Make it sunny and bright

Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching? Dennis and Wendy Mannering

Springtime in this city at the foot of the Rockies is a time of black and brown and grey. This year, it includes a whole bunch of white. In a world where scientists and environmentalists worry about global warming, we're being doused with a big chill. Go figure.

Yet, colour smiles everywhere if I change my glasses and let go of grumbling about what I cannot change, and focus instead over what I have influence upon -- me!

The weather outside is yicky, and keeping the fire inside burning bright is tricky, when I lose sight of what I want, and focus instead on what I don't want -- more snow!

Can't change the weather. I can change my attitude.

Yesterday, I had to bar a client from the art studio at the shelter where I work. On the weekend, he'd participated in a verbal judo contest with another client in the art studio. Even after the other client had walked away, he had continued to curse and swear, telling anyone within twenty feet of him what was wrong with the other guy and how he was going to right the wrong with his angry outbursts. To make matters worse, a staff member was taking a tour through the studio and heard the entire altercation.

I didn't want to do it. Bar him. I had worked with this client over several months in an attempt to take his focus off, as he calls it, 'defending' the little guy. In his mind, what he's doing is standing up for 'truth and justice'. In my view, he's blaming everyone else for his actions and not being accountable for himself.

Yesterday, as we talked about what had gone wrong on Sunday he kept repeating. "But he started it. He had no right to say what he did."

"We're not talking about his actions right now,"I told him. "He came forward to the staff member immediately after the altercation and acknowledged where he was out of line. He's taken ownership of his 100% in the situation. We're here to talk about yours."

"But I didn't do anything wrong," he wailed. "I was just standing up for the other guys. He talked down about their art and was making fools of them."

"The other guys had no issue with what he said," I told him. "They took it in the manner with which it was delivered. As a joke. They chose to let it go."

"But what he said was wrong."

"That may be so, but it doesn't account for your response."

"Well what else was I supposed to do," he asked. "Nobody else would stand up for themselves. I had to do it for them."

When my daughters were young, I went to great lengths to differentiate between behaviour and person. "Your behaviour can be changed. Who you are as a human being is a miracle of life, a gift, a beautiful being. That can never change. Your behaviour is what we're talking about here. What could you have done differently?"

Sometimes, when they did something inappropriate, or threw a tantrum, one of them would cry, "But I can't help myself."

And I would respond. "If you can't help yourself, who can?"

Nobody is powerful enough to help you if you are unwilling to help yourself first.

For the client yesterday, what keeps him stuck in his place, is his belief there is no other way to bring truth and justice into the world than by screaming and yelling and fighting.

"I'm not doing this for me," he said. "I'm doing it for them."

And what is that getting you? I asked him. They're still up in the studio painting. You're here. No longer able to use the space.

He didn't have an answer other than to say, "It's always the same. Somebody else causes the problem and I get blamed. Nobody listens to me."

When he left the office I cried. One of my coworkers who had sat in on the meeting told me. "You can't help him if he doesn't want to see the truth about what he's doing. You're not that powerful."

No. I'm not.

But if wishes were horses, I'd wish for him a mighty white stallion to carry him away from the angst of believing he is powerless to change himself.

Last night, C.C. took another client, the man who went through Choices in February, to a Flames hockey game. When he got home, he was excited. "What a great guy," he said. "His excitement at being at the game was infectious. I had a wonderful evening."

Earlier in the day when he told me he was looking for someone to go to the game with him, I asked if he would consider taking T. He quickly responded. "Absolutely. That would be fun."

"I fall in love with you a little bit more every day," I told him.

T. is changing his attitude. He's claiming his power to make a difference in his life by focusing on what he wants more of, and letting go of what doesn't work.

For today, I can't choose the weather, I can choose my attitude. Make it sunny and bright. Make it a brilliant reflection of what I want more of in my life. Let me smile through adversity and skip through travails. Let me be the beacon of light only I can be when I live up to my best and shine bright! Let my attitude be contagious.

The question is: Is your attitude worth catching?

One direction. One step. One answer.

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it. Salvador Dali

I have always thought there was a perfect way of being me. I told myself, 'the problem with me is, I'm just not doing it right. There must be an answer." And so I kept searching for the perfect answer to being me, struggled to meet the criteria of being 'the perfect me'.

It was and is, a great journey. In giving up the need to 'be perfect', I give into the truth of being me. I am perfectly human in all my imperfections. Right now. In this moment. Exactly the way I am.

Last year, while at Super Choices, Thelma Box, the founder of Choices, said to me after I had asked a question, "I experience you as a woman who will never find an answer good enough for her."

What a powerful and restorative insight.

I wanted the perfect answer as to why I was the way I was. I wanted the perfect answer to 'make it all better'.

There is no perfect answer. Just as there is no perfect path to where I want to be. There is only this moment, this path upon which I journey with grace and ease, and sometimes angst and trepidation.

Some time ago, in one of my journeys into self-discovery through therapy, I said to my psychiatrist, "Okay. I get that I'm an experiential learner, but did I have to take such a torturous path to get here? I like where I'm at, but did I have to make it so difficult?"

"There were a thousand paths you could have taken," he replied. "This just happens to be the one you took. End of subject. There is no good, bad or indifferent about your path. It is simply the path you chose to bring you to where you are today."

The path I chose.

Ouch!

Did I really choose an abusive relationship to get here?

Well, if I'm 100% accountable for me, myself and I, I am 100% accountable for the choices I made that brought me here.

Which brings me full-circle. I could not know what I did not know. I could not see what I did not know was there to see.

The choices I made that lead me into that relationship were based on faulty wiring, mis-information and deception. I could not know it until I opened my senses to the truth screaming at me in my face -- I didn't know such pain before that relationship with him. I had never been so desperate I wanted to die. I had never believed I was worth nothing other than the abuse he was dumping on me.

An abuser is like a poison. They fill our minds with mis-belief and we, their willing acolytes, drink of their poison, believing they hold the truth to 'perfect love'.

There is nothing perfectly loving about abuse.

But, we buy into the mis-information, and keep searching for the return of their perfect love -- which was the decpetion in the first place. In denial that what they are doing is hurting us, we begin to believe it is our fault the perfect love of that first encounter is possible to reclaim, if only...

If only we weren't so short, so fat, so thin, so stupid, so naive, so smart, so talkative, so inquisitive, so....

If only we weren't who we are. If only we could be the perfect someone they are looking for, that someone they told us we were when the rosy dawn of happily ever after first appeared upon the horizon of their promise to love us forever and a day.

And so, in our fear that we will never be the perfect someone they are seeking, we fear being perfectly us. We buy into the myth that if we could be the perfect love they seek, our love, our lives, our selves would be the perfection of happily-ever-after in their arms.

Ain't no such thing as perfect love.

Love is.

It is our interpretation of the human condition of love that trips us up. There is only our imperfect interpretation of what we think it is.

And when we're with someone who lives and deceives and abuses, chasing after perfect love becomes perfectly abominable -- and we lose the game as we become a reflection of what we seek.

Franklin D. Roosevelt once quipped, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."

I was once afraid of losing what I perceived to be, a perfect love.

In giving up my fear of losing it, I have gained a universe of love unending. I have opened myself up to the greatest truth of loving myself for all I'm worth.

In love, I am exactly where I am meant to be in this moment. Everything I have done has brought me here. It is my choice what I do next. There is no perfect step. No perfect answer. No perfect direction.

There are only the choices I make, the steps I take, the direction I choose to go. In my stepping fearlessly into the void of not knowing the perfect answer I surrender and fall in love. Over and over again.

In love, there is only one direction, one step, one answer. To continue to fall in love with all of me and the world around me, moment by moment, step by step.

The question is: Are you willing to let go of seeking the perfect moment, the perfect answer and fall in love with yourself, over and over again?

Turning up for me.

I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met. Dwight Lyman Moody

Snow covers the ground in a blanket of wintry white, and I wonder and I wonder, oh where oh where has spring time gone? Perhaps we should start calling it, Sprinter, or maybe Wring.

Weather aside, the temperature inside is cozy. I sit at my desk and survey the wonderland outside. Snow sugars the branches of the pine tree. The hedge is coated white, birds twitter from branch to branch.

Yesterday morning, I gave The Passion Test to clients, staff and friends at the shelter where I work.

Once again, I am in awe of the human spirit to compel each of us to claim our light and shine bright!

As we worked through the test, a lively conversation took place around 'self-sabotage'. One of the participants, a friend and fellow coach from Choices, said, "I'm always sabotaging myself. What's with that?" she asked.

A client piped up. "Me too. I don't like it."

"Then stop doing it," I replied.

"But why do I do it?" they both chimed in. Heads around the table nodded. "Yeah, why do we do it?" someone else asked.

"Why is the sky blue?" "Why do birds fly?" "Why does water flow?" I asked.

Why is the question that keeps us stuck in inaction. Why let's us off the hook of doing.

Action engages attention. What I put my attention on grows stronger in my life.

When I ask myself questions that keep my mind spinning in circles, my attention is on spinning the answers to fit the question. Because I'm stuck in my mind, circling the wagons around what I know, often avoiding 'truth' riding in with a whoop of freedom, I keep coming up with the same old answer, "I don't know". In I don't know land, I find myself repeating myself again and again, mirroring my words with actions of ineffectiveness.

When I let go of the 'why' and focus on 'what'. What do I want. What kind of person do I want to be. What's the right thing to do, my mind quits spinning incessantly as I engage in doing the right thing to create more of what I want in life.

One of the trainees yesterday, a talented artist and musician, spoke about having been named in some pretty famous company as an artist many years ago.

"And then I got scared," he said.

"Scared of what?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "Maybe success."

"What if what you were really scared of was turning up. For yourself. For your talent. Your art. For those who admired you. Counted on you. Looked up to you. What if turning up was not your habit and so, you turned down, once again, the opportunity to shine."

He scrunched up his face. "I gotta quit doing that don't I?"

"Yup. And only you can stop it. At this moment in time, the why is irrelevant. Just stop it. Choose differently. Choose in favour of your passions. Choose in favour of 'life'."

What I find most inspiring about the class is I learn so much. I see myself in other people's stories. I see myself reflected in their angst, their fears, their dismay.

And I get to let it go and turn up for me.

I get to stake my claim on greatness. Stake my right to live this one wild and passionate life fearlessly in love with me. All of me.

In listening to their stories, I learn and I get to grow.

For today, in whatever you do, choose in favour of having more of what you want in life. If your mind is telling you, oh don't bother to clean out that cupboard. Or don't meditate. Don't bother to make that phone call, or write that letter, or apologize for something stupid you did last night. Stop listening!

Start tuning into what's good for you. Start firing up your imagination and letting loose your greatness.

Only you can stop beating yourself up for past events. Only you can stop circling your mind, looking for different answers in your head.

Life is happening outside your mind. It's out here in the universe of possibilities. Get moving. Get cracking. And, get living it up!

For today, in whatever you do, turn up for the best of you!

The question is: Are you willing to let go of the 'why' and tune into the 'what'? Are you willing to do what's best for you today?

Doing nothing. Being everthing

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Zen Proverb

I didn't get to write here this morning. I was teaching, The Passion Test, at the shelter where I work and was out of the house early to get set up. When I came home, my daughter, Liseanne was working in my office, working with her study group on a project they have due Monday.

I took a nap.

Nurturing the spirit requires time out from doing. When I experience being, without any need to do, I nurture myself and create harmony in my inner being. When I return to doing, I am empowered from calmness and peace within.

I wish for you a day of doing nothing but taking care of everything within so that you can be without stress and anxiety.

Live quietly in the moment of being at peace with everything within and around you.

The Soothing Voice of Love.

There is always a choice to be made: We can listen to the voice of love or the voice of the ego. Gerald Jampolsky, MD

As part of, This is My City, a project run by the city of Calgary, the shelter where I work opened its doors last December to provide a space for a group of actors to write/rehearse a play on homelessness. The objective was to give them an in situ experience upon which to build a play that would increase awareness on the human condition while experiencing homelessness. Masks played a vital role in the production and they brought in a mask maker to teach them, as well as clients, how to make a mask.

Yesterday, I received the link to a short documentary on one of our mask-making clients. You can watch it here: The Invisible Project.

After I saw it, I went in search of Tom, the man being interviewed. He dropped out of the art program around Christmas time because he felt the other artists were not respecting his work. Yesterday, he sat in my office and watched it, his eyes filled with tears. I could see the pride settling upon his body. He knew he did a good job. He knew he spoke well.

I told him we'd love to see him back in the art studio and he hesitated.

"I don't know," he said. "I miss it but nobody wants me there."

"Is that true?" I asked him.

"Well, they didn't welcome me back very much last time I went in," he replied.

"What if it isn't about their welcome versus your desire to be someplace you enjoy?"

"Do you think they'd let me come back?" he asked.

"It isn't about them letting you back. It's about whether or not you want to come back and participate."

He paused awhile, picked at a thread on the sleeve of his sweater. "I don't know. I don't think they like me."

Ah, the fragile ego of the artist.

It is a recurring theme I witness all over the shelter -- and in my life. We encounter discord and take it to heart. Except, it isn't really our 'heart' that responds or holds onto the discord, it's our ego.

In my life, there are countless times when my ego counselled my heart to harden up, to take offence, to tuck itself back into its shell and be on guard. In the past, those times were much more frequent than the times my heart has lovingly counselled my mind to be still, to breathe, to open up and step to the other side of anger/discord/ disagreement. To not take ownership of someone else's words, actions or feelings. In those times, my ego counselled me to hold onto what someone else had said or done as 'truth'. To bite into it and keep chewing on it as if, the more I chewed the more it would make sense to me, or give me meaning.

As I have moved beyond my limiting belief that other people determine my worth or value or even what happens in my life, I have opened my heart up to possibility. To love. To my 'Self', that Divine essence within and all around me that yearns for harmony and has the power to create it.

In my opening, I create more of what I want in my life. Peace. Love. Harmony. Abundance. Respect. Integrity. Trust.

In my opening, my heart centers my ego in love, balancing every choice with the truth: I am 100% accountable for everything that is happening in my life. I allow everything that is happening in my life to lift me up or pull me down. It is my choice.

The question is: Are your choices lifting you up today? Are you soothing your ego with the voice of love?

PS: The space you see the mask making taking place in, is the Wild Rose Studio at the shelter.

A flip of the coin.

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein

This morning, I had to be on-air with a radio station at a home of a family who were entered to win a contest. If they guessed the coin toss right, they won $3,000. If they lost, we cleared all the food out of their kitchen cupboards and donated it to the shelter where I work.

The woman guessed tails. The announcer flipped the coin and heads appeared on the toss.

The little five year old daughter stood in the kitchen and cried, "Are they going to take my Froot Loops?"

I reassured her, "No. We don't want anything that's open."

The morning started with a problem -- how to honour the spirit of the contest, yet not leave this family with the challenge of re-stocking their cupboards.

In the end, it was a win/win for everyone. While the family didn't win $3,000 they did receive a substantial amount of gift certificates to a grocery store, as did the shelter. We judiciously culled dry goods from her cupboards and added a few items to the hamper she'd already put together as a donation. She ended up with a clean fridge and freezer and re-organized kitchen cupboards -- not bad for a situation where she could have ended up with empty shelves and pockets.

Last night, I had to meet with our musicians group here at the shelter to talk about some of the personality conflicts that are causing stress. Personality, ego, hurt feelings, conflict have interrupted the harmony of what can be when the focus is on 'what' we're doing versus, 'how' we're doing it.

As we went around the table with each musician telling each of the other five individuals at the table, "What I appreciate about you.." I was struck by the power of intention to create more of what we want in our lives when we quit focussing on how little we have in our lives.

For the musicians, their focus has been on all that is wrong amongst them. By shifting the question to "What's working", "What's right", or "What I appreciate", the perceived problems diminished beneath the harmony created in voices rising up to talk about possibilities and change and gratitude.

Problems are opportunities to move forward, to get going, to get up and step out of where I'm at. To look for ideas beyond my limited beliefs of what's wrong as I work on what can I do to create space for all that is right, all that can be.

Last night, six individuals let go of a problem and grasped the notion of creating possibility.

This morning, a family lost a coin flip and we flipped the loss into a win for everyone.

If you've got a problem you're facing, don't use the same thinking that drove you into the corner with the idea it will get you out of where you're at.

Open your mind, open your heart and drive your thinking about the problem to the other side of possibility. Let your dreams open you up to doing it different, being different. Let gratitude expand in your heart so that you can appreciate the problem as the opportunity to create new thoughts, new ideas, new happenings in your life.

The question is: Are you closing down possibility with limited beliefs about what is possible in your life? Or, are you opening up to new opportunity by limiting your belief in what you can't do and opening up to all you can achieve when you turn a problem on it's head and look at it from the flip side?

Leaning into love.

Having a problem simply means you can’t see the solution. But someone else can often see the solution clearly. Rob McPhillips

Yesterday my daughters and I had coffee with a friend who went through Choices a couple of months ago. He's a big, burly guy. Big hearted. Big mind. Big possibilities.

We chatted and laughed and told stories on ourselves and at one point, he asked, "How do I let go of that stuff from when I was a kid? From all those hurts?" He held one of his hands in front of him, giant palm facing up. "I know I dropped lots of it at Choices, but how do I keep dropping it when it keeps popping up in my mind" he asked, shaking his hand like a dog drying itself off.

Liseanne, my youngest daughter, is 21. She's vibrant and caring and very wise. She leaned towards him from where she sat across the table. "Don't think about forgetting the stuff," she said. "Just say, 'I forgive them'. Again and again and again. Whenever you think of something painful, immediately replace the thought with the idea, I forgive them."

T. sat back in his chair and stared at her. "What if I'm not ready to forgive them?" he asked.

"What if you quit thinking about being ready, and think about what you want more of in your life?" I asked.

Alexis, whose heart overflows in a continuous river of love, chimed in from where she sat at the table across from me. "I too have a hard time forgiving. I get a hard shell around my heart sometimes because I want to protect it. So, rather than thinking of forgiveness, I start with thinking about as my mom calls it, 'softening my heart'. Whenever I feel that fissure of anger erupt about someone else, I take a breath and fall into my softening heart."

When we'd first met for coffee, T. was anxious and upset. He lives in an environment that is not very supportive of the changes he's experienced since going through Choices. Due to his current circumstances, however, he needs to remain where he's at for a bit longer. He talked about how angry and anxious he is about being there. "There's no way I can 'fix' the problem of the people around me," he said.

Before we left him at the coffee shop last night, his mood had lifted. "I know what I'll do tonight," he said and listed off three things he could do to keep himself feeling positive and strong. "It's not about them," he said. "It's about me. The choices I make and where I focus my attention."

Stuck in the darkness of the problem, T. couldn't see his way clear to his power. Feeding off the energy of three people who love him, T. turned his focus away from what felt impossible, to the possibilities we could see in falling in love with himself all over again.

It wasn't that we had the answers for him. We simply stood by him as he leaned into our love. In feeling our support, he caught his breath and found the space to refocus his thinking from the darkness to the light. In feeling our love, in breathing deeply into his own power, hope had room to leap in and lend a hand.

Through seeing the 'problem' as not being the other people, but rather where he was placing his attention, T. came up with his own solution to stop giving into what was causing him pain. By sharing his fears, he surrendered and fell in love. With courage in hand, he fell into that mystical place where all things are possible, as long as we don't give up on loving ourselves for all we're worth.

It was a powerful lesson in what happens when we quit getting in our own way and simply let people love us where ever we're at. As they hold a place for us to find ourselves again, we connect with our courage, breathe deeply and move away from fear into the love of being where we want to be.

The question is: Are you closing yourself off from love or leaning into the support of those who love you? Are you shutting yourself off in fearing the problem, or opening yourself up to the help others have to offer in helping you find a solution?