Fair warning – I was feeling very reflective so today’s post is a long one!

Life has been a series of ups and downs for me. Over 20 years ago (in 1989), I encountered the whole personal growth and development movement. Over 10 years ago (in 1999), I walked away from a high paying job to complete my doctorate and start a new life. I wanted to have my own company helping individuals and organizations realize the kind of positive change I had made in my own life (both personally and professionally).

I completed the doctorate in 2004. I launched my own company in 2005. But it never really got off the ground. I would have a client here and there, but essentially I was living off money that I had saved from my job and for my retirement. So I decided to focus on getting healthy – losing weight and getting in shape. And that worked great! I started a new business to help people (like myself) who had always struggled to lose weight and keep it off. I got a few more clients, but not really enough to make a living.

Then my father passed away in November 2007 and I hit a wall – of grief, of loss, of feeling like a failure, lots of painful feelings. It felt like nothing in my life was working. So when I sought spiritual guidance on what to do next, the message was “move to San Francisco”. However, there was another area of my life that was significantly out of shape. My house was filled with years and years of accumulation of stuff. Even now, I can’t watch the television shows about hoarders. While I was never that bad, it is still too close for comfort.

So I went through layers and layers of letting go – of my father and of my stuff. And in all that letting go, I didn’t have the strength to keep up with my diet and exercise routine, so the weight started coming back on. My one success was reversing itself, and I seemed helpless to change it. I did manage to get moved to San Francisco, and I do love this town, but success has continued to be elusive here as well. Guess I have a way to go before I can be an advocate for living your dreams.

I paid for and attended lots and lots of seminars, courses, programs, and coaches, trying to find out what I needed to do to turn things around. But no matter what I tried, nothing seemed to work for me. But I have seen all these things work for other people. And the only common denominator of all this effort is me. So the answer lies within me – not in something outside of me, but within my own being. At one level, I’ve known that for almost 20 years, but at another level, I kept falling back on what I learned as a child – if I just try harder, somehow it will all work out. But that was not true – at least not for me.

So what’s the answer? Truthfully, I don’t know. I may never know for certain. But what I do know at this moment is that I need to slow down. My life is out of balance. I spend too much time struggling (and failing) to make a living, and not enough time operating from a place of ease, acting from my fearless center. I have been so caught up in worrying about whether or not I will be able to pay my bills that I forgot to be still and just acknowledge what is.

Instead of running to try to find the next thing that might work, I am settling back into my stable center. I am once again meditating regularly. I have started to clear up and clean up the remaining amount of stuff that I have been living with for the past two years. I am resuming an exercise program and slowly getting back on track with my diet. I am learning to let go – not from a place of fear, but from a place of love. The one thing I am very sure of is that the ultimate answer is love – unconditional, infinite, immediate, and unending love.

My own work is to live into that love more and more each day. And that is all. Love and fear cannot co-exist so the more I live into love, the less fear I have in my life. It has been a long road and I have no idea where I will be in another year, or what I will be doing for a livelihood, but I know that I will be continuing to live into love. My new mantra is – I love you. To myself, to other people, to the world, to everything that exists. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Even on days when saying that seems difficult or impossible, I continue with this practice. And it is first directed to me – because if I do not love myself, then there is no one else I can truly love. When I love myself first, I am in touch with my Divine nature, and that source of love is infinite and profound.

So if we all walk around everyday telling ourselves that we love ourselves, I believe the world would be reborn in love through us, through our love. Three simple words – directed at ourselves – each of us, individually, falling in love with the beautiful, unique, precious, and Divine beings that are each of us. I love you. I love you. I love you. There is a phrase – “Peace begins with us”. So does Love. Can it be that simple? Yes, I believe it can. Enjoy!

It has been a crazy week. I traveled from a seminar in North Carolina to another seminar in Washington, D.C. That is finishing up today and tomorrow I head home. I will be very glad to be home again for a while. I do love to travel, but I also love sleeping in my own bed, so too much of one or the other makes me tired. Like many other things, the secret is in finding the right balance!

Finding the right balance is true for so many aspects of my life. The right balance between food and exercise; between sleep and being awake; between work and fun; between learning and teaching – the list goes on and on. Too much of any one thing is not good for us.

We thrive on diversity, but not on uncertainty. Uncertainty tends to make our “flight or flight” mechanisms kick in. We don’t know what to do or which way to go, so our adrenal glands go into overtime, and our survival instincts take over. Like if you are caught in a crosswalk with a speeding car bearing down on you. You don’t stop to think about your options for escape and which one is probably the most effective. Your adrenal glands kick in and you run! Without even thinking about it!

In the case of a speeding car, that is a life saving response. The problem is that our adrenal glands can’t tell the difference between a speeding car and an angry boss. Both seem life threatening to our emotional selves, so we go into hyper-drive in both cases. Since modern life gives us many opportunities to feel stress, we become adrenaline junkies – operating all day at hyper-stressed levels of activity. Eventually we burn out and find coping strategies – and at least for me, those strategies usually involve self-medicating with carbs to replace depleted energy reserves. And that creates an entirely new set of problems – with weight control and related health issues. Not fun!

But uncertainty is everywhere, so what are we supposed to do? I tend to think of it like one of those rides at a county fair. You know the ones where they are designed to whirl you and twirl you and spin you around until you get sick? Well, the secret to not getting sick is to pick one stable thing, something that you can control like your hand or your foot, and look at that, just that. When you do that, you don’t get sick. Just like they teach you in whirling Sufi dances, look at the palm of your hand. It’s stable, it moves with you, and it will keep you from getting off balance when everything else is spinning around.

Find something really stable in your life, something you know you can count on, and place your focus on that. There will still be plenty of uncertainty in the world, creating opportunities for you to spin out of control and lose your balance. But if you can just focus on one stable component of your life, you don’t have to lose your balance and get sick. Now you know the secret! Enjoy!

I am at a seminar in western North Carolina. I have been gone for a week and am flying home tomorrow morning. I have greatly enjoyed the company of like-minded individuals for the past five days, but am ready to go home and sleep in my own bed – even if it is only for one night because I have another seminar after this one!

Seeing other people do so well with something I learned over a decade ago is both inspiring and somewhat overwhelming. Inspiring because I am very glad to see them doing so well and to know that big positive changes are happening in the world. Somewhat overwhelming because I know I am not one of those who has made that leap into having a larger impact on the world, despite my best efforts to be of greater service to others.

I used to let that fact really get me down, but I have been slowly coming to terms with it over that past year or so. After all, I can only do my best at whatever I undertake. There is nothing more – “best” is as good as it gets.

In many ways, I am very happy to see how much positive change is at work in the world. It gives me hope for the future and joy in the present. If my efforts are of assistance to others, than I too am a part, even if only a small part, in helping to create that better tomorrow. So today I rejoice in what I have seen and learned about how much good there still is in the world, how many people are working to create a better tomorrow for all life everywhere, and in whatever ways I can support those efforts. It is all good. Enjoy!

The past few weeks have been tough. It seemed like no matter what I did, it didn’t work out. Working on building my business – but not much success happening. Trying to set up fun things to do with friends, and things don’t work out. Adjusting my schedule to accommodate more of the things that are important to me, and last minute emergencies change everything.

You probably know what I’m talking about. When all your plans seem to be falling apart and you can’t do anything about it. But the general wisdom is that we need to make plans, to have goals, to focus on what we are striving to achieve. Otherwise, there is no direction, no sense of accomplishment, no motivation. That is the general wisdom. But what happens when it no longer seems to be true?

Wisdom changes and evolves with experience and discovery. Hundreds of years ago, the wise person believed the world to be flat. Now anyone asserting that the world is flat would be either corrected or dismissed as crazy. What we “know” to be true is not always so. I think my plans are good plans, but they don’t always work out well. I base my actions on what I believe will move me forward toward accomplishing my goals, but sometimes these actions set me back rather than move me forward.

How am I to interpret all this? Do I change my goals? Do I persevere because this is some kind of “test”? Are my thoughts not aligned with my actions, so that I am unconsciously sabotaging myself? There are many questions, and most have no easy answers – if they even have answers at all. So what am I supposed to do? What are any of us supposed to do when these things happen?

I cannot speak for anyone else, but for myself, I am choosing to refocus my efforts on deeper questions. Rather than asking myself why something didn’t work, I am starting to ask myself what I can learn from the situation. Rather than asking myself if this some kind of a test, I am starting to look at how to depersonalize what happens to me. It’s not because anything or anyone is out to either get me or reward me. What happens is simply what happens. End of story.

So today I am working on letting go of the stories I tell myself. I am working on letting go of judging whether something is good or bad. I am working on becoming more in tune with just the experience of being alive. And I am engaging in what Eminem called “the business of is-ness.” How about you? Enjoy!

OK, my most recent blog posts have started to look like newsletters! I lost track of my short and simple format and got kind of long-winded. Sorry about that. This one I will try to keep short, simple, and of course interesting!

I follow a number of other people – reading their newsletters and following their efforts. One in particular who has been very moving for me recently has been Suzanne Evans and her World Movement Marketing Day launch. Her motto is “it’s time to stop marketing and start a movement!” She’s all about changing the world in a positive way, and helping others do the same.

For her recent launch of her World Movement Marketing Day (on September 1, 2010), she prepared several short videos (between two and three minutes each). I found each one of them to be very inspiring – particularly if you are trying to start your own business or if you are struggling with the business you are currently in. Heck, they are inspiring all on their own!

So today I just wanted to share the link to her website so that you can watch the videos if you would like to. The link is www.worldmovementmarketingday.com/.  No cost, no obligation. Just inspiration. Enjoy!

I just got back from visiting my nieces in North Carolina. Their birthdays were over the past week. They are 9, 10 and 12 now! Sometimes it is amazing to think about when they were first born and this very proud Auntie was carrying each of them around in her arms. Seems like such a short time ago, and yet now they are young ladies on the verge of becoming young women. So many things change so quickly in life. The challenge is to remember and stay focused on what really counts!

Spending time with the people I love is one of those things that really counts. We won’t all be around forever. And at the end of the day, I would rather spend an hour with my family than on my taxes. I would rather spend an afternoon at the beach with my friends than paying my bills. And I would rather spend an evening out with those I love than watching television, no matter how much I might otherwise enjoy the show.

I say all that, and it is true. And yet I still spend too much time on my taxes, paying my bills, and watching television because I haven’t completely aligned my desires with my actions. Just like many things we all want – to maintain a healthy weight, to have a strong body, to have a great relationship – it is difficult to do (at least for a lot of us).

Every day I get a lot of email from people who are offering to help me address the parts of my life where my desires do not match up with my reality. They coach; they sell programs; they offer weekend experiences. Many of them do this because they have achieved their dreams and now they want to help others do the same.

Personally, I have such a coach. He is famous for helping people achieve their dreams. He charges a lot of money because his reputation is so amazing based on how much he has helped others in the past. But this week on our call, he said he was frustrated. He told me I was doing everything right and he couldn’t understand why my results were so low in comparison to others he has helped in the past.

I have thought about that conversation several times over the past few days, and I think the piece he is missing is the piece about aligning my desires and my actions – particularly my deeper desires to be of service and to help lots of people. It is not only about aligning desires with actions. It is also about aligning actions with desires. If my actions are not aligned with my most powerful desires to be of great service in the world, then they will be less effective. And that has been my experience recently.

So I am going to take some time over the next week or so to look at my true desires and my current actions. I want to make sure they are aligned – so that my actions support my desires, and my desires are the fuel for my actions. When I am anchored in what has deep meaning and purpose for me, then things always go more smoothly for me. It’s time to get back on track myself and not only remember what really counts, but take action on what really counts. Are your desires and actions well aligned? I hope so! If not, I wish you great success in creating that alignment. Enjoy!

It is the end of August. September is right around the corner and with it the end of summer for another year. As an adult, it amazes me that time flies by so quickly. I remember as a child that my summers seemed endless. My memories of that time include long days of tree climbing, bike riding, fresh food from the garden, and of course the usual chores of life on a farm in the summer.

Now summer flies by in the blink of an eye, barely different from any other season of the year except for the changing temperature when I go outside. I grew up on the land, attuned to the seasons and the changing cycles of light and warmth, growing and harvesting, working and resting. But somehow I’ve lost track of that in my current life. Instead my days are filled with more demands on my time, more tasks required, and more challenges to be faced and learned from.

Memory is of course always tinted with emotion – one way or the other. Mine are colored with a great deal of joy and excitement. The world was and is so interesting – and there is so much to see, to do, and to experience. For example, I live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, and have been spending most of my time either looking at a computer screen or attending networking events at hotels and restaurants.

I have said before that I need to change this, but for some reason, I have not. Resistance is an interesting experience. I know what I want to do, what I need to do, and yet I do not do it. Why not? Am I stuck in a rut? Am I afraid of the consequences? Do I somehow think I don’t deserve better? All these are valid questions – to which I do not have any valid answers. I only know that I have good intentions, and that those intentions generally slip quietly away without action as I struggle with the day-to-day requirements of my choices.

I am not complaining here – just observing the pattern of my life over the past year. It is not a pattern I am comfortable with – and it is not helping me achieve my goals, the ones I wrote about in my last post. So while I have goals and strategies and tasks; while I create plans and schedules and to-do lists; and while I have the best of intentions and a strong desire to change, nothing actually happens until I just break free of all my questions and take action.

So today is a day of “just do it”. I have a plan and a schedule and a list of things that must be accomplished. And while I will make progress on all those things, I will also take time to go outside and appreciate these final days of August in the year 2010. I will rejoice in the beauty that surrounds me. And I will choose to take action on those things that are truly important to me – because in the end, I do not want to look back over my life and say “it could have been so much more.” Step back, take stock, make a new choice, and take action in alignment with that choice. And don’t forget to – enjoy!

I have decided that my life needs more organization. Those of you who ever visited my formally messy home in Cincinnati will appreciate the truth of this statement. Moving to San Francisco allowed me to get rid of a lot of stuff, and I have been continuing to downsize and organize what’s left ever since I got here. But there are so many things to do, and only so many hours in a day, so I get off track and don’t make a lot of progress sometimes.

All the time management gurus are now emailing newsletters about accomplishing the goals you set for yourself for 2010. The year is more than half over and they are asking how it is going. I must say that while some things are going forward well, other things are not. I am following up on a lot of good suggestions, but I tend to over-commit and then not have enough time to do everything I have committed to do. Not some of my best work, I will admit.

So I sat down to look at my life and decide what are the three most important goals I have, not just for 2010, but always. For me, those were easy to identify. I want to maintain my health and wellness. I want to maintain my relationships with the people I love. And I want to have a good livelihood doing work I love that really helps people.

Once I identified my goals, I looked at the next level of achieving them. What strategies do I need to accomplish my goals? For example, what strategies do I need to maintain my health and wellness? Again, when I looked at it like that, the answer was easy – eating right, exercising, and meditating.

The final step is to take each strategy and break it down into a series of tasks. For example, eating right involves buying and eating healthy food in proper proportions at reasonable times. Once I have identified what tasks are needed, I can decide whether I want to invest the time to do them myself or ask for help (depending upon my available time and budget).

When all my tasks support my strategies which then in turn help me achieve my goals, I feel better about the process. It’s not just some long to-do list, but actual progress toward creating what I want out of life. Looking at what I need to do within this kind of structure allows me to build on something as I move forward. I have found it very helpful. Hopefully, you will too! Enjoy!

Last week was about getting back on track after being sick for two weeks. Lots of delayed to-do’s that needed to get done. When I was sick, I got off track with my time diary because there were days when I didn’t really do anything – including writing in the diary! So last week I started it again. One thing I am finding is that I spend a lot of time each day clearing email. Not the most productive thing I do, but if I don’t get it cleared out, it becomes overwhelming very quickly. I am sure that there are better ways to do this. I just haven’t discovered them yet! So I went online to see if there was anything I was missing.

I found recommendations to organize email into folders, filter junk e-mail, maintain separate personal and business e-mail accounts, only check email two or three times a day, address each e-mail quickly, keep responses short and sweet, be clear, be polite, etc. All things that I am doing currently so not much help there. So I kept on reading and found two more suggestions that I have not been following. The first one is to delete aggressively. I don’t do that. I keep a lot of e-mails for reference purposes – e-mails from clients, e-mails that support tax deductions (online order confirmations), e-mails with great content that I want to keep (and I don’t want to print out and file in hard copy), so my inbox gets overloaded and so do my folders. I need to start deleting aggressively!

The second suggestion I have not been following is to stop using my inbox as a to-do list. I am very guilty of having e-mail to-do’s. And I agree that it is not an efficient system because I put them in a follow-up folder and then don’t follow up, or I leave them in my inbox but they get buried. So I spend to much time going back over old emails to make sure I am finding everything I need to deal with – not a very good use of my time. So I also need to stop using my inbox as my to-do list!

Is e-mail taking up too much of your time? Are you following all these suggestions for taming this electronic beast? Do you have some other ways of making it work for you? Please share! I’m always looking for great ideas! In the meantime, I’m off to aggressively delete some untamed e-mails! Enjoy!

I have been sick for almost two weeks. No fun! Some combination of cold and flu and sinus infection – or as one of my friends called it “The Goinga Round Bug”. (Thank you Randy!) Whatever the source, it has slowed me down considerably. Not such a bad thing I guess, but frustrating at times. I am used to maintaining a fairly frenetic pace and so adjusting to this longer-term recovery has been challenging. I not only appreciate my health more at the moment. I also appreciate what having good health allows me to do – which is work for longer periods at a quicker pace.

They say that when you are starting a new business, you are supposed to work long hours and do whatever is necessary to make it happen. For example, I was watching the new Tony Robbins television program on Tuesday night “Breakthroughs with Tony Robbins”. Last week it was about a family that had lost their source of income and their savings. They were on the verge of losing their house when Tony Robbins took them through a 30-day process to help them change their lives.

At one point in the program, Tony arranged a trial employment with a successful business for the husband. The message was that to succeed, he had to work like crazy, do whatever it took, to get the job done. The husband did what it took and got the job. The wife went back to work as well. The program never addressed what happened to their small children, or who took care of them while their parents were working.

While I’m glad that family saved their home, I felt somewhat disappointed by that outcome. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t work hard (and well) at their jobs, or that you don’t have to put a lot of effort into getting something started and going well. But does the only way to keep a roof over your head really require you to work 24-7 week after week, month after month at the cost of time spent with your family and/or maintaining your health? I hope not!

The long-term effect of that kind of stress on people’s health is disastrous! People respond to stress differently, but some physical illnesses commonly related to excessive, long-term stress include irritable bowel syndrome, heart attack and high blood pressure, ulcers, insomnia and chronic fatigue, and obesity. Because stress weakens the immune system, people get sick more often and more severely.

So while many of us have to work harder right now to make ends meet, my hope is that we can all find some balance somewhere in this process. I hope we can all find moments of relief and periods of relaxation to help us stay healthy and happy, positive and productive, as we go about our lives. I hope we have days that aren’t always and only about work, but that there are moments of joy in every day for every one of us. Today I am joyful about feeling better. What about you? Enjoy!