Doubt and Fear

When you have made mistakes, or are in a desperate place, it’s easy to fall into the habit of criticizing yourself or beating yourself up.
There is often a voice that says something like, “I need to beat myself up to keep myself on track. If I don’t, I might become lazy or worse and then [...]

“Prosperity consciousness” is usually associated with material abundance. But there is a subtle poverty that is deeper than the scarcity people feel around money (although they are related). And no “abundance” strategy will heal it if it isn’t dealt with first.
We often live with daily emotional and spiritual scarcity. We don’t feel like enough.
We don’t feel [...]

All emotional suffering and stuckness is caused by closing down and contracting around pain. Pain happens, and change happens – this is the nature of life. However, suffering is an add-on that we create through our reaction to that pain and change.
Healing is the process of grieving and accepting this pain and change, and [...]

This is a common story: a skilled artist or creative decides to become a designer because there is more job security. Or a lawyer. They never really develop their creative talent and feel unfulfilled.
Or the other side: a skilled artist decides to work at a cafe to have free time/brain-space to pursue art. They never [...]

Completing a major project (or job, or other major part of your life) and letting yourself move on involves:

recognizing that you are “done”
giving yourself permission to be “done”
actually completing the thing

When and why is it hard to recognize and accept when you are done?

If you think you ought to not be done yet.
If you thought [...]

It always surprises me when I realize I’ve forgotten something rather basic and have to relearn it. Over and over and over again.
Feel your feelings.
All of them.
All of them, feel them, as much of the time as you can.
But, don’t identify with them.
Don’t loop around in thoughts that make them worse.
They are messages, they are [...]

I’ve gone through a long process healing my relationship with comments, and I want to describe it because I’m guessing it’s something others go through.
Fear and anticipation, approval and validation
When I first started blogging four years ago, I didn’t have online buddies, I didn’t have Twitter, and consequently I didn’t have any commenters for a [...]

Resistance is when there is something you “know you should do”, but you don’t seem to get it done. Something you want to do (or at least some part of you wants to do), but for some inexplicable reason, you can’t get it to happen.
Maybe it’s something you want to do for yourself personally – [...]

This post is kind of a book review and kind of a technique review. Yup, it’s a lazy winter hibernation blog post.
EMDR = Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMT = Eye Movement Technique. It’s a thing.
Here was my first response to EMDR: Huh? Moving your eyes back and forth? You’ve got to be kidding me.
But [...]

I’ve been playing around with my fears of biggification over the past month or two and I’ve come to some conclusions.
And I’m not afraid anymore.
Here’s what I learned: I was really afraid of myself.
I was afraid I would get latched onto the idea of being “biggified” and start doing inauthentic things to try to be [...]

Note: This is a follow up post to My Gnarly Cave-Like Fear of Showing Up Bigger In The World).
There are two fears I am still working through around showing up bigger in the world.
Fear #1: People will only like me for my coolness, not for me.
This is a weird fear. It goes like this:
As a [...]

About two months ago I was at a Biznik networking-in-the-park thing where we each looked at what we needed to do to become more “visible”. To show up bigger in the world.
And we drew it with crayons and pens. (Have I mentioned how much I love Portland?)
When I asked internally what I needed to be [...]

Havi started a conversation about fear yesterday. My other business-spirituality-buddy Mark posted a response. Here’s mine! (Isn’t blogging fun?)
This is in response to David’s comment:
I guess I’m a little thrown off because it seems like every way of dealing with fear is appreciated and supported… except bulldozing through it, and feeling like a rock [...]

I was at Fred Meyer today getting some storage bins and three of the lids slipped off the shelf and clattered to the floor in three different directions. I halfheartedly tried to catch one, but for the most part I just let them fall. I said “D’oh!” under my breath and looked sheepishly at a fellow shopper nearby [...]

Attachments, in the spiritual/emotional sense, are when you strongly want something to be a certain way (or not a certain way), and you have an emotional investment in it. They feel like a tension, tightness, clenching in your body and are accompanied by persistent and generally unpleasant emotions that arise whenever you think about the [...]

What happens when your business partner or employee is also your friend…but they aren’t good for your business?
Sometimes you don’t realize right away. You want to give them a chance, so you let things slide that you wouldn’t if they were anyone else. Perhaps they used to do a good job but lately things never [...]

There’s this idea that our purpose in life is this defined, concrete thing, and that if we find it our lives will “click” and if we don’t we’ll forever be wandering and lost and not really “living up to our potential”.
I’m beginning to think that maybe that’s all BS.
We all definitely have needs for self-awareness [...]

Employed people from time to time tell me something like this: “My job sucks. I have to work all the time. No one appreciates me. Maybe I should start my own business. Oh, but I don’t know. My job pays pretty well. And I have benefits. Maybe I should just be happy with it.”
If this [...]

I’ve been growing and expanding my business and life in all kinds of ways in the past month, so I was puzzled this morning that I was not feeling happy. Instead I felt like I had a loooong to-do list and I felt tired and grumpy.
So I took a long walk, stared at some ducks, [...]

What is Codependency?
Robert Subby defines codependency as “An emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual’s prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of oppressive rules.”
The term comes out of treating alcoholics and their loved ones, who developed codependent patterns to cope with the alcoholic’s behavior. Codependency is a [...]