Get Out of Control

“There is chaos under the heavens, and the situation is excellent.”

            -Chinese Proverb- 

In my work as a transformative coach, one of the most common concerns that my clients bring up is a feeling of being out of control with their lives.  Now we could make up a bunch of reasons why that is, such as we are born into the world and we actually have very little control; we can't feed ourselves, dress ourselves, or even go to the bathroom on our own. It would then be the most natural thing in the world that we would start our quest for more control way back in the high chair.  We could attribute our life long pursuit of control to a basic desire for safety, where we equate more control with our ability to be safe in the world.  Or, I could just as easily make up a story about how people really just want to be happy, and they have it made up in their heads that if they could just control other people and the universe, then they could finally be happy for good.

As one of my mentors Michael Neill would say, "The universal truth is way above my pay grade."  The good news is that knowing why control is such a hot button issue for so many people, isn't actually relevant to allowing a sense of peace and freedom back into you life and mind.

However, before we explore creating more of what you want in your life, let's look at what happens for most people who are coming from a place of feeling out of control. People will attempt to gain a sense of control by redirecting their physical and mental energies. They try and take control of their personal development, finances, and relationships.  From this place one of two things generally occur.  Either, they fail, which leads to even more stress because now their feeling helpless and victimized about the whole thing. Or they actually start to get more control. Things start to go their way.  But the problem is that once you start to get more control, it's very tenuous.  Suddenly, something unexpected happens, you lose your partner, your job, or your house, and suddenly it feels as though you have lost control again.  So then we fluctuate between feeling out of control and feeling in control.  Life lived from this place becomes extremely unstable and boy is it stressful.

There's another game in town though, and it's called freedom.  In the freedom game, the goal is just to be able to navigate the world and your life with a relative sense of ease and grace.  The reason more people don't play the freedom game is because from inside the control game, freedom looks a whole lot like being out of  control.  If you're reading this article, that might just mean that you are ready to play a new game now, are you not?

There is a couple different levels to address this from and I'm going to start shallow and then go deep.  And if you find yourself going deeper and deeper as you read this now, you're probably on the right track, to freedom that is.

Let's start with why people feel out of control in the first place.  The reality is, there is actually a whole lot of things we have little to no control over.  We don't have control over the stars or the planets, seasons or the weather, and we don't control other people.  But contrary to popular belief, that stressful, frantic, out of control feeling doesn't come from not having control, it actually comes from thinking we do have control over something that we don't.  In other words when we attempt to take control of the uncontrollable, otherwise known as control freaking, we get to suffer.

This has a debilitating effect on people's lives.  When you can't see that the bulk of your energy is going toward pushing an immovable object or person, you get to be really really tired, physically and mentally, and very little actually happens in the world as a result.  So you get all the stress with no results.  And have you noticed that when you push against things, they almost always push back?

This is actually a biological response.  There was some research done where some scientists noticed a phenomenon between male gorillas where they would push each other, and they discovered that there was never an instance where a fight didn't occur after 5 pushes.  They then wanted to see if this was observable in humans, so they found the most logical grounded people they could think of, Nobel Prize winning scientists.  They had the scientists push each other hard in the chest, and they discovered that the scientists had slightly less control over their urge to fight then the gorillas.

Take a look in your own lives, where have you been pushing up against people and trying to force them to change?  How's that working for you?  I'm going to guess that it's not.

It turns out that there is actually a pretty simple solution to all of this.  When you're feeling out of control or not able to control what you'd like to, just get really clear about what it is you actually have control over.  It turns out that there is 3 things we have a fairly high degree of control over, and that is seeing, being, and doing.

Now, let's break these down one at a time.  We have some control over how we see the world.  An example would be that you could see your current circumstances as either a problem, a challenge, or an opportunity.  You can choose to see other people as cruel, hateful and mean-spirited, or you could choose to see them as essentially doing the best they know how to do.  You could see your job as a hindrance dragging you down, or you could see it as a source of cash flow, funding your dream.  And if you're wondering how do I decide which way to see, simply ask yourself: is this a useful and empowering way of seeing?

Our next element of control is Being.  I sometimes talk about this as how we show up in the world.  Are you showing up as being fun, loving, playful and curious; or are you being resentful, angry, and afraid.  On a more superficial level, you can access different states by simply thinking of a time when you were in a particular state, and stepping back into that in your mind, therefore re-creating it in your body now.

On a slightly deeper  level our way of being is created by how we are seeing the world.  So if you see your circumstances as scary, you'll feel afraid, if you see your circumstances as joyful, then you'll feel joy.  You can also create an intention for how you'd like to be.  For me this is like pointing myself in a direction.  You may not be able to cultivate a sense of love and play and curiosity at all times, but if you continually point yourself in that direction with an intention, you'll find yourself showing up there more and more of the time.

Finally on the deepest level, your very nature is well-Being. A quick glance into a babies eyes tells me that we were born happy, and all you really have to do is slow down and allow your natural well-being to bubble up to the surface. To learn more about cultivating this check out my past coaching article, Spiritual Self Care.

Now we get to the doing part.  Where people get mixed up here is they take a bunch of action without considering how they are seeing and being.  And the funny thing is, once you are seeing clearly, and nestled into your well-being, if there is still something left to do or say, it will be clear, and often pretty straight forward.

So if the first half of the equation, get clear about what you do and don't control, and take control over what you can.  The second half, and in my opinion the key to the whole freedom game, is actually making peace with those things that you have no control over.  I don't know about you, but I find incredible freedom in the notion that I don't have to control the universe or other people.  Quite frankly that sounds exhausting.  When you make peace with the fact that most of the time, you don't drive the train, it allows you to sit back, and enjoy the journey of life.  And if you're not careful, that sense of freedom just might turn into connection, creativity and passion for life.

That's it!  That's all that I'm aware we really have control over.  And if you're thinking, that's it!?  You might find comfort in this idea: The beauty of the freedom game is that the second you let go of trying so hard to change circumstances and other people, very often they change all by themselves.

Love and Light,
Tyler

The Choice Point

"Do we 'wake up' by bringing higher levels of awareness and consciousness to our lives, or do we go unconscious and let our lives pass us by in a haze of half formed dreams and imagined torments?"

-Michael Neill

Over the last several weeks, I've been looking at what it is that really allows people to transform their lives and make once and for all changes.  I've begun to make some of those changes in my life, stepping forward to be a leader and a more powerful and loving coach.  I noticed myself, in particular over the last week, making some very different choices compared to what I have in the past, in regards to how I show up in the world.  I've decided to partner power and boldness with love as a leader and a coach.  There was a point over the last weekend that I realized not only was I showing up that way, but I was taking actions that supported that way of being.  I'm still in process with it, however there was a definite shift.  This really sparked my curiosity as to what is that point where we actually change, and how does that come about.  What is it that has us rise above our current circumstances and automatic ways of being to create something completely new for ourselves?  Let's take a look shall we?

One of the things I'll often tell my clients is that everyone is essentially doing the best they know how to do given their past, values, beliefs, and the conditions of their lives.  This can be an extremely useful lens with which to view others and the past.  If you want to hold others softly, with love and kindness; then taking this on as a belief will serve you tremendously.  You will no longer feel the desire to hold grudges or remain upset with people, because they were just doing what they knew how to do, no more, no less.  It's the whole, 'forgive them for they know not what they do' concept.  This works equally well for forgiving yourself for all of those things in the past that you'd like a do-over for. To learn more about this kind of forgiveness, check out last weeks coaching article, Real Forgiveness.

Okay, now let's look at how this idea can become a road block.  When I consider that I am doing the best I know how to do, that can actually be dis-empowering in the present moment, can it not?  If we really want to wake up from the haze of the automatic, habitual parts of our lives, then we can't simply continue to do what we know how to do.  We have to learn to do it different and then on some level choose to change.  Now of course, you could make the argument that we are learning all the time, and with each new learning, we are actually doing the best we know how to do.  But if I'm completely honest with myself, there are times when I am aware of a new way I would like to behave, or an authentic thing I would love to say, and I choose to go with what's familiar and automatic instead.

Have you ever felt that way?  Have you ever had the experience of knowing how it is you'd love to be, and then just continuing to go with the norm?  It's a bit frustrating isn't it?  Some people live out their whole lives in this state.  Some go years and years essentially living the same day over and over again, with no end in sight (Groundhog Day anybody?). It's just doing what you know how to do, without tapping into possibility, or inspiration, or love.

There is another possibility though, it's the possibility to make a new choice.  This ability to choose something new, to choose the road less traveled, exists and is waiting for you in every single future moment of now.  This choice will ultimately be the difference between living a life that is driven by your conditioned self, or a life inspired by your wisdom and inner knowing.  It's the choice between love and fear.  It's the choice between essence and survival mechanism.  It's the choice between inspiration and desperation.  It's the choice between being a dreamer of the night, and what T.E. Lawrence termed a dreamer of the day.  It all starts with a choice.  Are we going to honor who we really are, or are we going to continue to service our self-image and all of the fears and insecurities that come with it?

Now, if we want to choose different, if we want to wake up and create a wonderful life for ourselves, how do we do that?  It begins quite simply with an awareness of how things currently are.  Without awareness, the point of power that is now, is obscured from our vision.  If we can't see that there is a choice to be made, then there is no choice to be made.  A psychologist once said, 'whether there is actually a poisonous snake by my foot, or I just think there is, I react the same'.  So, do whatever you can do to up your level of awareness in your life.  When you find yourself engaged in behaviors and choices that you aren't so sure about, ask yourself, what is this for?  What is this in service of?  Is the choice I'm making in this moment to remain asleep, to simply 'cut and paste' the past, onto the future canvas of my life; or am I breaking out the paint and the brushes to create a life of love, purpose and meaning?

Our unconscious mind drives the majority of our behavior.  What we do day in and day out is largely a result of habit and automatic ways of being.  However, that is not where possibility lives.  When you begin to shine the flashlight of awareness onto your present behaviors and circumstances, that will allow you to turn the light toward the future, and begin to walk a different path.

It can be very easy to make this into a black and white conversation.  However, I invite you to be kind with yourself.  I invite you to consider making new more empowering choices as being on a gradient, instead of all or nothing.  Because, unless you're one of the enlightened masters, you're going to fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum with this one.

If you'd like to fast-track this process, I suggest getting some support.  I think one of the most wonderful investments you can make for yourself is hiring a personal coach, such as myself, to assist you in transforming how you show up in the world and the results you produce.  If that isn't an option for you, then enroll a friend or family member and you can be awareness buddies for one another.  Ask each other, are you creating more of the same, or are you stepping into the unknown?

There will almost certainly be fear when you reach this point because you are stepping into unfamiliar territory.  It's a normal enough reaction, but recognize it is in direct response to your thoughts, and not the world outside you.  As you begin to live on the edge of what's familiar and dive into the unknown more and more, your focus switches from fear to possibility.  And, even if there is fear, it's okay, because you know what?... You can do fear.

Okay, so now that you have upped your awareness, gotten support, and addressed the fear, what now?  Well it is important to have a vision of how you'd like it to be.  You need to have an idea of what it is you actually want to create for yourself.  Imagine for a moment that you have complete control over your life and you are starting from scratch.  You have no preconceived notions about how you are supposed to behave, and what the appropriate goals are for you.  The only questions you have to go by are: what would I love to create for myself and in the world?  What would I love my purpose to be?  What do I want my legacy to be when I'm gone?  Who would I like to spend time with? What skills would I like to master.  Without this vision, you won't have the inspiration or the fuel to truly transform your life.

After you spend some time with these questions, the next bit is to create an intention.  When you know what it is you want to make your life about, hold the intention of that as often as you can.  If it feels too big, just start with a decision you are facing today and ask yourself, is this what I want to make my life about today?

Now, I can't tell you when or how the awareness and the insight will show up, but if you continue to look in that direction, I can assure you that it absolutely will come.  The final step then in the present moment, in that choice point, is to decide!  You can have all of the build-up to change, but without the decision in the moment to see, be, and do things differently from the past, change is impossible. I as a coach, can walk you to the bus stop, I can buy you a ticket, but ultimately it is you and you alone who is responsible for getting on the bus.


Coaching Tip: Harness the power of your choice point
to recap:

1. Up your levels of awareness around your current choices by looking in that direction and asking yourself powerful questions.
2. Enroll the support of a coach, mentor, or friend so they can point out your blind spots, and believe me, we all have them.
3. Create a vision for how you want your life to be, taking into account joy, love, connection, meaning, purpose, and legacy.
4. Create and hold the intention to, from this day forward, make your life about everything in step 3.
5. Choose the behaviors, actions, and words that support the vision for your life.

And with that, I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes in the world:

"All men dream, but not all equally.  Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
-T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

Love and Light,
Tyler

Real Forgiveness

“If we could read the secret history of those we would like to punish, we would find in each life enough grief and suffering to make us stop wishing anything more on them.”
            –Source Unknown   

I, like most people in our culture, grew up being told that forgiveness was very important; and yet, somehow nobody wanted to do it.  I don't recall anyone ever speaking of forgiveness willingly.  I was always told forgiveness was the right thing to do and yet it mostly occurred as an obligation or a chore.

Here's how forgiveness showed up for me, and let's see if it fits what you were taught.  It goes a little something like this:  Somebody does something mean, unloving, hurtful, or unkind, and then they were supposed to say sorry. When/if that ever happened, I then had to bestow upon them the magical gift of forgiveness, which really just meant that I still didn't like what they did, but I would let it go for the time being and make it okay so that they didn't have to feel quite so guilty about it.

Does that sound at all familiar?  Do you still cringe at the notion of 'having' to forgive somebody because your parents told you to?  Or do you tend to never really forgive people because what they did to you was inexcusable and therefore doesn't deserve forgiveness?  Wherever you currently are with your relationship to the process of forgiveness, I'd like to offer up a fresh perspective that might just allow you to finally make peace with the 'wrong doings' of the past.  It might just free up a whole lot of energy that you can redirect toward creating a life that would make you go 'Wow!'

The following ideas about forgiveness are largely adaptations from the book A Course In Miracles (ACIM for short), which is one of my greatest sources of inspiration.

Lets start by taking a look at what real forgiveness actually is. To forgive someone isn't to make a wrong into a right, or make something okay which you don't really believe was okay.  Real forgiveness is actually acknowledging that there was never any wrong doing in the first place.  Real forgiveness is seeing your brothers and sisters for who they really are; divine, spiritual, and valuable beings.  Real forgiveness is looking upon a situation and seeing the truth; and the truth is that no matter how seemingly violent or hurtful the act may have appeared, it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with fear in the other person's heart and mind.  Real forgiveness is the ability to separate human beings, from their behaviors, because believe it or not, we aren't what we do.

We all have an innate value as humans that can't be taken away.  It's part of the design.  Just by being alive, we have that fundamental and essential value and the sooner you are able to see it in both your fellow humans and yourself, the sooner you will experience more love and peace in your experience of the world.

To illustrate this, imagine that we're taking a field trip into the maternity ward of a hospital.  We are going to visit the big room where they keep all of the babies.  As we stand outside the room looking through the big glass window, I'll ask you to choose which one of those babies is worth the most, and which ones are worth the least?  If you're like most people, you won't be able to sensibly answer that question.  Those babies have value simply by existing and guess what, so do you and so do the people who you think have wronged you throughout the years.

Let me make a quick distinction before moving on.  It is important to note that if you are in a potentially physically dangerous or abusive situation, forgiveness doesn't mean stay in that circumstance and take it because the other person doesn't really mean it.  Real forgiveness would say, you can love them from a distance.  Acknowledging that someone elses behavior has nothing to do with you and is everything to do with their own inner pain, doesn't mean you have to continue to be their punching bag, literally or metaphorically.

Okay, now that that is cleared up, I'm going to make a case for real forgiveness.  Forgiving and releasing the past is an incredibly useful and practical thing to do.  Contrary to popular belief, forgiveness is more an act of self-care than it is letting somebody off the hook.  So go back to the last time you were really resentful toward someone, and now I want you to remember what it felt like in your body.  It's really uncomfortable isn't it?  Even painful at times.  Now, think about what you feeling really bad in your own mind and body is doing to the other person?  Nothing!  It's doing absolutely nothing... unless they decide to feel bad because you are upset.  But guess what, that is completely up to them.  In other words, you get to definitely feel bad in an attempt to make them feel bad, which may or may not work.  Never mind the fallacy that influencing others to feel guilty is serving you in some way.  Forgiveness is then and incredible act of self-care.

Let's take a look at this whole idea of using our own hurt and resentment as a weapon against others.  My first question is, do you want to suffer? Take a second to be really honest with yourself.  My next question is do you really want anyone else to suffer?  I mean honestly, for what purpose?  Punishment?  Revenge?  Satisfaction?  Learning a lesson? To change a habit?  These are some common answers to that question, and yet, have you ever stopped to think about if it actually works?  My experience is that it doesn't work to get us what we want.  And this is only relevant if you answered yes to my first question. People only are willing to suffer if they think it will get them what they want. If you just keep asking yourself what you really want, eventually you'll come to some version of peace and love and connection, both with others and inside yourself.  When you get to that place, you'll realize that using your own pain and suffering as a weapon won't get you what you really want, ever.  All you have to do is give yourself permission to let it all go, and with that permission, forgiveness comes swiftly.

By the way, all of these reasons for forgiving others, are equally if not more important when it comes to forgiving yourself.  So if you are bullying yourself with guilt, you needn't do that either.

When you take the time to forgive yourself and others and see the truth of who you and they are, you get to experience incredible freedom and peace.  All of that energy that was tied up in the past, can now be put toward your creativity, communications, and passions.

If you are up for practicing forgiveness, the question becomes how do I do it?  Well forgiveness is pretty simple because it has everything to do with how we are choosing to see the world and nothing to do with our actions.  Here's a simple process that will have you on your way to leading a life of forgiveness and ultimately joy.

Forgiveness Process:

1. Make sure you have your own permission to forgive yourself or another. Without permission you won't be able to reach a state of forgiveness
2. Look for the truth in the actions or words spoken by the other person.  If it was unkind or unloving, recognize that it had nothing to do with you, and everything to do with their own fearful and insecure thinking.  Does it make sense to kick somebody who is afraid?  When you can see their fear, that allows you to see more clearly their essence which is the next step.
3. Next make a choice to see them for who they really are instead of who they think they are.  This can take some practice, so make a practice of seeing people as their spiritual essence, and not their actions which can sometimes be fear and ego based.  Imagine everyone is doing the best they know how to move away from pain and toward love; it's just that what some people have learned as strategies are pretty screwy 
4. Finally make a declaration that you forgive them because you want to experience peace and deep down, you want them to experience peace.  

I'll end this article with an account of love and forgiveness in the most extreme of circumstances:

 "In Warsaw, in 1939, a man watched as the Nazis machine-gunned hundreds of jews, including his wife, two daughters, and three sons.  “'I had to decide right then whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people's minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life–whether it was a few days or many years–loving every person I came in contact with.'” –George G. Ritchie, Return from Tomorrow, pp. 115-116

Love and Light,
Tyler