What If You Were 'The One'?

“You’re in business to spread love.  Your screenplay should spread love.  Your hair salon should spread love.  Your agency should spread love.  Your life should spread love.  The key to a successful career is realizing that it’s not separate from the rest of your life, but is rather an extension of your most basic self.  And your most basic self is love.                                  -Marianne Williamson

I'd like to start today's tip with a story from Michael Neill's book, Feel Happy Now. This is an old spiritual teaching story, but I particularly like his version.

"Many years ago (or so the story goes), in a time of great war and consternation, there was a monastery which had fallen upon hard times. There were few monks left and they tended to squabble amongst themselves. Everyone was convinced their path was the right path and the peaceful ways of the past seemed little more than a dream. 

In a last-ditch attempt to save the monastery, the abbot went to seek the wisdom of an old rabbi who was reputed to have great wisdom and insight into the ways of men. 

When the abbot told the rabbi of the situation, the rabbi shook his head with great concern. ‘It is imperative that you find a way to resolve this situation before it is too late,’ said the rabbi. ‘For what you do not realize is that among you is the One who will deliver us all from fear into love.’ 

The abbot asked who among them was the One, but the rabbi would tell him no more. On the way back to the monastery, he wondered who the One could be. ‘I bet it’s Brother Arthur,’ he thought to himself. ‘He is kind and good. Or perhaps it is Brother Thomas – he is young but already shows great wisdom. Or could it be … no … I mustn’t even consider that it might be me!’ 

On his return, the abbot shared the news with the monks. While they were startled, there was the ring of truth to what the abbot had said. The One was amongst them! 

As they contemplated which of them it might be, the monks began to treat one another with a very special reverence and respect. After all, someone among them might really be the One. And, on the off-chance that each monk himself might be the One, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect and reverence as well. 

As time went by, the monks developed a gentle, loving quality about them which was hard to quantify but easy to notice. They lived respectfully, in harmony with themselves and nature. An aura of respect and reverence seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling about it. 

Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the life of the monks, and young men were asking to become a part of their community. Within a few short years, the monastery had once again become home to a thriving order – a vibrant centre of light and spirituality in the world."

I think this story provides beautiful insight into what  a simple shift in perception can do to our energy as well s behavior.  As Wayne Dyer says, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."  and I would take it one step further: when you change the way you see your fellow human beings, they will transform before your very eyes.

Imagine for a moment that your romantic partner was, the One, in disguise.  How would your experience of them change?  What would you do and say differently?

What if your children, friends, co-workers, clients, and patients were, the One?  What would transform?

What if the stranger you bumped into on the bus, or the homeless person begging on the street was, the One?  How would you treat them?  How would you look at them?

Finally, I want you to imagine that You are the One, sent to move the world from fear to love.  How would you live?  How would you treat yourself?  How would you treat others?  What would you spend your time doing?  What would you make your life about?


Weekly Coaching Experiment:

• This week I want to invite you to treat everyone you come into contact with, including yourself, as if they were 'the One' in disguise(feel free to substitute whatever spiritual language you would like here, Jesus, Buddha, God, Avatar, etc)
• Notice how they shift, change, and transform as a result
• Finally, notice how you shift, change, and transform as a result.  If you like it, keep it up!

Until next week,

Love and Light,

Tyler

The Source of All Fear

"If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold onto.  If you aren't afraid of dying, there is nothing you can't achieve."

-Lau Tzu

The number one thing holding people back from living bold, passionate, fulfilling lives, is FEAR.  Take a moment to look in your own life... where does fear stop you? Does it stop you from taking action, does it stop you from having certain conversations, does it stop you from taking certain actions... or does it stop you from even considering creating something new. If you're having trouble locating fear, just look in the opposite direction, look at where you are stopped in life, and I can pretty much guarantee if you dig enough, you'll find some fear.

We're scared of lots of things really.  The Fear of falling, fear of spiders, fear of airplanes, fear of rejection, fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of poverty, fear of what others will think, fear of confrontation, and fear of disease.  The list could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Let's take a look at what fear is.  Fear is another one of those processes that we talk about as if it was a thing. In linguistics this is known as a nominalization.  So there is actually a process or 'strategy' that we go through in order to scare ourselves.  Usually it involves an external trigger, although it is not necessary.  Then we go up into our heads and make big scary pictures or movies of things that we've learned to be frightened of.  There is also often times a scary voice narrating the movies in our heads to add an extra layer of fear.  Finally we feel it in our bodies.  Increased heart rate, tightness in the chest, dry mouth, and a rush of adrenaline.

In essence, fear is created 100% through our thoughts.  If we couldn't think, we wouldn't experience fear.  This is of course usually a very unconscious process.  We're not usually sitting up in our heads saying, okay it's time to be scared let's access a fear thought.  I know... I'll think of a bear mauling me, or being pushed off a cliff, or my mother in law calling.  No, it happens in a split second, but if you're feeling afraid, and you look, you'll find the thoughts behind the fear.

Okay, so now that we've cleared  up that fear isn't a result of circumstances it's a result of our thinking about circumstances, now it's time to look at the usefulness of fear.  Is it useful?    Fear is used in an attempt to either motivate us or an attempt to keep us safe.  I want to challenge the usefulness of both of those uses.

Let's explore motivation.  Look at where you are using fear in your life to move yourself forward.  It often sounds something like, "If I just scare myself enough, I'll go get a better job, or relationship, or body." First of all, how's that workin' for you?  I'm guessing that it's not.  However, if it is helping you move toward what you want, guess what? You get to live in fear!

Fear is just not a great strategy for motivation.  I'm personally a big fan of inspiration.  Create such a compelling vision for your future that you can't help but move toward it.  And guess what, inspiration feels good.

Okay, the second of the two uses of fear is safety.  Most people will argue with me up and down that if they weren't afraid they'd go do something stupid or crazy.  My question is always, why do you think that having no fear would suddenly make you stupid?  There is a distinction here worth making, which is worry vs. awareness of danger.  What most people think of as fear, is really just superstition or worry.  Those worries are made up, extremely unlikely, worst case scenarios in our heads, that we use to apparently keep ourselves safe.  So we have worry, and then we have the awareness of danger, which looks remarkably like common sense.  For instance, if I am standing on the edge of a cliff, I don't need worry fear to keep me from jumping, I just need to have the awareness that if I jump, I will likely die or be very badly injured.  Similarly, when I'm cooking, I don't need to be afraid of the burners on the stove in order for me to not put my hands on them.  I'm simply aware of the consequences. The awareness of danger is extremely useful, worry is not.  Here is my favorite analogy about worry that I first heard from one of my mentors, Michael Neill:

Imagine you are walking along, and you see this guy who's swinging a tiger by the tail.  This is obviously very strange so you ask him very curiously, 'hey what are you doing?'  

And of course he says, 'What does it look like I'm doing, I'm swinging a tiger by the tail.'  

'Well, yeah I can see that, but why?'  you ask.   

He says, 'Oh, it's to keep away the lions.'   

So you look around and of course see no lions, so you very astutely point out, 'but there are no lions.'   

And the guy says, 'see, it's working!'

That analogy sums up worry in a nutshell.  It's like, well, I'm having all these scary thoughts, and nothing really bad has actually happened yet, so they must be working to keep me safe.

The reality is, worry-fear actually decreases our intelligence and our resourcefulness.  Imagine for a moment that you've got this math problem that you've got to solve, and it's pretty complicated but it's within your skill level of doing.  So in the first case scenario you are doing it because you love math and want to improve your skills.  Now imagine the second scenario, somebody comes to you and says they have kidnapped your family and if you don't solve this math problem correctly and soon, they are going to be killed.  Which scenario are you going to have more facility and creativity? Would you perform better or worse without the fear?  If you really thought about it, of course you'd do better without the nerves, because you're head is not clouded up with all the fear thoughts.  You can actually focus on the task at hand.

Now that you can hopefully see that, what people normally think of as fear, which is worry, is not particularly useful.  It rarely keeps us motivated, and even then, it's not sustainable or enjoyable.  And we don't need it to keep us safe.  How can we begin to decrease the amount of fear in our life?

Because fear comes from our thinking, changing our circumstances isn't really going to help much.  Of course, if you are living under constant threat of attack, then you might want to do something about that. However, if you're reading this, I'm willing to guess that that isn't really a concern for you right now.

That then leads us to cultivating a couple of understandings.  The first understanding I mentioned already, which is to just recognize fear for what it is, thought.  I'm not suggesting you try to control your thoughts, or wrestle your fear thoughts to the ground in a choke hold when they try to enter your head, because all of those things tend to make the fear bigger and even more significant.  All I'm suggesting to begin to alleviate your fear is to make a practice of recognizing your thinking for just that, thought; not reality.  And remember, I'm not saying your fears have no basis in reality, it's just that they aren't useful, in fact they are often harmful and get in the way of you creating a wonderful life for yourself.

The second realization is that if you trace almost any fear thought back to it's origins, you will continually bump into the fear of your own physical demise.  In other words, the fear of death is the root of all fears.  For example a simple digression might be.  My fear of rejection comes from my fear of being alone, and my fear of being alone comes from my fear of not being able to cope, and if I couldn't cope, and I'm afraid of not being able to cope because I'm afraid to die!  Or something like that.

The moral of the story, much like the quote at the beginning of this article, as long as you are afraid to die, your life will be relatively full of fear.

What is there to do?  Make peace with the fact that all of our bodies will stop working some day.  George Bernard Shaw once said, “Be Patient with the poor people who think they will live forever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.”

In my experience, it is worth spending time in your life, making peace with the fact that you are going to die someday and you don't know when.  I believe it was the old Samurai culture where they began every day saying 'today is a good day to die'.  It's not a wishing for death, but more of an acknowledgement and a peace making of what is the truth.  Because the reality is, we just don't know when our time is up.

Now I know that the affirmation 'I'm going to die someday and I don't know when' might not be at the top of your list of positive things to say to yourself... but what if it was?  Imagine how your life might be different.  If you were fully aware that you are going to die someday and you don't know when, would you keep putting off making amends with a loved one, or asking your partner to marry you?  If I'm going to die someday and I have no idea when, am I going to stay in this job that I hate because it's safe and it has good benefits?  If we are all going to die someday, and we don't know when, is there any reason to not tap into as much joy and connection and service as we possibly can in each moment?

My invitation to you is to spend some time with this.  It's not an over-nighter. You might be asking yourself, how do I make peace with the end?  And, for me it was by exploring how it might not be the end.  How, in fact, it might be the real beginning.  Death may be as simple as walking in one world, to walking in another.  However you find peace with it, will be up to you, but it is absolutely a worthwhile endeavor.  It may take you on journey's you never could have imagined.

For me personally, I find myself taking more time to breathe, connecting more authentically, experiencing more vividly, and loving more deeply than I ever did before.  I find myself not worrying so much about what other people think and more about what my inner wisdom is telling me.  I find myself with more compassion for the human condition, and wanting to share insights.  I spend less time in the past and the future, and more time in the only moment we every have, right now.  And maybe, just maybe, if you explore for yourself and get out of your head and into your heart, you'll discover what I did.  That the world isn't so scary, in fact, it's only as scary as our thoughts.

Love and Light,
Tyler

Unconditional Acceptance

"I know everybody loves me, I just don't expect them to know that."

-Byron Katie

This weeks tip is in response to one of my best friends asking me to share with him my thoughts on 'acceptance'.  He's compiling a book of people's past experiences of feeling accepted or not, its significance in their lives, and what they've learned about it over the years. If you are inspired to do so, write about your own experience, contact me, and I'll put you in contact with him to so he can consider your entry for his book.

Early on in my life as a child I really struggled with this whole notion of acceptance.  I really wanted everybody to like me, and so I would often times pretend to be somebody I wasn't in order to get that.  Over time I learned, that it actually kept me somewhat safe, however it also fueled my sense of being alone and disconnected from the world.  As I made my way through college and began studying different modalities for personal transformation, my perception began to shift.  I now realize the importance of being unconditionally accepted within a community, as well as being able to authentically express ourselves in the world.

As a coach and really just a human being, here's the best of what I've learned so far about being and feeling Accepted.

Let's first take a look at what it is to be accepted.  My trusty dictionary defines 'accepted' as:

Generally approved; usually regarded as normal, right, etc.

This definition fits what people generally think of as being accepted.  They just want approval, or to be considered normal; however, my experience tells me there is much more to it than that.  Let's dive a little deeper, shall we?

When we have the desire to be accepted, we don't usually stop to think about what we want to be accepted for.  Do you want acceptance for the way that you dress, for your body shape and size, for what you own, what you say, what you do, how much money you have, or for just being a human being?  And how many people do you need to be accepted by before you can be okay? Is it 1, 2, 5, 10, 100, or 1,000.  Or are you stuck in the trap of thinking you need everybody you come into contact with to accept you?  If so, do you know anybody who has ever actually pulled that off?  If you stopped to think about it, would you really want everybody on the planet to like you and want to spend time with you?

Another thing worth considering on this subject is, do you accept yourself?  Do you have your own approval?  If not, what do you think you have to change about yourself before you can accept yourself?

One of my favorite theories for why we have this hardwired desire for approval and acceptance from others, dates back to when we lived in tribes.  The harsh reality of living in a tribe was you had a pretty high degree of dependence on the other members of the tribe to pull their weight, and work together so that you could all survive.  If you ended up being rejected by the tribe, you would be cast out, and left to fend for yourself, which in most cases meant certain death.  So if being accepted by the people around you feels like life or death, it's because historically it was.  The only problem is, that's not really true anymore.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of being accepted; just not at the expense of my own authentic expression.  Having a community of people that love you and accept you for who you really are is a beautiful thing.  But, if you have to put on a front or a fake persona to be liked, then you may want to question the people who's acceptance you are seeking?  Are they really your friends if you have to do that?

Here's the problem with pretending to be somebody you are not, in order to be accepted by others.  You aren't actually being accepted!  A fake version of you is accepted, but not the real you.  So, you don't actually get what you want, and you have to fake it.  Here's the other problem.  So long as you are putting on a false persona, you never even give people to opportunity to accept you for who you really are, so you end up ensuring that it never happens.  Because even if people accept you, you're always left wondering, 'if they knew the truth, would they still love and accept me?'

Sure you could be turned down, or told to go away, but there are 6 billion people on this planet; I think you could find somebody who appreciates you for your authentic self, could you not?  Wouldn't you rather be you, and loved and accepted. That way, you don't have to walk around feeling like a fraud, and you can rest easy knowing that people get to meet the real you. This is how you get to experience real, genuine love and acceptance.  That means, true acceptance can't actually occur unless you are showing up as your authentic self.

Let's take a quick look at the other side of the equation now, which is your acceptance of others.  The beautiful thing about acceptance, is you don't have to wait until you run into human beings that fit your criteria before you can accept them. We all have the capacity to accept anybody for exactly who they are in the moment.  Even if they are behaving in a way that you don't like, you can still accept them as doing the best they know how to do, given what they've been through and their current perceptions of the world.  Accepting somebody for who they are isn't saying, It's okay what you are doing; it's saying I love and accept you as a fellow human being doing the best you know how to do.  Accepting yourself and others is a choice we have available to us in every single moment.

So for today, just as an experiment, what if you gave the people around you the gift of unconditional acceptance and love?  What a rare and beautiful gift that truly is.

This is a process that I'm still learning and practicing every day.  Some days, I still want to hide and pretend I'm somebody I'm not.  Some days I'm incredibly judgmental and don't want to accept anybody; but more and more I understand that neither of those options is ultimately serving me.  So my invitation to you is to begin practicing today, knowing that it's a life long experiment.  Rest assured that you can't get it wrong and you can only get better.  

Act and speak from your essential self today, knowing that you are giving people the opportunity to accept the real you, and giving yourself the opportunity for real love.

Weekly Coaching Experiment:

1. Think of somebody you care about who you haven't been completely yourself around.
2. Know that they can't truly love and accept you unless you stop pretending
3. Keep in mind if they don't like the real you, there are 6 Billion more people to go connect with and it is most likely not actually a life or death situation.
4. Speak or take action from your authentic self around this person when you are next in contact with them.
5. Notice how often, people love and respect you for being who you really are around them.
6. Let the ones who don't, fall away. They're not your real friends.
7. Finally, take one minute to give yourself love and acceptance for being your authentic self! Wahoo!

Love and Light,

Tyler