is to assume that change is necessarily bad. It stops us from taking a chance, being our authentic selves and fully experiencing life. Yes, change is difficult for us all, but at the other end of that tunnel lies greater possibility if you’re willing to go with the flow, rather than fight against it.

In these uncertain times, your greatest success skills will be learning to turn inward for guidance, staying flexible and aware, and having the willingness to believe in a positive outcome, regardless of the general consensus. Independence of thought is vital when structures are decaying. You’re certainly not going to thrive in changing circumstances by doing things the way you’ve always done them.

As the author Caroline Myss emphasises, “The turning of the tides is done from above and from within. It is you who must learn to work with the power of your interior forces, to scaffold your inner consciousness and build a soul with stamina, so that when chaos abounds around you, you can see through it rather than be consumed by it.”

She adds, “We can look at this time as a nightmare of chaos or we can look at this time as that which we have prepared ourselves for during these past many years, working on our health and on becoming more conscious individuals. If this isn’t the time to put all that you’ve learned about being a conscious person into action, then when would be that time? Ask yourself, ‘Why have I worked so hard on myself?’ Was it just to process the wounds from your childhood? Well, if it was, be done with that and get on with the business of thinking, living, acting, and perceiving the world around you through the lens of a mystic. This is the time to apply all the laws of the cosmos to every one of your challenges, to approach every problem through mystical reasoning and not that of ordinary reasoning, which will draw you backwards and into your history. Looking backwards at what you used to do or how you used to do something will not work anymore.”

To truly have mystical vision, you’ll need to focus on the opportunity presented to you, not dwell on the chaos or the loss. Myss notes “To me, this is a time of great hope, because when chaos abounds, so does opportunity. It can look as if the field of opportunity is bleak, but that is simply not true … you must keep your attention in the present in order to ‘perceive’ intuitive instructions. These will rarely speak of what you have already done. Rather you have to be prepared to do what you have not done before, as your intuition will always direct you to draw on new inner resources, as opposed to relying on the old and familiar … Wisdom teaches us, for example, that if all we thought was stable evaporated so easily, it can all be replaced just as quickly. Chaos is as much an illusion as stability. What is not an illusion is truth. Truth is the one constant. Look at whatever is happening in your life and remind yourself that if it is chaotic, there is something old that must be surrendered. Look to your interior and listen for guidance. Remind yourself that you are alive at this time because you are meant to manoeuvre through these changes. Move forward, ever forward. And think like a mystic!”

This week, calm down your fearful emotions and pay more attention to what’s going on inside rather than outside. Be willing to stay aware of how you’re being triggered by outside events and to choose to listen more closely to your inner promptings. Put yourself on a news diet and keep away from those who are all doom and gloom. Hang out with positive people who are also willing to look for opportunity and growth in crisis. Stick to the facts and keep any temptation to panic under control. Keep a cool head and an intuitive heart. That’s how you’ll find your way through tough times in a manner that’s meaningful to you and that brings more growth and purpose. Stay visionary, get comfortable with uncertainty and let your mystic vision lead the way.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Dating & Relating

2008-11-24T10:00:00.000-08:00

Bottom line, everything comes down to relationship – the relationship you have to yourself, to others, to money, to life … it’s an unassailable fact that all the problems in life boil down to the thorny issue of relationship. Even if you try hiding out on a desert island, there’s still the little matter of the relationship you have with yourself. There’s just no escaping it.

So let’s all breathe a huge sigh of relief for the spiritual wisdom shared by Charlotte Kasl in her books If The Buddha Dated and If The Buddha Married. A slightly cynical part of me wonders whether If The Buddha Divorced is in the works, but let’s just be grateful for all the help we can get, shall we?

Charlotte Kasl has gathered together some helpful Buddhist principles, along with Sufi and Quaker techniques, to bring more clarity to the subjects of dating and relating. This is where Buddhism really comes into its own, for its emphasis on detachment, which allows us to really see what’s going on, rather than getting stuck in our own viewpoint.

In If The Buddha Dated, Kasl writes about the most basic need to ground ourselves in our own authenticity, because relating with others – particularly in a romantic sense – can bring up the unhealed places in us from past traumas and the negative self-perceptions that we’ve come to see as truth from years of repetition. Vowing to commit to being our authentic self is vital for self-esteem and essential in holding your own space around others.

She notes “We become spiritually grounded when we make this commitment to ourselves: More than anything else, I want myself. I want to live with integrity and truth. I’m not going to hide the jewel of who I am, nor mask my imperfections. No bargains, no avoiding reality, no conning myself, no lies. The more we commit to knowing and accepting ourselves, the more we are able to surrender to loving another person because we have nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. Our spiritual commitment to truth and integrity creates a safe harbour within us – a mooring, a home to return to when the journey gets rough. This is immensely important in the dating process because new love can resurrect our most primitive feelings of fear, hope, dependency and emptiness. If we know how to soothe our pain and relax into our emptiness, we won’t be afraid to be open and honest, regardless of the outcome.”

What an amazing vow. I’m inclined to suggest that it’s one you should write out on a card and carry it around with you. Imagine reminding yourself every morning that you’re not going to hide the jewel of who you are – that’s got to be a kick-ass way to start the day!

Reminding us that it’s holding our own centre that brings us growth and security, Kasl adds “If we succumb to fear, we start holding back, and do that all-too-common dance of getting close, then pulling away. When we remember that our safe harbour depends on our awareness and honesty, we’re less likely to make internal compromises, put on masks or act like a chameleon to attract a partner or keep a hurtful relationship together. If we live by truth we may have pain, but we will always rest securely within ourselves.”

Authenticity is always going to be about holding that core of your own inner truth against whatever pull of the outside world is threatening to throw you off course. Naturally, we all end up making detours that are probably ill-advised, but unless we have a strong sense of self, we can drift way off purpose following someone else’s dream or fulfilling someone else’s desire. That point is as valid in a work arena as in intimate relationships. The advice for dating rings true in any form of relationship, be it business or personal.

Another fascinating aspect of all relationships is how rarely we are simply reacting to what is in front of us. We know for sure that we’re igniting our baggage and bringing the past into the present when we have a strong reaction to a person or an event. If your emotions are being intensely triggered, consider it the iceberg effect – most of what is going on is not on the surface.

In If The Buddha Married, Kasl writes “We are all a marvellous maze of different parts and levels of development. A question I have found very helpful for myself and my clients is simply this: How old do I feel right now? Sometimes we feel centred and grown-up; other times, we feel young, off-centre or confused. Our frustration might feel like a three-year-old having a tantrum or resemble a rebellious teenager. These states may switch rapidly in response to different people and situations. The point is to realise when we’re in a childlike state and understand that it is not primarily about the current situation. We are emotionally wired into a past experience that is affecting our response. We need to stop and reflect before acting.”

That, folks, is the simple truth that gets in the way of so many relationships – when our past gets on a collision course with someone else’s present, they’ll need to duck for cover unless we’re willing to take responsibility and recognise that our old rage, resentment, fear, hurt or sadness has been triggered. That doesn’t mean they’re necessarily in the right, but that we to make sure that our response to whatever has triggered us is proportionate and appropriate. And that we can express ourselves truthfully and responsibly, without fear or a need for retaliation.

There’s a helpful list of child states – or automatic reactions from past trauma – in the book, to which Kasl adds the caveat “The idea is not to judge yourself or attempt some impossible notion of perfection. It’s to bring awareness and understanding to yourself. For example, if you repeatedly feel worried about people’s reactions – Do they like me? Am I doing it right? – it can be very helpful to understand that it is probably more about your reaction as a child to a critical parent than current reality. You can learn to say to yourself ‘That was then, this is now’. What is actually going on now?”

Kasl also advises “When you go through the list, explore the nature of your responses. For example, if you tend to break agreements, is it because you over-commit and feel afraid to say no, or is it because you feel resentful of being asked to help? Most of us have a few predominant age regressions. Remember all of these responses are about conditioning. You existed before taking on all these thoughts and beliefs and your true essence or consciousness that dwells within your centre is perfect and free.”

Common Traits Of Child States Or Trauma

Fear of saying what you feel, need, think and want.
Fear of saying no and setting limits.
Feeling hurt, mad or rejected when someone says no to you.
Fear of being left, hurt abandoned.
Fear of conflict and differences.
Fear of being swallowed up and losing your identity.
Fear of violence.
Intense angry outbursts: screaming, yelling, name-calling.
Rationalising/making up excuses for your partner’s behaviour.
Taking on the worries and anxieties of your partner.
Breaking agreements, not following through on tasks you agreed to do.
Blame: not taking responsibility for your actions.
Feeling entitled to be waited on, supported, taken care of.
Withholding, withdrawing, refusing to talk.
Feeling uneasy, possessive or jealous when your partner seeks out new friends and feels passionate about their interests.
Feeling afraid or embarrassed to tell your partner you’ve made a mistake.
Feeling needy, insecure or afraid of being alone.
Defensiveness – having difficulty listening to your partner without interrupting to explain yourself or prove your partner wrong.
Being in unequal roles, such as parent-child, teacher-student or enlightened one-neophyte, rescuer-rescuee, healthy one-emotionally damaged one.
Active addictions to drugs, food, gambling, shopping, sex, work that are not being addressed.
Using sex to try to creat a closeness that is lacking in the relationship or saying yes when you really want to say no or no when you really want to say yes.
Frequent headaches, stomach aches, tensions, low energy, boredom with life, feeling stuck.

OK, take a deep breath – that list is hard going. If you got through it without recognising a few of your own, you’re probably in denial. Again, remind yourself this is not about making you feel guilty, but about bringing light to the shadow parts of ourselves that haven’t made it to grown-up territory quite yet. And we all have a lot of those, so there’s nothing to feel bad about. Plus, awareness is half the battle. When you realise you’re doing something out of an ingrained habit, you can give yourself the breathing space that allows you to start reacting differently. The mantra that will get you across the bridge from teenage-style tantrum to adult appropriate reaction when you realise your past has been triggered is ‘That was then, this is now’. Accompany it with a few deep breaths and you’re on your way to acting out of your authentic self, not your conditioned self. That’s real progress.

This week, give the list a good going over and start working up your own hit parade of favourite negative patterns. Pay attention to what sets you off and see if you can catch them as they happen, remembering to say to yourself ‘That was then, this is now’ before reacting. If you don’t manage it, don’t beat yourself up either. This is a detachment technique that requires practice. You will get it and ultimately you’ll be able to laugh at yourself – in a kind way! – when you catch your three-year-old or thirteen-year-old self at it again. And remember to start your day with the thought that more than anything you want yourself - your authentic self - and you will not hide the jewel of who you are. How fabulous is that?

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The God Of Small Things

2008-11-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

Uncertainty is the great de-stabiliser for us all. At a most basic human level, we’re all little control freaks who like our security and certainty and currently, on a global level, we’re getting none of that. There are plenty of doomsayers out and about and every day brings some fresh disaster to up the tension. This all plays into our underlying fear of uncertainty, leaving us insecure and hyper-vigilant for the next problem heading our way. Let’s call it ‘the light at the end of the tunnel must be an on-coming train’ syndrome, which we seem to be experiencing collectively right now.

So how do you find any sense of peace in a world that’s going crazy? For me it’s the god of small things, connecting with the little moments that remind you who you are at heart and give you faith for the future. It’s finding a happiness that arises from within, less driven by outer events. If it’s all going to hell in handbasket outside, what other choice do you have? You have to find your security within yourself. And that’s not an impractical act. When you have a strong core, you’re less affected by what’s going on around you and more driven by your own values, as well as having the benefit of your own intuitive guidance.

The author Zsusannah Budapest says “Happiness is a spiritual value. The spirituality that puts bread on the table and puts a roof over your head is a very valuable spirituality. A spirituality that disregards that your stomach is empty and you don't have a roof over your head and you don't have any self-esteem is not spiritual, it's just somebody's money-making scheme. Spirituality has to address practical matters. Finding the purpose in your life would find you meaningful work. I think that's spiritual. Finding a mate with whom you share your soul and body is spiritual. Finding your self-esteem, which is my main focus—ninety-nine percent of my work is about self-esteem—is finding your spiritual centre and getting the courage to go on and evolve instead of giving up.”

Our cultural evolution will take on a multitude of new shapes as we ride out the economic storms we’re currently experiencing and hopefully adapt with a set of values that is less concerned with the getting of stuff and more concerned with the experiences that we share. And so we go back to basics, to find the little things that make us feel connected to our spiritual centre and at peace. That is where comfort lies. From comfort springs hope and the courage to get out there and try again, whatever the circumstances.

I call it the god of small things because it’s never usually the big stuff that holds us together in tough times. It’s the small kindnesses from others, a moment of peace, a beautiful sky, something that makes you laugh out loud or a flash of insight that helps you see clearly that makes the difference when all around you seems cloudy and grey. It’s where you take refuge, where you find those moments when you feel most purely yourself, unconcerned with the turmoil of the outer world.

Obviously I’m of an introspective persuasion, so my comforts are often solitary ones – meditation, prayer, walking by the river – or purely sensory ones like enjoying the aroma of really great coffee, listening to the sound of the ocean or walking barefoot on the grass. In the Jungian sense, introverted people are refreshed by withdrawing into their own world and extroverted people are refreshed by social interaction. If you’re more extrovert, your touchstones that remind you who you are could be getting together with friends for a drink or going to a concert or event with lots of other like-minded people. In reality our behaviour encompasses a little of both, but when the chips are down, we naturally opt for one of those modes – introversion or extroversion.

This week, pay attention to how you recharge yourself. Are you naturally introverted or extroverted? If you’re not sure, ask yourself this question – if you were feeling completely exhausted, what would perk you up more: an afternoon of solitude or a lively event with lots of people and activities? If you come over all faint at the very thought of socialising under those circumstances, you’re clearly an introvert. If the company of others is just the ticket when you’re in need of some upliftment, then extroversion is your style.

Use that knowledge about how you refresh yourself and recharge to take a look at the small joys that make you feel in tune with yourself and your purpose. What are the simple things that really make you feel alive? When you know what they are, make a list and start doing them. Schedule time in your diary if you have to – just make sure you make your happiness a priority. These are challenging times and they’ll only be harder if you don’t retain a strong sense of self. When everyone around you is all doom and gloom, don’t catch that bug. Give yourself some spiritual immunity with the god of small things.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Here Come The Girls

2008-11-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

Don’t know about yours, but my weekend was an all-singing, all-dancing girlie extravaganza. It kicked off – literally – with Ladies’ Day at the rugby which rather curiously included something described as a burlesque performance, followed by a quick dose of my current addiction, Strictly Come Dancing, and an extraordinarily entertaining evening of sensual Arabic dancing. Are you sensing a theme here?

Understandably, none of us seemed particularly interested in the rugby – unless there was any promise of a player being stripped, washed and brought to our tent – so we concentrated on the entertainment to hand … that being a fashion show and a pair of pole dancers masquerading as burlesque queens. Now, there’s quite a difference between sporting an overdose of silicone and patent leather whilst gyrating lasciviously and truly being a diva of the burlesque scene. Everything about Dita Von Teese – the poster girl for the burlesque renaissance – says class, while everything about the sideshow we witnessed said low-rent.

What really brought it home, though, was watching the beauty and sensuality of Arabic dance. The female dancers had a sensuous confidence in their bodies that was mesmerising and the audience revelled in it, showing their enthusiastic appreciation of an incredibly seductive art form. The array of different body shapes on display was vast, yet each had their own unique beauty and power. And there was so much joy in the room, so much pleasure in creative performance, that it just made the rugby strippers look tawdry and cheap.

While the pole-dancers were claiming to teach women the art of seduction as a form of empowerment, it was still just about writhing around trying to get a man’s attention. For the Arabic dancers, though, it was clear that they took great pleasure in their own sensuality and their artistry, and felt very comfortable with their bodies, whatever their shape. Who needs Gok Wan to help you love your body when there’s a belly-dancing class near you? Find a good one where the teachers have a real love of the dance and you’ll be shaking your money-maker with joy and real abandon in no time!

In the sacred traditions, the feminine is associated with dance and from earliest times, that dance has been sensual and seductive. In India, sacred sculptures venerate the goddess Shakti, whose name means life energy, carrier of the sacred art of female sexuality, of transformation through sex. She has been known and served as sacred prostitute and temple dancer, uniting the physical and the spiritual, and is embodied in all women. In the Middle East she arose again as Ishtar and in Sumeria, as Inanna, she inspired erotic poetry. The Greeks called her Aphrodite and she was known as Venus in Rome. This archetypal feminine energy is still with us, but these days our goddesses appear more on the silver screen than in spiritual worship. Sadly, we’re a little short on cultural icons who are permitted to embody both spirituality and sensuality in our current worldview.

Yet the stage is set for a resurgence of a more powerful feminine sensuality that doesn’t exclude any aspect of life. We’ve separated ourselves from our own innate feminine wisdom to fit a cookie-cutter model of feminine behaviour for long enough to realise that it really hasn’t served us – or men, or the planet – well at all.

Jane Fonda, the radical feminist of the 70s, wrote recently “Before I turned 60, I thought I was a feminist. I was in a way – I worked to register women to vote, I supported getting women elected. I brought gender issues into my movie roles, I encouraged women to get strong and healthy, I read the books we’ve all read. I had it in my head and partly in my heart, yet I didn’t fully get it. See, although I’ve always been financially independent, and professionally and socially successful, behind the closed doors of my personal life I was still turning myself into a pretzel so I’d be loved by an alpha male. I thought if I didn’t become what he wanted me to be, I’d be alone, and then I wouldn’t exist.”

That’s quite a statement, and a brave one at that, to realise that despite all your achievements, you were still turning yourself inside out to please someone else. It just goes to show how we delude ourselves with outer appearance and mistake validation from the outside world for true confidence. Anything worthwhile must come from within, if you want it to stand the test of time.

Fonda is now promoting a feminine agenda that doesn’t seek to polarise masculine and feminine, but to carve a new path that honours both archetypal energies. She adds “So, as Eve Ensler says, we have to change the verbs from obliterate, dominate, humiliate to liberate, appreciate, celebrate. We have to make sure that head and heart can be reunited in the body politic, and relationship and democracy can be restored. We need to really understand the depth and breadth of what a shift to a new feminine paradigm would mean, how fundamentally central it is to every other thing in the world. We win, everything wins, including boys, men and the earth. We really have to understand this and be able to make it concrete for others so they will be able to really see what Feminism is and see themselves in it.”

This week, take a look at your own body politic – how is heart shaping up, versus head? Are they both getting a look-in or is calculating head winning over instinctive heart all the time? How comfortable do you feel in your own body? Been twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to get anyone’s approval lately? Time for a girlie MOT – how feminine do you feel and what would it take for you to feel that sensual life force alive in you?

Get your body moving – try something seductive like a salsa or a rumba if belly-dancing feels out of your comfort zone. Though quite why you’d want to hang out too long in a comfort zone is an issue in itself. This week get girlie and get fabulous, whatever femininity means to you. Explore it, mull over the concept of feminine power, spend an evening at a burlesque club … do whatever it takes to find that sacred feminine alive and well within you.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Sound Of Paper

2008-11-03T10:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it’s simply curious to hear a familiar concept out of context and other times it’s quite inspirational. Many of you will have heard of the seminal work on creativity by Julia Cameron, called The Artist’s Way, where the concept of Morning Pages first hit the mainstream, bringing creative journaling to the masses.

As Cameron describes it, “Morning Pages are the pivotal tool of a creative life. They are three pages longhand, morning writing, about anything and everything. You may complain, whine, grumble, grieve. You may hope, celebrate, plan, plot. Nothing is too small or too large to be included. Everything is grist for the mill.”

Developing the discipline to crank out three pages on a daily basis allows you to download bedhead fuzzy thinking, get past mindless brain-chatter and awaken your creative spirit. Oddly enough, of all the techniques I’ve recommended, this one is probably the hardest to do. The sheer level of resistance to getting anything down on paper stops most people in their tracks and those that get started are mortified by the petty grievances that work their way onto the page. However, only when you get past the dull stuff does the gold appear, so only those with perseverance make it to the bit where your intuition kicks in and starts to hand over the goodies.

Answering the question why we should do Morning Pages, Cameron responds “Morning Pages prioritise our day. They render us present to the moment. They introduce us to an unsuspected inner strength and agility. They draw our attention to those areas of life that need our focus. Both our weaknesses and our strengths will be gently revealed. Problems will be exposed and solutions suggested.” Moreover, she adds, “Morning Pages are a potent form of meditation for hyperactive Westerners. They amplify what spiritual seekers call the ‘still, small voice’. Work with the Morning Pages awakens our intuition. Synchronicity becomes a daily fact. We are more and more often in the right place at the right time. We know how to handle situations that once baffled us. In a very real sense, we become our own friend and witness. Morning Pages are the gateway to the inner and higher self. They bring us guidance and resilience. They make us far-seeing.”

It’s the witness part of Morning Pages that seems to crop up in its other guises that have come to my attention of late. Someone mentioned writing out three pages - and apparently it had to be exactly three pages – when deciding whether to end a relationship or not, which seemed to be an adaptation of the same concept. When you become witness to your own feelings and face them in black and white, it’s a lot more difficult to remain in denial and a lot easier to see graphically how you really feel. By the way, there’s no special magic in three pages, in case you’re wondering what that’s about. It’s just that it generally takes that long to get past the rubbish lurking about on the surface of your mind and tap into the creative wiring that lies beneath.

The other use I heard for the Morning Pages was as a diet journal. Apparently, when Cameron teaches The Artist’s Way and people participate in Morning Pages on an ongoing basis, they very often lose weight as they become conscious of their own feelings and inner dialogue. In her new book, The Writing Diet, Cameron encourages journaling beyond the bounds of simple Morning Pages, into an ongoing daily practice to become conscious of the link between mood and food. As she says, “The journal makes it very specific. It is a way of becoming accountable. Usually when people are overweight, they’re kind of vague about food. When you have the food journal, you can see ‘I did fine until 4 o’clock’. The food journal allows you to interrupt a binge. The minute you write in a journal, you become conscious of the direction you’re going.”

To be honest, there’s probably no issue that wouldn’t benefit from a journaling technique. Career decisions, relocation, problems with family or friends – they’re all potential material for Morning Pages or an ongoing daily journal if you’re looking for inspiration or clarity on your deeper feelings.

This week, pick an issue and go for it. Commit to either three Morning Pages daily for a week or to keep an emotional/creative journal throughout each day until the next I Am Fab rolls around. Watch out for resistance and the classic excuses, eg no time, I’ll do it later, one page will do … I’ve heard them all (and given them a good run myself – just because I love writing does not mean I’m immune from resistance). You never know, you might just find yourself loving this technique and keeping it up on a regular basis. Or you might adapt it in a totally different way.

What’s important is giving it the space to do it properly in the first place, so Morning Pages can work their unique charm in freeing up blocked psyches. Julia Cameron’s been doing this for 20 years and specialises in working with professionals who suffer from writer’s block, so I think we can trust that she knows what she’s talking about. Do yourself a favour and get the paper party started. You’ll be in celebrated company. So as the auteur Jean Cocteau famously said, “We writers are fabulous creatures!”

While we're on the subject of creativity, here's an inspiring short film film – Mankind Is No Island – shot entirely on video camera phone, using typography and simple imagery, that's just won the first prize at the Tropfest short film festival in New York.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrDxe9gK8Gk

If you're looking for IAF archives, they now have a new home, as AOL has closed down its blog hosting. You can now go to Fab Central on the link below and catch up with all the archived entries.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Voice Of Experience

2008-10-27T09:28:00.001-07:00

Every now and then you get an insight into the world of someone who’s living a very public – and very successful – life. I figure it’s best to pay attention when that happens, because you’re likely to be reminded of some truths that we all try to avoid, particularly if that public figure is big on personal responsibility. Well, they don’t loom much larger on that scale than Oprah, who’s just documented the twenty things she ‘knows for sure’.

You can read the whole kit and caboodle online at http://www.oprah.com/article/spirit/inspiration/200811_omag_for_sure_oprah, but in the meantime we’ll just take a look at a few goodies …

“You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” At Fab Towers, we are big proponents of the joys of authenticity and individual creative expression. Yet it’s one of the hardest maxims to stick by when you’re being pulled every which way but loose by other people’s expectations. Have the courage to hold your centre and you’ll get to create an exceptional life.

“Whatever someone did to you in the past has no power over the present. Only you give it power.” Another tough one there. We all just love a good wallow, but feeling sorry for yourself and giving someone from the past the power over how you feel today is highly destructive. There is a healing time required after any trauma where we need to explore and release our pain, but it very quickly becomes counter-productive to continue to ruminate over the same issues. All the power at your disposal is right here, right now. Leave the past where it belongs or it will suck the life out of the here and now.

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” For the avoidance of doubt, this doesn’t mean being judgemental, but being realistic when someone has been less than respectful of your time, energy or feelings. We particularly like to delude ourselves in the romantic arena by overlooking flaws that have been glaringly obvious from the outset. People show you what they think of you by the way they treat you. Don’t allow people to take up residence in your life if they’re not respectful of who you are, what you need and how you live.

“Trust your instincts. Intuition doesn’t lie.” It may not lie, but we lie to ourselves. As with people showing us who they are, we often over-ride our intuition and that is always going to come with a cost. If you’ve done that, be honest with yourself and notice how you had a nagging feeling things weren’t quite right. Your intuition is always at work, guiding you quietly. You just need to shut up and listen and remember that it won’t always tell you what you want to hear.

“Love yourself and then learn to extend that love to others in every encounter.” The big issue here is learning to love yourself first. Extending love to others without self-love is simply sacrifice and that just leaves you drained and resentful. Fill your own well first and you’ll naturally have plenty of love to give to others freely and joyfully. Your own self-acceptance will allow others to feel free to be themselves – and nurture themselves – too.

“Find a way to get paid for doing what you love. Then every paycheck will be a bonus.” Nothing keeps us more in tune and on song than doing what we love for a living. That’s the holy grail of a working life. Keep that as your major aim and everything else will fall into place. When you’re passionately interested in your own life, you become highly magnetic to good in other areas of your life. If you haven’t managed to make your passion into a career yet, just keep doing it whenever and wherever you can. Self-expression is its own reward.

“When you don’t know what to do, get still. The answer will come.” Stillness is the wellspring of all wisdom. Yet we live in a society that will throw any kind of activity or money at a problem rather than sit still and ponder it for even a few minutes. Be reactionary – learn to embrace the power of stillness. That’s where you’ll learn to calm and comfort yourself and listen clearly to the voice of your intuition, which will lead you down roads you could never have imagined. Get comfortable with silence.

This week, pick one of these pearls of wisdom and reflect on it. Which one stands out for you? How is it showing up in your life? Maybe it’s something that’s working for you – in which case, be very proud of yourself – or maybe it’s something that you already know is true but are trying to avoid taking responsibility about. Write the saying that speaks to you most at the top of your diary page every day for a week. Put it on a sticky note on your desk. Keep reminding yourself of what it is you need to pay attention to and let it work its magic. If it’s working for Oprah, it’s a pretty sure thing that it’s going to work for you too.

Let’s leave the final word to our old friend the genius scientist, Albert Einstein, who seems to have cornered the market in essential wisdom. He tells us “The ideals that have lighted my way time after time and have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth”. With that kind of simplicity he could have had an alternative career as a Zen master …

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Light Years

2008-10-20T09:48:00.001-07:00

It turns out that one of my greatest inspirations, Marianne Williamson, is celebrating 25 years of lecturing on A Course In Miracles this month – that’s a hell of a lot of light for one person to put out into the world!

And she’s still doing it. In a recent post on her blog, discussing the US presidential election, she raises the issue of how authentically the candidates have communicated, saying “There is a psychological principle that people hear you on the level that you’re speaking from. If it’s all in your head, then someone hears you with their head. But if it’s coming from your heart, then someone will hear you from your heart. And that’s not just a metaphor; it’s brain functioning.”

Using the Obama and Clinton face-off as an example, Marianne notes “Throughout her campaign, with almost every word she uttered, Hillary Clinton spoke to us from that smart head of hers. And like everyone, she was fated to crash into a wall with that. No matter how smart we are, we don’t break through to our greatness until our mind has been humbled. There is a higher intelligence than the intellect, and that is the ceiling Hillary was not able to break through. She depended on intellect, force of will, external alliances and political strategising – while Obama subsumed all those things under what Mahatma Gandhi called soul force.”

For Gandhi, that principle known as satyagraha had its root meaning in “holding onto truth, hence true-force.” He also called it love-force or soul-force.” It stems from the wellspring of essential goodness – the divine spark – that lies within us all. That same principle of authentic and innate inner beauty lies at the heart of the teachings of A Course In Miracles, to which Marianne Williamson has dedicated her life’s work, with enormous success. So much so that a passage from her book, A Return To Love, formed part of Nelson Mandela’s inauguration speech and is often mis-attributed to him. Although you’ve probably seen it a thousand times, it’s so good it bears repeating …

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

What’s particularly powerful about this quote is that it reminds us of the many ways we hide our truth and our goodness from ourselves and so often project the good that we cannot see in ourselves onto others, particularly in intimate relationships. This principle is echoed in Spiritual Divorce, by the leading shadow coach, Debbie Ford, who writes “Just as we project negative aspects of ourselves onto our partners, we also project our light. For most of us when we fall in love it is because we are seeing our disowned light in someone else. We see in our mates a part of ourselves that is hidden and then the chase begins to capture what we believe will make us whole.”

In the chapter on Reclaiming Our Divine Light, she notes “Having embraced our darkest qualities, it is now time to reclaim our light, our loving, compassionate, creative self. Only when we embrace our darkness and our light equally do we have access to our entire self. And only when we have access to all of who we are can we align to the destiny of our higher selves. When we are dancing in the arms of our soul’s purpose, each of us naturally expresses the precious gifts that we hold.”

To find our way back to an awareness of the personal qualities that we’ve endowed others with, Ford counsels “While your dark shadow is the person you would rather not be, your light shadow is represented by the people who inspire you. We can find our disowned positive qualities by looking outside ourselves at those we admire, those we love and those whom we would like to emulate. When you look outside, you can see yourself in the mirror image of others. Just as we have given so much of our darkness away, we have also hidden that much of our light.”

This week, let’s redress the balance by taking a look at just how much of our own light we’ve projected on to others. Look back at past relationships for clues as to the qualities you were drawn to in your partner. Then notice, as the relationship went on, was that truly a quality of theirs or was it something you later learned to express yourself? Any area of disillusionment in a past relationship is fertile hunting ground for disowned qualities. In my own personal inventory, I’ve noticed an attraction to so-called ‘creative’ partners, yet as I’ve gone on to express myself more creatively they don’t seem to have been quite the creative geniuses I rather idolised in the beginning …

Take a good look at the people you admire – famous people, fictional characters, family or friends – and pay attention to what it is that inspires your admiration. Whatever you find attractive and uplifting in them is a quality lurking within you that’s crying out for expression. Dare to face quite how talented and fabulous you just might be. It could be the missing piece of the puzzle in your quest for a fabulous, authentic life. While we’re all too willing to dig around to find what we think is wrong with us, we could do with a little light relief by focusing on what’s ultimately true – what’s actually right with us.

I’ll leave you with a final word from Ford on the importance of encompassing the entirety of ourselves. As she says “It’s not until we can embrace both our light and dark sides – all of our positive traits and all of our negative traits – that we can truly experience the feeling of emotional wholeness.”

Oh, and Happy 25th Anniversary, Marianne - very glad to have you on my team of projected light!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can be found at http://journals.aol.co.uk/iamfabulousco/IAmFabulous. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

True Colours

2008-10-13T06:23:00.001-07:00

I so wasn’t going to do this, but when something keeps staring you right in the face, you just have to deal with it. Apparently there’s barely a person on the planet right now who doesn’t have some issue with relationships – either because they don’t have one or they’re not getting what they want from the one they’ve got.

Of course this is the perennial issue of human dynamics, but it seems to be even more frenetic than usual of late. I’m going to blame this partly on the cycle of Mercury retrograde – a period when communications, ie the bedrock of relationship, can tend to go awry, causing all sorts of confusion and havoc. The good news is that this cycle, which happens for a few weeks about three times a year, will conclude on Wednesday 15 October, so hopefully this chaos will subside and we’ll all get back to trying to understand each other with a little less hysteria thrown in.

While the surface effect of this cycle can be confusing, the underlying purpose is to have a re-think about the major issues that were concerning you when the cycle began, which for this period would have been around 24 September. It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the kind of thoughts that were occupying your mind around that time and also if any new opportunities or people entered your life then. You’re being given an opportunity to take a closer look and refine your plans or take a deeper look at your relationships and how you approach them.

For those feeling the lack of personal relationship in their life right now, the only cure is acute attention to your own life, by finding and living your own passion – which, paradoxically, will make you attractive to others. Writer Martha Beck hits this particular nail on the head in her article for ‘O’ magazine entitled Damn, I’m Hot: Instructions on Seduction, which you can find at http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/ss_omag_200709_mbeck/1.

She reminds us, “Remember the old Peanuts cartoon in which Lucy mooned endlessly over Schroeder, whose only interest was the piano. That stereotype is based in truth: People who are mastering something that fascinates them become fascinating to others. If you want to capture other people’s attention, put your own attention on something that has nothing to do with them: oil painting, cooking, wildlife rescue. The more you get lost in what you’re doing, the more interesting you’ll become.”

The same advice applies whether you want to find a relationship or improve the one you have. Looking for someone else to fill an empty space in your life is a recipe for disaster. Your emotional needs are your own responsibility. Psychologist Dennis Sugrue, co-author of Sex Matters For Women, makes this point very clear, saying “If you are looking to a partner to make you feel worthwhile, to make you feel happy, to rescue you from a bored or unhappy life, if you are seeking someone to make you feel complete or whole – well, then you have some work to do, because these are needs that are never going to be met by anyone other than yourself.”

Yeah, we all freak out from time to time and start feeling needy or insecure, but it’s up to us to put the brakes on the fast train to Neurosisville, lest we drive ourselves and every one else around us nuts. Love brings up everything unlike itself. We over-analyse, we fret, we obsess, we find ourselves unworthy, we demand attention – now tell me, which particular part of that little list is in any way attractive?

Remember, we are all instinctive beings and we can sense neurosis and fear in others, so if you’re obsessing about someone, you can be damn sure that he or she is fully aware at a subconscious level that this is going on and is very likely to start withdrawing their energy and attention. If you are too present or too available to anyone – even on a subconscious level – it is an unattractive trait, because they never ever get the chance to feel your absence. And we all know what makes the heart grow fonder!

Perhaps the best relationship counsel ever given comes from Cynthia Heimel’s book, If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?, in which she details her sage advice on how to get a man. Ditto for women, by the way – these gems of wisdom are perennial and can apply equally to any relationship, regardless of gender. She writes, “Okay, pay attention now: I have the ultimate man-getting advice. You don’t have to listen to anybody else. Just listen to me. Okay, here’s what you do. Nothing.

“If he’s the wrong man, you can turn yourself inside out with wiles and perfume and French-maid’s outfits and nothing will work. You’ll never get him, you’ll never keep him, you don’t have a chance. If he’s the right man, you can have greasy hair, spinach in your teeth, and your skirt on inside out, and he’ll still be entranced and follow you to the ends of the earth.

“You don’t have to believe me, but what I say is absolutely true. You just have to follow your own personal, weird, goofy little star and some poor sucker is going to come along and die for you …”

Bugger. It really is that simple. Despite the endless array of advice, products, tricks and techniques on the market, the bottom line is that wiles won’t work. Being your authentic self will, but that requires self-knowledge, the courage to confront your own demons and a willingness to put effort and focus into your own life rather than trying to grab someone else’s attention. Oh, and love will come along in its own sweet time and not on the timetable you had planned. Not what we want to hear, maybe, but sometimes you just have to suck it up and accept the way things are. If you’ve really got it going on in your own life, it’s not like you’d feel the lack anyway – relationship would enhance your life, not be the missing link.

Cynthia Heimel’s advice comes with a little addendum, a timely reminder that we should be aware that what we think we want may bring us more than we bargained for and we should prepare accordingly. She says “Okay, the second part of my advice is just as simple, but infinitely harder: To get a man, you have to be ready for a man. Taking a man into your life is an enormous risk. Can you open your heart to a man, can you be trusting and vulnerable knowing that you’re also opening yourself up to the possibility of rejection and heartbreak? Can you withstand rejection and heartbreak? Can you let another person inside your defences, let him know who you really are and what you’re really like, knowing that he might someday leave you? Can you bear it?

“No, neither can I. But I’m trying. It’s quite a trick to build up your defences against heartbreak and yet not be defensive against men. And the trick is to develop self-confidence. Which is quite a trick, especially when you’re feeling needy and desperate. But be brave. Have a good look at yourself. Are you torturing yourself for your singleness? Punishing yourself for your alleged failure? Eating hundreds of thousands of M&Ms to atone for your neediness and desperation?

“Our society has made a practice of punishing its victims. Not only are women being punished (still!) for the feminist movement, but, even worse, they are being flayed alive for feeling weak and dependent and in need of love. Society has taught women to hate themselves. Society sucks. Pay it no mind. Of course you feel lonely and desperate and want love! You’re human! Wanting love is an honourable wish!

“When you stop practicing self-hatred, when you start feeling affection for yourself and your little ways, when you are able to follow that weird and goofy little star of yours, then your fears and defences fall from you like thistledown. Then you’re ready for a man. And then the nightmare begins.”

This week, fabulous people, put your attention firmly on your own life. Forget what’s going on with anyone else – your relationships will simply be reflecting what you need to address in your own inner life. What’s your purpose? Where’s your focus? What are you passionate about? If you’re mooning about over someone, just give it up and go cold turkey on obsessive thoughts – they won’t help anyway. If you’re not getting what you need from your relationship, try giving it to yourself and see how that shakes things up. Your sense of self-confidence and self worth is what teaches other people how to treat you. If you drop your focus on that by making someone else more important, things can only go downhill. Get interested in who you are – follow your own weird, goofy little star – and, curiously enough, other people will too.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can be found at http://journals.aol.co.uk/iamfabulousco/IAmFabulous. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Harmonic Wealth

2008-10-06T09:24:00.001-07:00

As we all appear to obsessing about money in the current economic climate, we might as well take a look at wealth from a wider perspective. One of the contributors to The Secret, James Arthur Ray, has written a book called Harmonic Wealth, where he urges readers to look at their concept of abundance in what he calls the five main pillars of wealth – financial, relational, mental, physical and spiritual.

According to Ray, “Creating harmonic wealth brings an overall sense of well-being, fulfilment, even unity. Understand that your pillars are interdependent: when you attend to each of them, all increase in strength. When you take care of your health by working out regularly and eating well, you create multiple benefits. Sexual relationships become enhanced by your greater confidence and stamina. Business booms from your increased energy. You’re more alert and receptive in spiritual pursuits. You’re more alive. Similarly, spiritual growth translates to deepening intimacy in friendships and romantic relationships, fuelling your desire to keep up with your physical exercise.”

For those among us who have difficulty equating wealth with spirituality, Ray harks back to his earliest convictions, saying “Ever since I was a kid I questioned – everything. Deep down inside I just knew that you could advance spiritually without giving up the joys of the earth. I looked around and saw that the people who were saying you couldn’t be wildly successful and highly spiritual at the same time didn’t appear to have authentic results in either area.”

Looking at this issue within our current cultural context, Ray notes “This is a new millennium and it’s time to redefine what it means to be wealthy and spiritual. I believe, for example, that it’s every bit as spiritual for Ronaldo to score a hat-trick as it is for me to sit in my living room meditating. Bill Gates has touched as many, if not more, lives with his inspirational vision as any modern-day teacher. Each person contributes and gives to the world from their own unique calling and gifts. Quantum physics and spiritual traditions tell us that all things come from the same source … For the first time in recorded history, we now have a marriage between science and spirituality. We need to drop these artificial distinctions between the spiritual and the material. It’s up to us to see how these truths apply to our everyday lives and how we can integrate them for harmonic wealth in all areas.”

Ray is one of a number of voices in the spiritual field calling for a more integrated spirituality, where it forms part of everyday life and is not considered a separate pursuit to the demands of daily living. Caroline Myss often talks about this time in history as being one where many are called to be ‘mystics without monasteries’, needing to honour their own inner spiritual callings while living ordinary, not cloistered, lives. Ray defines the same issue, saying “But you and I aren’t going to live in mystical abstractions. We’ve got real work to do. Spiritual mastery in today’s world is about integration. It’s about being able to have a great body and run a business, as well as meditate, give back and everything in between. My goal has always been to soar into the realms of the mystic, while keeping my feet in the sand.”

So if we are to meld the spiritual and the material, where do we begin? With an enquiry into our personal vision in each of Ray’s five pillars, apparently. The first step in the harmonic wealth approach is to create a compelling personal vision for each of those areas. For financial wealth, ask yourself what’s your ideal income and what would be your ideal way of making it? For relational wealth, look into how much quality time you spend with yourself; whether you treat yourself the way you want other people to treat you; what kinds of things do you do that make you feel fulfilled and what quality of personal relationships you have. To assess your mental wealth, take an honest inventory of how many books you read or seminars you’d like to take, as well as asking yourself if you’re the master of your emotions or if they master you. For physical wealth, look at your health, physical flexibility, your possessions and where you’d want to travel. Finally for spiritual wealth, review what inspires you and makes you feel connected, as well as defining what is your own personal truth about your relationship to your creative source.

In making this kind of self-assessment and creating a personal vision, Ray notes that it can only be effective when it’s personally meaningful and comes alive in your imagination. He stresses “I promise, when your vision on the inside becomes more compelling and powerful than what you observe on the outside, the universe is at your command. So, be specific, make it real, and fill in your vision with as many sensory details as possible. If you had it, what would it feel like, smell like, sound like, look like, taste like? You want to be able to recognise your intention when you create it at last. Think big – really, really big. Don’t censor yourself. I’ve shared this powerful strategy with thousands of people on all levels of the happiness scale and the results are often extraordinary and life-changing when people truly let go of what they think is possible and write down their soul’s desires.”

This week, take that one pure, solid gold piece of advice and create a vision for yourself of your soul’s desire. Not what you think you can have, not what you think is possible right now, but exactly the dream that’s lying dormant in your heart – the one you’ve always thought might not be possible. Let that cat out of the bag and see what fabulous things just might happen next …

To download or listen online to James Arthur Ray talking to investment advisor Jim Hansberger about the current state of the global economy, go to http://blog.jamesray.com/ and click into Thrive In The Face Of Economic Challenges – The Recording.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can be found at http://journals.aol.co.uk/iamfabulousco/IAmFabulous. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Gift & The Servant

2008-09-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

I seem to spend my life talking about the need for inner-directedness amidst a world that constantly demands outer attention and activity. There are so many distractions, so many ways in which we fall into old patterns of behaviour – whether they work or not – just because they’re easier or generally more culturally acceptable. Tapping into your own inner wisdom may not appear to be the path of greatest ease, but then again repeatedly banging your head up against a brick wall isn’t exactly a laugh a minute either, is it? There surely must be some cosmic joke in the fact that we seem hell-bent on persevering with our ineffective coping strategies and self-defeating behaviours long after it becomes blindingly obvious that they’re not getting the desired result. Clearly the triumph of hope over experience is the definition of the human condition.

Now, I’m all for an easy life, rather than having things be a constant struggle. That’s not to say I don’t have my own issues – ‘slow learner’ would probably be written on my spiritual report card – but I am finally grasping the concept that the creative, inner-driven approach is always the one that spells ease. Too much effort means you’re not allowing things to come to you.

The intuitive approach taps first into the power of the inner world, harnessing the creative spirit, before action is taken. It allows for synchronicity to get to work on your behalf, so you don’t have to do so much legwork in the outer world. Why do it the hard way by chasing something, when a little inner work could draw it towards you so much more easily? However, this does require you to honour and trust the inklings of the inner world above the seeming certainties of the outer world and its logical approach. If you’re uncomfortable living with a little mystery, this one’s going to be a tough call for you.

Interestingly enough, the man who brought us E=MC2, Albert Einstein, expressed a similar opinion, when he said “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind its faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Way to go, Albert. Let’s not forget this is history’s leading scientist telling us to trust the mystery first and the logic second. He wasn’t dismissing either, simply placing them in their correct order. As one of our most inspired thinkers, it strikes me that it’s a pretty safe bet to follow a path he’s already laid out for us if we want to live fabulous lives of inspiration ourselves.
That said, he also cautioned that “Intuition does not come to an unprepared mind”.

You need to put in the groundwork so you can be gifted with the power of inspiration. Vision requires dedication and three distinct qualities – receptivity, trust and surrender. Your intuition is constantly flowing, but it’s like a radio frequency you must actively tune into. The act of receptivity is the willingness to know that creative inspiration is available to you. The element of trust is not only to believe that it’s there for you, but to take action upon the information you’re given. The art of surrender is the willingness to be open to pursuing a course of action even when you don’t know why you have the impulse to follow it or what purpose it may serve.

When the rational mind – the servant – is ruling the roost, it misses opportunities because it won’t take action without a logical reason being in place beforehand. When intuition is in charge, action taken on a seemingly illogical impulse can lead to extraordinary turns of events that your rational mind may never have been able to contemplate.

Underlying this process is a force that’s deeper than how the law of attraction is currently portrayed via The Secret and other material of its ilk. To me, it’s the law of magnetism. It’s more profound than intent and attraction. It rests in a knowing that you are a spark of the divine and that when you tap into that knowledge you are tapping into an enormous well-spring of creativity, abundance and joy. It’s not an energy that strives. It’s a deeply feminine knowing that allows you to be receptive, to trust and to be peacefully confident without needing to control the outcome.

In her recent book, The Answer is Simple – Love Yourself, Live Your Spirit, Sonia Choquette writes elegantly of the essential spiritual truth about us all, saying “You’re Divine. You’re made of light, love and grace. You’re holy and your body and personality are the caretakers of this sacred presence. To house this Divinity in your being, in your physical self, is a gift and should be a pleasure. To accept your true nature is a huge, undeniable step toward self-love.”

Again, we hear echoes of Einstein, as Sonia Choquette reminds us that the gift lies in our essence, not our body or personality. And before any of us decide to come over all austere and self-denying on the basis of that little quote, let’s remember that the issue is not about denying ourselves the pleasures of life, but in getting our priorities right.

So, this week, let’s see if we can get the law of magnetism up and running in your life. If there’s something you really want to make happen, but clarity or achievement seem to be eluding you, go back to basics. The magic happens when you’re clear from the outset. Set aside some time to sit quietly and really sense how it feels to know that your true essence is divine. Imagine yourself sitting quietly in the centre of all the maelstrom the world can offer, simply allowing what is right for you to fall into your lap. Ponder on what you think you need and let it go, trusting that the right solution will find its way to you. Surrender your concepts of needing to know how it will happen. Just see it being brought to you elegantly and easily.

Then, whatever happens, just keep trusting. Maybe what you’re asking for is no longer what’s right for you. Maybe there’s a better option that can’t come through until you let go of the one you’ve set your sights on. If you find yourself stressed about it, take some time out to settle your energy back into peace and trust. If an impulse to take action arises and it feels right, go for it whether or not you know where it will lead. Have some faith in mystery. If it’s good enough for Einstein, it should be good enough for you!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can be found at http://journals.aol.co.uk/iamfabulousco/IAmFabulous. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

State Of The Nation

2008-09-22T09:30:00.000-07:00

When you have to talk just about everyone down off the ceiling, you know things aren’t good. We appear to be in a collective mental spin about the state of the economy, due in large part to the prevalent media hype that’s the communications equivalent of putting out the fire with gasoline. Yes, it’s tough out there and in all probability we’re not in for the easiest of times, but dwelling constantly on the worst that could possibly happen is not a healthy approach. Fear drives recession – that’s how runs on banks start, which can throw even prosperous institutions into terminal decline. By all means protect your position, but don’t live in a perpetual cloud of gloom. Well-known millionaires and billionaires have made money in recessions and depressions. For every person who takes a loss, there’s someone out there profiting from it. Don’t assume the worst – it won’t help. And, actually, you’d be missing the point of the turmoil we’re currently experiencing.

On a timely note, an email newsletter from the rather prescient intuitive astrologer, Robert Ohotto, dropped into my inbox today, in which he notes “as the US/world economy crashes and the Earth’s climate changes, it’s becoming painfully obvious that we are at a Fate/Destiny point collectively and individually; which means we are in a Dark Night Of The Ego together at this time and must therefore tend to our collective soul.” If we cannot change the circumstances we are exposed to, we must then seek to discover what changes those circumstances might be trying to provoke.

Discussing the movement of Pluto – the planet of transformation – into Capricorn as an indicator of massive change in our cultural structures as it highlights their murky underbelly, he interprets this as a marker for the need to make a reconciliation with the “shadow of capitalism, corporate business structures, governments, policies and bureaucracies – especially as more earthly resources become limited … Now we must urgently adopt a new approach infused with ethics, holistic thinking and a new model of economy based on renewable resources.” Collectively we’re burning down the house so we can build a better one.

It’s not all bad news as Jupiter, the great benefic, is acting “as an intuitive guiding grace”. However, to take advantage of that grace, we need to be not only receptive to the intuitive inklings we are given, but to take action upon them. He asks “But as with all intuitive guidance, are we ready to listen and take action based on its promptings – which demand risking change – or will we once again become seduced by the cultural spells we’ve been fed and become vulnerable because of our fear?”

For all of our sakes, I hope it’s the former. My deepest intuitive hit on the difficulties we are facing has been for, some time, that those of us who will negotiate them most comfortably will be those who become inner-directed and willing to ignore the prevailing hysteria to live by their own inner wisdom. And by ‘live’, I mean put it into practice and refuse to be swayed by other people’s opinions and be open to allowing your life to be re-shaped in ways you might never have expected. Those of us who hold on tight to the way things used to be could be in for a very rocky ride.

As Ohotto explains, the planets are not causing this economic downturn, they are simply reflections of the archetypal experiences affecting us all. To take it to an individual level, he explains how these archetypes are likely to express themselves in our personal lives, saying “Jupiter and Pluto in Capricorn asks us to re-evaluate all of our ambitions in the world and connect them with the concept of service to the whole – the ultimate expression of Capricorn achievement and duty which requires a more meaningful reason to commit our life force to the goals we pursue.”

“I’ve seen many people having to look to developing more confidence (Jupiter) and stamina (Capricorn) to pursue the next phase of their destiny. This includes the development of better boundaries (Capricorn) so that they can expand the possibilities of what they could be meaningfully doing in this life (Jupiter). It also means being willing to face our Fate and call on inner strength to persevere up our mountains. As the old saying goes, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. Nor was your destiny.”

“I’ve also seen a lot of businesses collapse (as have we all with the economy) because they were based on faulty, worn-out ideas or corrupt ethics … And I’m sure there’s more to come, which will absolutely affect us all. But we must not get caught up in the hype and mistake the symptoms for the cause. It’s our shadow that has brought us to this point and needs more interrogation and subsequent integration. To resent and focus on the teacher is to lose the lesson.”

This week, if you’re in danger of losing the lesson due to generalised anxiety and panic, your first step is simply to calm down. Secondly, be very honest with yourself about changes that you need to make and insights or intuitive hunches you might have been ignoring. Be willing to let go of what no longer fits or is preventing future growth. Comfort zones are an endangered species, so be prepared for change. It needn’t be difficult if you’re not holding on for dear life to something you’ve probably already outgrown.

Engage your intuition as much as possible. That means calming mental panic and stormy emotions by allowing yourself as much peaceful, unstimulated time as you can make available to yourself. Do simple things that make you feel uplifted – buy fresh flowers, take a walk by the river, soak in a hot bath. Water is great for facilitating intuitive thought – it’s instantly calming, whether you’re walking by it or soaking in it.

Kick the addiction to fretting about the worst that could happen. Do all you need to do on a practical level and then have some faith in yourself and your future. If you spent as much time thinking creatively about what you want to happen as you do fretting about things that might never come to pass, you’d be amazed at what you could achieve.

Learn to rest comfortably in not knowing. Yes, times are tricky, but you have a better chance of having them work out for you if you can learn to have faith in a positive future. You might not know exactly how that’s going to come about, but you don’t need to. Trust, follow your intuition and pay serious attention to where your soul is guiding you – not where your personality wants to stay stuck – and you’ll be excited by change, not terrified by it. Let this week be the one where you get in touch with the deeper impulses in your life, not just the superficial ones.

To read the full newsletter by Robert Ohotto, go to http://www.ohotto.com/.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can be found at http://journals.aol.co.uk/iamfabulousco/IAmFabulous. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Yoga School Dropout

2008-09-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

Now that the hurly-burly of relocating the chaise-longue is over, I’ve retreated into my number one coping strategy for getting my groove back, ie doing nothing. Of course nothing can be experienced in myriad ways, although it does require high standards in lack of planning. No schedule must be adhered to, no dates booked in the diary and only spontaneous activities are allowed. Everything must be light in tone – conversations, movies, books or wine – and completely without effort. Unadulterated pleasure – or leisure – is restorative to the soul and I must say my total lack of effort in that direction is coming along quite nicely.

Apparently I am in good company with this approach, as Oprah has recently written about overcoming overwhelm by simply stopping for a day in the middle of a frantic period looking for key executives for her school in South Africa and her new television network, OWN. Feeling frantic and overwhelmed, she decided on the radical approach of stillness. As she notes “So I stopped. Everything. For one day, I just stopped. Didn’t interview anybody. Or take any phone calls. Or return any emails. I stopped doing in order to return to the being of myself.”

“I pulled out my gratitude journal, in which I’d been too tired to write even a sentence for months. I went to my favourite place on earth, the place where twelve oaks form a canopy on the side of my front yard; I call them the apostles. I watched the sunlight filter between the branches and enhance every leaf. I listened to the birds and tried to decipher how many different ones were singing – or were they just talking at the same time? I let myself absorb the sacredness and the dignity of the oaks. I let those trees remind me how to be: still. I took a few deep breaths. I said ‘thank you’ out loud. I felt like I’d come home.”

Her day continued in blissful freedom, as she revelled in having no particular place to go and nothing she had to do, but plenty that called to her. Remembering the spaciousness of the time she’d carved out for herself, Oprah wrote “I sat in silence. I prayed. I meditated. I napped. I filled three more pages with praise and gratitude for all that’s gone right. And I stopped giving my attention to what wasn’t working. I watched the sun move across the sky. I went inside and filled a bowl with lemon sorbet and fresh strawberries purchased at the farmers’ market that morning. I savoured every spoonful, then licked the spoon. I went for a run with the dogs. I sat in a tub of bubbles until I got crinkly. I put on a new pair of PJs I’d been saving for a special … what? I read myself to sleep with Mary Oliver poems.”

Then, of course, as it somehow always does, taking the time for herself paid dividends in spades, as the two thorny issues she’d been dealing with suddenly resolved themselves. “The next day, I found the new head of school. Two days later, a president for OWN.” We shouldn’t be surprised, really, because we all know that feeling rested and centred can be a medium for seeming miracles, as much as feeling frantic and frazzled is an energetic accident waiting to happen.

One of my delicious pleasures of the past few days has been reading the exploits of the soi-disant yoga school dropout, Lucy Edge. She has a light touch with language, a keen eye for the absurd and a self-deprecating tone that makes her writing charmingly entertaining. In her first book she tells the story of how – after a decade in advertising with highlights like working on a margarine account – she set off to India “on a yoga school pilgrimage, in search of life’s greater meaning.”

Lucy’s aspirations for the journey were perhaps a tad ambitious, when you consider they included returning as “a Yoga Goddess – the embodiment of feminine perfection – peaceful, happy, loving, wise and endlessly compassionate to a suffering world – and a magnetic babe attracting strong and sweaty, yet emotionally vulnerable men. Not only would my purpose in life be revealed, but also a pretzel-like body – light on fat, flexible yet strong. I would sit in the lotus position, or stand on my head, effortlessly performing advanced postures in designer clothes for a Sunday Telegraph feature on Yoga Babes. Vogue would photograph me in my favourite organic juice bar and designer friends would choose me to model their size eight scented knickers. In these dreams the lack of money didn’t matter because I was beyond materialism, and anyway I got free holidays when Sting invited me to his Italian villa to give him personal tuition. Of course I knew it might not turn out this way, but it had to be better than looking for meaning in a tub of marge.”

It’s a bit of a no-brainer to work out that the path to smooth abs did not run smoothly, but the journey was definitely worth it. Lucy concludes “OK, so I wasn’t going home a Yoga Goddess wearing a shiny ‘new and improved’ sticker. To all intents and purposes I’d failed on my quest – but I didn’t feel like a failure. I actually felt happy and optimistic. Failure had set me free. I’d given up on perfection and I didn’t feel beholden to the demands of my ego any more. If I lay very still in my hammock I thought I could detect once more the vague whisperings of that ancient Eternal Self – telling me that in breaking free of the self-imposed goal, or gaol, without the ego’s fear of failure, I would find the world to be a bigger place … was I finally getting in touch with my own inner guru? The one that says be happy with what you have. The one that says happiness is always available to us, we just have to look inside ourselves. The one that says there is perfection in imperfection. The one that says talk to men on trains. The one that says eat M&S chocolate peanuts and be blissful. The one that says possess only what is necessary – and necessary may include pretty dresses, though they don’t always need to be labelled Joseph. The one that says life is a delicate balancing act: one part mugs of Maharishi Ayur-Ved Calming Vata Tea and standing on one leg yoga tree poses; one part bottles of Pinot Grigio and falling over.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, except I’d have probably gone for the Prosecco.

This week, just stop. Yeah, really. Don’t pay lip service to it – genuinely, actually and totally give yourself a day off. Take a day off from anything you think you should be doing and face the vast white space of an empty diary with an attitude of curiosity. Don’t plan anything. Get up in the morning and do what you feel like. Don’t get talked into doing anything anyone else wants to do. Use up things you’ve been saving for some special day. Above all, don’t fret about the things that need to get done – worrying is verboten.

Giving yourself some space can have miraculous effects. Just feeling rested will make you more effective and resourceful. Have a juicy, delicious, guilt-free ‘nothing’ day. Make it as empty or as full of activity as it occurs to you in the moment. There’s no right or wrong, just so long as you’re doing things you find pleasurable and you’re not in a hurry. Stand back and let the chips fall where they may. I suspect you’ll find things will stack up pretty well when you have the courage to simply let go – even for just one day.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Reclaiming Inner Wisdom

2008-09-08T08:30:00.000-07:00

It’s a new home for everyone – not just me – as I Am Fabulous relocates to its new address at Chez Fabulous. With Fab Towers becoming a bit of a moveable feast, it made sense to have a one-stop shop for all things fabulous. Now that the move is over, it’s possible to apply 20/20 hindsight and detail a few of the major insights the relocation process has highlighted, just to round off the whole experience.

· Today’s bargain is tomorrow’s clutter – embarrassingly, quite a few items discovered in the move still had price tags on or had never been worn. Not exactly a bargain if you never use it, is it?

· Have just enough to know exactly what you’ve got – as the not-so-proud owner of two pairs of precisely the same Fendi shoes bought in Cannes a year apart because I’d forgotten I’d bought the first pair, a clearer set of cupboards might have brought that to light.

· Experiences are more valuable than stuff – when I’m thinking about what’s important to me, it’s not multiple-purchases of Fendi mules that cross my mind. It’s always experiences with people or places (in the inner worlds and outer ones).

· Call on your friends and share the load – when it all seems too much, good friends will listen, make you laugh and help out if needs be. That team effort will get you through just about anything.

· Do things when you get the first inkling – the entire process of clearing out would have been so much easier if I’d started when I first got the intuition a move was on the cards, instead of in a mad rush on a deadline.

· Take things one step at a time – if you want to avoid overwhelm, do a project in bite-sized chunks. Of course I tore the house apart until it looked like New Orleans after Katrina, then had to live in chaos for weeks. If I’d tackled a room at a time, it would have been a much more pleasant experience. Do what I say, not what I did!

· Change will show you where you’re weakest – I found myself slipping into feelings of overwhelm far more often than I would have expected. It showed me that overwhelm and helplessness are instinctive stress responses of mine. The antidote was telling myself to put one foot in front of the other and deal with what was right in front of me. It got me through and it all got done in the end.

· Have faith that it’ll all be OK and somehow it will be – despite scaring myself countless times with ‘what if’ scenarios, it all worked out as most things invariably do. There’s less stress if you stay relaxed and don’t terrify yourself with all the things that could go wrong.

· Not everyone’s going to understand your reasons – radical change makes people uncomfortable, so don’t expect everyone to think you’re doing the right thing. As long as you do, that’s the vote that counts!

· Lightening up equals freedom – the less you have, the more flexible you become and the more open to new experiences and options. That goes for stuff as much as for rules about living, judgements and set patterns of behaviour. Less is always more.

· Movement shifts energy and you never know where that might lead – when you make a radical change in one area, there’s always a knock-on effect in another. Watch for an upturn in new insights and opportunities when you’ve taken a leap of faith.

· Your security lies in who you are, not your stuff – we know that intellectually, but we don’t really know it viscerally until we loosen the bonds with our possessions. What makes us happy is the quality of our relationship with ourselves and others. Stuff is a bonus, but it’s no substitute for inner peace.

Apropos of our relationship with ourselves, I’ve come across a memoir by Gail Straub called Returning To My Mother’s House: Taking Back The Wisdom Of The Feminine, which she describes as “the story of how I returned to my mother’s house and reclaimed my own female wisdom, taking back what both Mom and I had betrayed”. Straub adds, “I see now how my story is so many of our stories. It is the story of both men and women who have abandoned their inner lives, leaving behind their hearts where deep, dark feelings reside; putting aside their intuitive imagination where dreams flourish; ignoring the invisible worlds where the irrational and the mysterious offer their incomparable gifts; and disowning the realms of silence, simplicity and solitude where the interior matures. Modern life rarely acknowledges or even allows space for such things. But we ignore these things at our peril, both as individual human beings and as an earth family.”

Recalling her travels in Bali, Straub describes a world where the feminine, right-brained intuitive and creative skills are dominant, in stark contrast to our masculine Western world. She reminisces “Unlike the Western world’s constant emphasis on the rational left brain, the Balinese culture was a celebration of the instinctual right brain. We were immersed in a vital process of dance, theatre, music, painting, wood carving and mask-making, not just as art forms but as interpretations of life. We learned that creativity is so natural and widespread in Bali that there is no actual word in their language for art or artist. Rather creativity is the natural means of honouring the gods and serving the community. Many women came home from Bali to take up forgotten passions of dance, piano, singing, painting, or poetry. I vowed to return to my love of writing.”

Through her writing she has detailed the journey to recovery of her inner wisdom and vital creativity, as well as the story of her mother’s lost authenticity. Remembering her mother’s gradual decline from vibrancy to conservatism, Straub says “I realised that those we love never really die. But what surely did die, long before my mother did, were her dreams and her connection to her innate female wisdom. A gifted and successful artist, with a passionate spirit and a wildly colourful bohemian wardrobe, my mother gradually gave up her vivid individuality as she grew into her roles as wife, working mother and aspiring member of an upscale conservative society. Then, wrestling with a fatal illness, she died too soon. The spiritual loss, more than the physical loss, of my mother has haunted me.”

“This loss of my mother’s authentic self has shaped my life, propelling me around the globe to reclaim what she left behind, to retrace the series of small deaths she suffered each time she abandoned more of her instinctual wisdom. I, too, betrayed my feminine, paying blind allegiance to the flag of the masculine, with its bold stripes of workaholism, speed and overdrive. Luckier than my mother, I realised that my feminine was dying before it was too late, before there was no turning back, before the spiritual dying entered my body and made me sick. With the consciousness and resources of my generation, I came to understand why I had sacrificed my interior life – the rich realm of feelings and moods, intuition and creativity, stillness and contemplation – to the overwhelming seduction of our dominant cultural values. I came to see why I had fallen under the spell of a culture that pays tribute to rational thought and exterior accomplishment, and at all costs, on all levels, encourages and rewards the principles of bigger, more and faster.”

This week, give some space to the reclaiming of your own authentic self with the principles of smaller, less and slower. Choose small goals, activities or treats that remind you of who you are at heart. Remember what inspired you or made you laugh when you were small. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by obligations or stuff, let things go until you feel the sense of freedom and creativity that comes from empty space. Do things slowly and deliberately, taking time to feel the sunshine on your face, the smell of fresh herbs, the calmness that comes from having no particular place to go and nothing to be or do. Do only what makes you feel authentically yourself and say no to everything else. Choosing what feels right to you – regardless of the cultural imperative – is the first step to reclaiming your inner wisdom.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

2008-09-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

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