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Recently I have been learning about shame.

Brene Brown has researched shame in great depth for over 12 years. 

“I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection…

…Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is, ‘I am bad.’ Guilt is, ‘I did something bad… Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.”

~ Brene Brown

What I want to say about shame is this… please be very careful with your words.

Brene says, if you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.

 So, when you experience someone in a moment of shame, when the underlying message is “I am a bad person because…”, or “I don’t deserve to be loved because…” douse them with empathy.

We need to tell them the story of how we have been in their shoes, and how they aren’t the only one.  We can’t judge, label or criticize and fuel the shame.

When someone we love is in a moment of shame, they already feel the consequences of their actions, our job is to remind them they are worthy of love anyway.

Everyone is worthy of love.

We simply need to be brave enough to love them.

I didn’t know how to tell the good guys from the not so good guys…I whole heartedly believed that everyone was good deep down, you just had to love them enough to bring it out.  
I wasn’t discerning with my trust, and I didn’t think character was important… I thought everyone intrinsically wanted to be good.  

Because of this I let some difficult people into my inner circle.

These people didn’t like my friends and weren’t always careful with the truth.

Some prided themselves on being critical of me, others made promises they couldn’t stand behind, and some were completely unreliable.  

I had surrounded myself with people who would rather tell me I was wrong than right.  

It wasn’t possible to have an equal and honest discussion with them because they were too wrapped up in trying to prove their point to explore all sides.

They were constantly battling inside themselves and projecting it on to me.  

And I was letting them.  

I started to seriously doubt myself and my choices. 

It put me into a whirlwind of trying to figure out how to do things right, how things were supposed to work, and how to do life.  

They say leap and the net will appear.

I did eventually leap.  

I didn’t remove every one of those people from my life, but I got enough distance to help see the picture more clearly.  

In doing so, I have realized how crucially important it is to have people around us who affirm us what we believe.

It gave me the space to ask questions, explore deeper meanings and find my way without constantly being told I was wrong and having to fight my way through.  

We think we are who other people see us as until we know better.

These difficult people taught me how to know better.

I listened to an older Tim Ferriss podcast with Kevin Kelly.

Kevin spoke about an experiment he had done where he lived like he was dying.

He gave himself 6 months and counted down the days. 

He said the usual things about how counting down your days concentrates your time and helps you figure out what’s important.

But there was one thing he learned that surprised me and stuck with me.

He said that having hope and making plans for the future is where life comes from.

There is a lot of hype around living in the moment and living for today, and I think it’s important to enjoy and appreciate the moments, but since listening to that podcast I have a lot more appreciation for the gift of hope and planning for the future.

Not everybody gets that gift.

I don’t think to live like you’re dying is really all it’s cracked up to be.

They say we change who we are every 7 years. When I look back to who I was 7 years ago I almost don’t recognize that person anymore.

I was living someone else’s life and wondering why it wasn’t working out.

I was allowing all the things I didn’t like to take over my life and making excuses for why I was doing so.

I didn’t do what made me happy, I did what would make someone else happy.

I didn’t choose the people in my life, I chased acceptance by other people.

I would drink alcohol because everyone else did and they told me it was fun.

I was so preoccupied in my quest for making the outside right in my life and missing the whole point.

I didn’t care about the little things.

I wasn’t making choices, I was making sacrifices.

In the last 7 years, it feels like I have been almost completely reborn.

I have learned to be responsible for my own life and to choose the things, people, and places that make me happy. When those things choose me it’s delightful, but also rare. We always need to be refining, fine tuning and weeding out what doesn’t work for us and as we do that the picture becomes cleaner and clearer.

I have learned that I love life when it’s fun and it’s the most fun when I feel good. It’s fun to feel creative and inspired. It’s fun to wake up and write a kick ass blog. Its fun to progress. It’s fun to engage and connect with someone else. It’s fun to get shit done. It is not fun to feel numb, glossy eyed, sick, and tired. Drinking alcohol and eating poorly only makes me feel tired and less inspired, it’s not fun for me.

I have learned the more I can be myself, the more I respect others choices to be who they are. I am now constantly searching and trying to find a clearer way to express what’s inside of me, and live in a way that aligns with who I am. The more I align the more the world around me aligns with me and I begin to wonder if the world I used to live in still exists at all anymore.

I have learned that I love to do little acts of service for people I don’t know. If I see someone who needs a hand, I always help them now. If I see something I can do that might make life easier for someone else, I do it. When people are taking selfies, I offer to take their picture for them. When someone drops something I help them pick it up, when an older lady needs help on the escalator, I help her. It’s the constant stream of doing little things that feel like wins to me. I’ve learned you don’t do these things for someone else, you do them for you because it feels good to be a generous, caring, human being.

Every little piece matters.

Every choice, every single thought, and every person you give your time to.

7 years ago I didn’t understand all of that yet.

Who did you used to be?

I don’t think you should ever give up.

There is so much life out there for you.

We have agency to do as we choose, so you can choose to give up if you want.

I just wish we couldn’t.

The times that were super hard and I would have liked to given up, I was already too deep to quit.

And I’m so grateful for it now.

The best thing you can do for yourself is to burn the boats and not give yourself an option.

It’s also the hardest thing.

But it’s the most worth it in the end.

You just have to endure the pain and keep learning until you get to the part where things start to become clear.

I didn’t read a lot when my kids were little, but I did pick up the occasional book. I loved romances and love stories. They gave me a really unhealthy view of what love should look like, and that worked well with my tendency to feel like a victim, because my life was definitely not built on a fairytale.

Eventually I decided that love stories were only real in movies and make believe and that fairytales were only a figment of someone’s imagination. I’m not entirely sure where I stand on that subject these days, but I can give you a long list of reasons why being a single parent rocks.

Something I always found intriguing about a novel was the way they would describe the way someone’s facial expression. “His eyes darkened”, “her seductive smile”, “a glimmer of hope washed across the child’s face”, “there was a flash of anger in his eyes”.

I didn’t have the context in my life to bring up the visual when I read those parts, so they always jumped out at me, and I took it upon myself to start paying more attention to the look in someone’s eye or the emotion on their face.

And it opened up a whole new world.

I was already in tune to what people were feeling and the energy in the air. I would assess that within seconds of walking into a room as a survival method. I was constantly seeking safety, and if there was the slightest note tension, stress, anger, or any unsafe feelings in the air I would immediately put my defensive walls up.

Reading faces gave me insight into what was going on behind the scenes and I can pick up what’s happening in another person quickly, sometimes before they do depending on their level of self awareness.

Over the years it has become an important nuance. I watch other people intently. I see so much of myself in another’s eyes. They really are the window to the soul.

When someone is at peace inside their face is soft and relaxed, and their eyes are kind and loving.

When someone is trying hard they have an earnest look on their face and their eyes are fixed on the situation trying to take it all in.

When someone is engaging with you, they are locked in and listening intently. When they are distracted or uninterested, you don’t have their attention and it’s unlikely the conversation is going anywhere.

You can see the second you say something that someone doesn’t agree with, their whole demeanour will change.

The more aware you become of your own response and reactions, the more you will see it in others.

Once you start to study and detect these nuances you will see the same look in the eyes of an animal, and you will notice the different posture of plants and trees.

There is an enormous secret world of connection, engagement, and insight living within the posture, facial expressions, and eyes of another living being. Watch for it and I think you’ll be amazed.

This is probably the most real life thing I learned from reading those romance novels.

The reason you become upset when you come up against an obstacle is because you believe that you can be stopped.

When you step into your true power you realize that everything is possible, and there is a way to bring whatever you can imagine into life.

You will no longer feel threatened by obstacles. In fact you might not even notice them.

It’s when you feel threatened that you lash out, or shut down. The more you release that belief and believe in yourself, the more you stop lashing out and can come from love and compassion while you continuously move closer to what you imagine life can be.

That’s when you are living your best life.

“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.”  – Marianne Williamson

Words are really powerful.

I am always surprised by them. They can tear something apart or build it up.

I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything that has started more wars, or created more trouble than words.

I didn’t always know this.

The truth has always been easier for me to speak than anything else. But I was blunt.

I always thought it was easier to say the thing then to try to beat around the bush.

Then I learned the power of words.

The same question asked differently can offend, or befriend.

The same truth delivered thoughtfully can bring change instead of opposition.

When you really start to pay attention to how the words someone else speaks become the thoughts you speak, you begin to realize that less words spoken carefully can have more impact than a lot of words that are rambling.

It’s worth it to speak carefully and thoughtfully.

“Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.” – Maya Angelou

I listen to podcasts, I have books on audio, and I follow teachers on social media.
And I read…a lot. 

I can’t remember the last time I bought a fiction book, there are some I would like to read but I feel like I have so much to learn I can’t get to them.

I have 3 different books on the go right now, one of which I’m both reading and listening to because I bought the audio version.  I read part then I listen to it on audio, then I read part then I listen on audio.

We filter so much information through our brains.
People are throwing facts, hacks, and tips at us left, right and center on social media.

Some of the things that match our worldview stick, and everything else falls to the wayside deleted from our existence.

We can constantly grow if we choose to.  We can grow up, and we can grow deeper

Eventually we come to a place where we can learn more and fine tune more about what we already know…and it just gives us more of the same results we have been getting.
Learning is important, but the experience is what changes us.

We need to get out and do things we have never done.

Stretch ourselves in ways we have never stretched.

The most positive change I have personally encountered is from showing up and experiencing new things in life.

Recently for me it was starting this blog, then it was speaking in public, then it was taking a marketing seminar, now it’s building a course.

When we get in the arena of life we have to deal with our shame tapes, “who do you think you are to be doing this?”   

We have to battle through the ‘why’ of what we are doing.  “Is this selfish or will it help others?”

We have to learn skills that we didn’t have any interest in learning, or use old skills in a new ways we didn’t know were important.  Tech skills, people skills, empathy skills, courage skills…there are  so many inside moving parts you don’t see from the outside.

And when we get through that, we have to test to see if our work resonates… and if it doesn’t, we start over.

All of this changes you.

It bring you to a new arena of life.

It helps you see things differently, meet new people, create new connections, and hopefully do something that matters.

It’s not easy.

In fact, starting is hard.

Sticking with it is really hard.

Seeing it through takes grit, tenacity, and resilience.  

But what else would you be doing?

We are all here, we might as well be spending our time doing something that matters, something that will change our lives and the people around us.

What new experiences can you create?

PS.  If you want to be kept apprised of the course I’m building for whole heartedness, sign up to my private email list below and I will drop you a line when I have more details.

This is the quote about the man in the arena from Theodore Roosevelt that changed Brene Browns life.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

I was the critic. 

I wanted to be the perfect girl.  

I wanted to achieve wild success, without anyone seeing me sweat…or being anything less than perfect.

I wanted to know the answers and have all of the answers.  

But I was never brave enough to be seen “coming up short”.  

I was the critic, except I didn’t criticize by calling someone out.  I didn’t think anyone was an idiot, but I would lots of times compare myself to them, and sometimes my ego would jump in and tell me I was better or knew better than “the doer of deeds”.

Sometimes I felt really sorry for the man in the arena when he would “err”.  

Erring in public was devastating to me and my heart would ache for them.  

I would project my fears of coming up short or being less than perfect, onto the man in the arena… 

I had no idea that wasn’t how he felt.  

The man in the arena is being vulnerable.  

He didn’t wait to be perfect before he showed up.  

He’s ok with being the beginner, he’s ok with not knowing the path, he has left his ego at the door because he knows he had to start somewhere.  

He isn’t expecting perfection, he is diving in and figuring it out as he goes.  

He knows there will be failure, and he has vowed to learn from it.  

When I began to see the man in the arena in this light, I began to see how coming up short, or erring in public wasn’t devastating at all.  

It was part of the path.  

It’s the part that keeps you humble and able to connect with people.  

My view changed…living life on the sidelines, small and afraid of the critics who hadn’t dared greatly themselves (like me) was worse than being seen coming up short.  

All of a sudden “coming up short” or “erring in public” didn’t matter to me anymore.  

Showing up matters. 

Being brave matters.  

Daring greatly matters.  

Being in the arena matters… and all of the others in the arena will applaud you because they also know that’s what matters.  

The man in the arena is the one who is making difference.  

That’s the (wo)man I want to be.  

Self doubt is real.

It can talk you out of almost anything. It will make you stop before you get where you want to go.

It will tell you it’s too hard, you aren’t smart enough, you don’t know how, you don’t have what it takes, and that everyone else is more qualified or better.

Self doubt is alive and well.

But what if you believed in yourself more than you doubted yourself.

Believing in yourself is laborious.

Pushing through when all of the signs say stop takes grit.

Doing it anyway because quitting is not an option makes you dig deep to find your way through it.

There really aren’t that many people who believe in themselves.

And I think most people have to pretend to believe in themselves because they are suffering from a lot of self doubt.

But I think believing in yourself is the secret.

And I think the only way you can believe in yourself is to do it even when you doubt yourself.

I find it enjoyable to be totally laser focused. I like the feeling of gaining clarity over a situation and I will put my blinders on to everything else and dig to the bottom of an issue.

Being able to focus like this has its benefits. I like to do good work because it feels good to know you’re doing a good job. I don’t get easily distracted when I’m working on a project (the kids don’t always appreciate this if they are needing a taxi driver), whatever I start I always finish, and when I am engaged in conversation you have my full attention.

However, there are times I overdo it. For everything that’s good, there is also a bad side.

I will work on something for weeks without looking up or looking around and as I come to completion and my blinders start to lift, I will wonder where all of the people have gone in my life and why I haven’t seen them in so long.

Usually I do this in sprints, and then take a rest and enjoy life for a while. When a project pops up, I would normally dive in, complete it, and take a rest.

I’ve been focusing on one project and then another continuously for about 8 months now and there hasn’t been much of a break.

I’ve learned so many things on this continuous sprint that I can’t summarize them in one blog post, but a few that are on my mind this morning are:

1. You can’t keep sprinting on projects and eating what’s quick and easy…or cookies. My body has taught me that sprinting on a project is not the same as physically sprint running. It’s become sedentary and asking it to move this summer has been painful at best.
2. When you laser focus on a project you miss the guidance from the universe. I had a family of hawks move in to my place and they swoop at me. Hawk medicine teaches us to circle over our life and examine it from a higher perspective. Coincidence? I think not.
3. Laser focus keeps you tense, so you occasionally need to distract yourself. Find something you really enjoy and immerse yourself in it. Your body will appreciate the mental break.
4. It would be great to hire a chef to keep you eating healthy, a housekeeper to keep your house presentable, and someone to do the laundry before your clothes start to smell. These are not distractions they are extra burdens. If you are lucky enough to have a spouse who does them for you, be grateful.
5. Friends and family who don’t let you kill yourself are the best. They make you do other things, they check on you to make sure you’re still breathing, and they wait patiently until the blinders come off. The ones who have stuck with me for the last 8 months are the real gems.
6. No matter how hard you try, how much work you do, and how good of a job you’re doing, there will still be people who try to rain on your parade, kick you while you’re down, and make life harder than it needs to be. But for everyone of those Debbie Downers, there is a team of people who care. While you are deep in focus, also focus on the good people. They will keep your heart full, and with a full heart you can take on the world.
7. Eventually you realize there is a never ending amount of work to do and emergencies to deal with. Sometimes you just have to accept what is good enough already and ship what you have out the door.

I’m about ready to end my continuous sprint, take a break, and enjoy the beautiful summer we are having.

It won’t be for long because I still have lots to accomplish, but I know the best things in life are the people you love, the experiences you have, and the memories you make… so I need to do some cultivating in those departments soon.

Meditation is all about spending time with yourself.
It’s a time to witness your crazy thoughts, and then learn how to let them go.

It’s a place where you learn how to be with yourself without believing your minds arguments.

It’s a few moments where you spend some quality time getting to know who you are.

We spend the majority of our lives running from our thoughts about ourselves. Our inner voice is unkind, and our narrative is unpleasant.
We think we aren’t enough and we feel unworthy because we are in the rat race and not able to catch up or keep ahead.

And rarely do we allow time for introspection.  
In the old days people used to spend a lot of time by themselves, with their animals and in nature working and plowing.

I think meditating is a roundabout way of taking us back to our roots.

You feel a tug on your heart.

Maybe it only shows up once in a while, maybe certain events, conversations, or pictures trigger it.

But there is no denying it when it happens.

It’s there for a reason and it’s trying to get your attention.

Whatever is in your head, needs to manifest into the world.

Just for today… stop and listen.

Listen to what your heart has been trying so hard to tell you. When the tug shows up again and again it’s the one you should follow. That’s where the magic lies.

I have always been hyper sensitive to other people’s boundaries.

When someone would tell me ‘no’, I would think it was an absolute dead end. I would respect their ‘no’ and drop the issue.

That is the easy thing to do isn’t it? When someone says ‘no’ we can drop the towel. Then it’s not our fault it didn’t work out.

I am beginning to realize this was a childish response to an obstacle in front of me. When I was a child no meant no. There was no grey area and I learned not to push the envelope.

But it worked for me. It was a way I could hide because I could blame someone else for me not showing up, and I have leaned on it as an adult.

My worldview has changed and I’m seeing the world differently. I am learning there are no absolutes and anything is possible, we just have to find our way.

Now I have a conflict.

Hiding behind someone else’s ‘no’ doesn’t fit with my new worldview that anything is possible. Ive learned that we are the ones responsible to make change happen and make our world a better place. Which means moving past a lot of no’s.

I am struggling to figure out how to chip away at some pretty firm no’s. My knee jerk reaction is to recoil and throw up my hands in surrender the second I get a no.

The problem I’m facing is that when I recoil, I can’t make change happen. I’m allowing old habits, old ways of thinking, and dysfunctional patterns to continue because we all remained in our comfort zones.

I’m trying to face this fear.

It brings up strong feelings of rejection (which feel like death to me), but I muster up courage and force myself to show up again and keep gently chipping away at one ‘no’ at a time.

I’m finding that some people don’t always mean ‘no’ when they say no.

They might mean I’m scared, that’s too hard, I’m out of my comfort zone, or I don’t understand… but they don’t mean ‘no’ forever even though it’s possible they mean ‘no’ for right now.

The slightest amount of progress feels good and I am constantly wondering if doors will open that appear locked up tight.

Only time will tell, but I believe its possible.

At my very first appointment with my therapist/intuitive energy lady, she talked about how we each have our own mountain and how I was never living on mine, I was always on someone else’s.  

Life is so interwoven with experiences, people, ideas, triumph and struggle it was hard to understand what was my mountain and what wasn’t, and it took me a while to sort out consciously what exactly she was referring to.
5 years later I’m still sorting it out… I just realized I’m back on everyone else’s mountain again. 

Our path is on our mountain. That’s where we are heading, it’s our truth, our dreams, and our hearts desires. When we are on our path we are intrinsically motivated, up at 5:55 am instead of 6:00, excited for life, and feeling fulfilled. 

But our path isn’t a straight line, it’s full of crooks and valleys, rain and snow, obstacles and injury.  

All of the things we have struggled through to get where we are, everything we have built, pieced together, created, and come out of the other side of, combined with our path forward make our mountain.

Sometimes when my mountain seems too easy or seems too hard, I will move onto someone else’s mountain.  Lots of times when someone else is really struggling, I will jump over to their mountain, and sometimes I will unintentionally be lured onto someone else’s mountain.

Getting onto their mountain is easy for me… I can jump, run, skip, fly and teleport there.

Getting off their mountain, and back onto mine is hard… but the universe helps me out when I need it. It makes the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easier.  

It turns my mountain into a priority by throwing curveballs, creating struggle, or affecting my health. Pretty soon I have no choice but to get back on or things will implode… and I don’t like implosions.  

So here I am, recovering from sickness and quite a few days of curveballs, getting back on my own mountain and back on my path, and things are starting to fall into place again.

It’s hard to make big changes within ourselves, like really really hard.

It’s hard to break a habit, it’s hard to see the world differently, to level up, to look at our status in a new light and it’s hard to learn a new way of being in the world.

It’s hard to change your diet, end an addiction, choose love over fear, and believe in abundance in a world fuelled by scarcity.

Our thought patterns, beliefs, and world views run really deep in our psyche and were ingrained into us from long before we consciously remember anything. There is stuff there we don’t even realize is affecting our entire way of being if we don’t stop to look.

When I understood how extraordinarily difficult it was to bring enough change within myself to get different results, I almost gave up on helping others change.

But then something happened.

I took a marketing seminar. I thought I was learning marketing, but the second or third lesson in I was told that marketing was all about “making change happen”. And in that seminar through a lot of sweat, and some real life tears, I learned about the nuance of change.

Change happens slowly in minuscule ways.

You might see a painful story from your childhood differently.

You might respond to an old behaviour in a new way.

You might notice something that had been there all along.

You might find a new point of view from a conversation with someone.

In these small ways every time we dip our toe in the water we create ripples. We are dynamic creatures that are always changing.

One of the biggest ways we can bring change to how we see the world and our story is to dive into empathy.

Empathy is different than being an empath which took me by surprise. I thought that because I was an empath I was automatically empathetic.

Empathy is different than sympathy. Brené Brown explains sympathy as feeling sorry for you, but empathy is feeling with you.

Empathy is really seeing and understanding what it would be like to be another human. To see the world how they see it, to understand what it’s like to walk in their shoes and understand their world view.

Empathy is the precursor to compassion.

My friend Scott Perry from Creative on Purpose put together 10 video lessons by 10 rising thought leaders with tips to get a little more out of life, or make change happen within yourself.

He graciously asked me to take part.

My lesson is on empathy.

There are lessons on meditation, clarity, finding your voice, and more.

You can sign up here.

I went on a book buying spree buying books that I thought might teach me how to be happy. Unhappiness seems almost like an epidemic. So many people search for happiness, and I was one of them. Our lives are hard and stressful and bad things happen.

I never read the books because in my search I heard Tony Robbins sum it up in two sentences.

“Progress equals happiness. If you stop growing, you’re going to be unhappy.”

Sometimes when you hear something, you can feel the truth in it. That was how his words hit me.

I have become aware that every time I struggle it’s usually because I’m not moving my feet. I am stuck, looking for a break, living in fear of the future, over thinking, or hiding.

I’ve learned there is nothing you can do that is a waste of time. Focusing on forward movement of any kind is everything when it comes to happiness. There are a million things you can do to get rolling again.

Start before you’re ready.

Be productive.

Learn more.

Apply what I’ve learned.

Practice.

Show up.

Be brave.

Try again.

Find a way.

Make a decision.

Grow.

Transform.

Move forward.

It’s really quite simple. The more I have focused on growth and progress the happier I am. There is something fun about stretching yourself, figuring life out, and discovering what works.

Looking for an opportunity to coast, slow down, or stop, only builds resistance in you. It’s not the answer.

What can you do today to contribute to your own happiness?