Live your purpose and live a life with more joy

In the last week of January a majority of Americans either quit or start losing motivation to fulfilling their New Year’s resolutions. When a New Year arrives, people love to make statements how this year is going to be different. This year is going to be the good one. Good bye 2009. Hello 2010! It is a new beginning where they will become a new person who reaches their goals.

Unfortunately, many people end up making the same resolutions each year. Every year they are going to lose weight, get a new job, join a gym, eat healthier, go out more, make more friends and the many other resolutions people make to change their lives.

Fortunately for you, you are not going to be one of them. You are doing something different this year. One of my favorite quotes is from Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” So what are you doing to do different this year to make your dreams come true?

Here are some suggestions

1. Write down your goals: Writing down goals increases the chances that they will become reality. To help alleviate any overwhelming feelings, write down smaller goals for your New Year resolutions. Smaller monthly goals are easier to accomplish. They are great for getting you back on track every month. Be sure to celebrate your wins.
2. Get an Accountabilibuddy: Find a friend that will hold you accountable. Make sure this friend is willing to call you on your excuses. Be willing to be able to accept it when they are being a little hard on you if you decide to slack. Also share in each other victories.
3. Take a class: You can find classes at your local schools that can help you reach your goals. One of the ways I made sure I was going to change one year was by taking three classes a month. I took a dance class once every two weeks, went to a group at www.meetup.com and then I would find a random class at an alternative school or community college. I was a shy man and taking a dance class was a fun way to grow as a person
4. Join or create a group: Like with the Accountabilibuddy, there is a certain power in belonging to a group. Surrounding yourself with people who have similar goals is a great way to keep yourself on track. www.meetup.com is a great way to find groups of people who are committed to create change in their lives.
5. Join an intention circle: Writing intentions in a group is a great way to create what you want in your new life with lasting change. It captures the power of people joining with the power of intentions. http://www.intenders.com/ is a great place to find what an intention circle is, how to start one and where to find one. It helps to write out your intentions with joy. Watch for my book coming in 2010 that will teach you how to write intentions in a joyful manifesting way.
6. Go to a workshop: Workshops are a great way to energize yourself and learn tools to create the life you want in a short period of time. The workshops I have taken have been a great help to me. Remember to take responsibility for your life and not spend more than you have on workshops as the workshop high can be very addicting. Read my blog on being your own guru. Remember that you are doing all of the work and they are just showing you a way.
7. Do some resistance breaking services: Resistance is inside of our psyche or energy and it gets in our way of moving towards what we want. NLP, EFT, therapy, and the Work are great resistance breaking training. NLP is good for programming the mind to get what you want. I even used some of the feelings generated in the workshops in my NLP feeling spinning work. EFT works on the energy body and is surprisingly simple, easy and effective. It helped me break through the resistance I had to deserving. I went from not liking hugs to a hug loving fool. Therapy is a good way to heal the past wounds of the mind. I haven’t done therapy, however I have heard good things from people who have. The Work is a wonderful training for the brain to allow you to give up a part of your story that you feel is holding you back.
8. Hire a professional: Personal trainers are great ways to keep motivated and learn how to work out. Life coaches are amazing at helping you reach your goals and keeping you on track. They will celebrate your wins, challenge you to grow, help you uncover the resistance you have to where you want to go, and be a catalyst to help create amazing change in your life.

Those are just eight suggestions that will make sure you will have the greatest 2010 ever! There are many other ways to do so. If you know one, make a comment. Also comment on what you are going to do differently this year to make your 2010 the best 2010 ever.

I have faith in you! You are going to have a great 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, …

Last year, I chose the 2009 Placebo of the Year award. Congratulations to the winner Invite Change. I thought it would be fun to start 2010 with a look back at the top 15 placebos of the 2000s. Wow, it is funny to write that. I remember when I was going to party like it was 1999. That song did not get old at all in 1999.

Placebos in this sense are personal development work, events, books or audio-books that have changed my life for the better. The 15 that I mention here are the top 15 in the last 10 years that have greatly shaped who I am today.

Here are numbers 5 through 1.

Number 5: David Deida and his book Way of the Superior Man. The book Way of the Superior Man is about being a more superior man than the man you are now. It is about living your purpose fully and with complete abandonment of things that do not serve your purpose. It says that living your purpose as a way to serve everyone.

One of the main gifts I gained from reading Way of the Superior Man is his ideas on relationships. I learned about the three stages of relationships and noticed that I was in the second stage, because I didn’t want to be in the first stage. The first stage is a dominant macho jerk and submissive housewife. The second stage is a partnership between the new age wimp and the powerful woman. He talks about ways of being a powerful man without being a macho jerk. In terms of math, I think the first stage is 1+1=0, where both people are dependent of each other; however, they mostly cancel each other out. The second stage is 1+1=2, where both people are 50/50 partners. This is nice, however it doesn’t provide spark in the bedroom and the woman doesn’t get to explore her radiance because she has to pick up the slack from her man. Also, the man does not get to explore his direction and purpose as he has to be the man in the relationship and his woman’s best girlfriend. The third stage is 1+1=infinite, where they are both whole, healthy human beings and together they are so much more. In this scenario the man is living in service of his woman so she can get to the depth of her radiance and the woman is in service of her man so he can get to the depth of his purpose.

He also mentions that one of the mistakes men make is to treat women like they are men, and vice versa. The way he explained how women are spoke to me and from there I let go of a lot of anger I had towards women. Before reading this book, I had anger towards women for not liking me. It was their fault that I was alone. They just couldn’t see what a catch I was. Also I thought of them as crazy. After reading this book, I became inspired to be a man who can attract an amazing woman and love her for who she is. I do not want to marry a dude, why would I want my woman to be like one.

Number 4: Invite Change. The Invite Change coaching model has five classes. I have been through four of them so far. The first one is Living Your Vision. In this class we work as a group to create vision and purpose statements that we are to use for our lives. It is an empowering exercise to develop a statement that when spoken feels like it talks about the essence of who I am. My purpose statement started off as long, however now it is “to be joy and love deeply.” Saying it feels so great. This was a very special class that I recommend all people take, as you do not have to be in the coaching school to take this class.

The second class is Essentials. In this class students get the essentials of coaching. This class is a great starting point for learning how to coach and what coaching is. This is mostly a learning class with some good exercises.

The third class is Power. Power is an amazing class that I cannot really explain. I went into the class feeling pretty good about coaching and I left the class feeling amazing about coaching. I felt completely sure that I am a great coach and I can help people reach their goals faster and with more joy.

The fourth class is Dynamics. They say that what Living Your Vision is to your life Dynamics is to your coaching business. It felt very true. I just took this class two weeks ago so much of what I learned is sinking in. I am very excited to see where my business goes from here. The vision and my mission statement fills me with pride. I look forward to working with people and facilitating a change in them that will spread out into their communities. I will be a positive force for change in this world and a huge part of that is because of Dynamics.

The fifth class is called Mastery, which I will take in July.

Number 3: Intentions. Learning about intentions and writing them down has been an amazing way to grow. I first learned about intentions from Wayne Dyer. I started writing them in a meet-up group called an intention circle. I highly recommend checking out an intention circle in your area. Getting together to make intentions for how you want to direct your life is very powerful. I have also enjoyed the work of Lynn McTaggart and went to one of her seminars this year. There is a lot of power in the written and spoken word. Using them to our advantage will help us get to where we want to go.

I am so inspired by my work with intentions that my first book will be about writing joyful intentions to awaken your true potential. Intentions are how I bring everything together. I learn from something and then I write down an intention to live and embody the way that I want to live. The intention process has changed my life for good and I am looking forward to sharing that with you in my new book.

Number 2: Kingpin. If this is the first blog you have read of mine, then this is probably a big surprise. However if you read the blog “The Greatest Day of My Life” then you understand why this movie is in the second spot in my top 15 countdown. The satori that I experienced from watching this movie has changed my life in so many ways. I know I wouldn’t be the man I am today and all of the other placebos that I have above would not have registered the way that they have. Taking complete responsibility for my life has been so freeing. It is amazing how amazing it is. It also shows me that the greatest wins can come from the least likely sources. Being open to anything allows me to get an amazing realization from a comedy about a bowler with one hand and a slutty woman taking an Amish guy to a bowling tournament in Vegas.

Number 1: Warrior Sage. Warrior Sage is number one on my list because I have received more from this group than any other in the last 10 years. I have completed four workshops with them including the Illumination Intensive (twice), Sex Passion and Enlightenment and Living Ecstasy.

The Illumination Intensive is one of my favorite things I have ever done for myself. I learned that the main person I learn from is me. The amount I have learned about me from these intensives is staggering. One of the most important is best described as “I am me.” I feel that everything I have learned afterward has been more authentic. I believe that I am a much more authentic and present person because of the Illumination Intensive. If you have a chance for an Enlightenment Intensive I highly recommend it. The Illumination Intensive is enough to put Warrior Sage at the top of my list.

Sex, Passion and Enlightenment was interesting to me. I do not know how much I got out of it. I did get my boundaries pushed a lot. I am very grateful for that. I do feel like I am a better man for going through with it. I just cannot pinpoint what exactly I got out of it or why it is a good seminar. I would recommend it to people who are in relationships or want a relationship.

Living Ecstasy was an amazing experience. Trusting my intuition is the reason I signed up for this seminar. During the first night of Sex, Passion and Enlightenment, I had the same dream three times. The dream was me at the end of Sex, Passion and Enlightenment with the feeling that I do not know what I got out of it and then me signing up for Living Ecstasy. So when it was the end of Sex, Passion and Enlightenment and I noticed I had that same exact feeling, I thought it was a good idea to follow the dream and sign up. Living Ecstasy set the stage for an amazing 2009 and was the end of my three seminars in four months. I went to Living Your Vision in October 2008, Inner Boundaries in November and Living Ecstasy in December. It was an amazing experience for me. During Living Ecstasy, I again pushed my boundaries and became more comfortable with myself. I was in a situation where I was able to get more in touch with my heart. In fact it was right after Living Ecstasy where I simplified my purpose statement from five sentences to just one short statement, “to be joy and love deeply.”

I also joined a men’s group from through Warrior Sage and with their help I was able to be challenged to push many of my boundaries. I also bought the book, Living Ecstasy by Satyen Raja, the man who founded Warrior Sage. It is a group I highly recommend joining. They are a huge reason I found the key to release myself from my prison of fear.

Congratulations to Warrior Sage for winning Placebo of the Decade from Joyous Expansion. I am very thankful to all the other placebos and the many that didn’t make the list. I am blessed to live at a time when there are so many special teachers available to me. Plus, I am in a situation where I am able to explore them rather than just worrying about what my next meal is. I appreciate the wonderful times we live in and I am looking forward to more placebos and being your placebo.

Look out for my book in 2010!!!!

Top 15 Placebos of the Decade

Last year, I chose the 2009 Placebo of the Year award. Congratulations to the winner Invite Change. I thought it would be fun to start 2010 with a look back at the top 15 placebos of the 2000s. Wow, it is funny to write that. I remember when I was going to party like it was 1999. That song did not get old at all in 1999.

Placebos in this sense are personal development work, events, books or audio-books that have changed my life for the better. The 15 that I mention here are the top 15 in the last 10 years that have greatly shaped who I am today. A few may surprise you, one definitely will if you haven’t read a previous blog of mine.

Number 15: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. This book gave me a wonderful look at life and the way things are and some methods to help me remain in the present. There are times when I am driving when I will just take some breaths and drive to practice being in the now.

Number 14: Deepak Chopra/Wayne Dyer. These two people are synonymous for me. They are similar in their teachings and are best friends. They are two of the first self-help people I listened to and they have many good ideas. Using Chopra’s process of being conscious of doing something unconscious, I stopped biting my fingernails. He said not to judge an action as right or wrong, instead notice myself doing the action. I started doing that with fingernail biting and then one day I noticed I had to cut my nails for the first time in over 20 years. That showed me actual proof that I was learning from self improvement. I enjoy both men’s senses of humor and have learned a lot from both of them over the years.

From Dyer’s teaching, I learned that living from spirit, is living from inspiration.

Number 13: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steve Covey. This is on the list for two reasons. One is the habit of which is my favorite, “Seek first to understand then be understood.” This is a wonderful way to live. Listening to people is a lost art in our culture. Often people tend to wait for their turn to talk. They do not actually listen to the person who is talking. There have been many times when I have listened to conversations and it is like two people are having completely different conversations.

The second reason is from reading this book I finally understand unconditional love. Before this book, I thought it made sense, however, after this book it just clicked. When Covey had a conversation with a client about how the love in the client’s relationship was gone, Covey kept telling him, “Well just love her.” This made the click for me.. Love isn’t something I have, it is something I do. You do not have love for someone, you love them. From this book I have been able to deepen my capacity to love and working to have love as just a state of being rather than something that I do.

Number 12: Boundary Solution. “Boundaries” is a seminar series given by Joan Casey. I was lucky to meet her at a Warrior Sage event. I was surprised to learn that she also leads seminars and was smart enough to take two of them. Using many techniques, I was given a view on my boundaries and push them. There was a time when nothing was more important than pushing my boundaries. The Boundary Solution seminars gave me a safe place to push and grow my boundaries. I took two seminars. One focused on boundaries with other people and the second was about boundaries within myself.

The main idea I took away from these seminars was an exercise where I felt a feeling with passion. I chose a feeling, fear, and then worked with it for 21 days to break my addiction to the chemical of the feeling. This excercise has allowed me to avoid creating situations that fulfill my need for fear. This has been very freeing.

Number 11: News for the Soul. www.newsforthesoul.com was a website that I would go to at least once a week. There I would listen to the people they showcase like Satyan Raja, Don Ickle, Greg Braden, Brad Yates, Amethyst Wyldfyre, James Arthur Ray, John Assaraf, and many more. News for the Soul also introduced me to a wonderful free and easy technique called Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. Brad Yates is the person who is known as the EFT wizard. I highly recommend looking him up on Youtube and giving it a try. It might look a little funny, however it is quick, easy and free and may help you.

It is hard to pick one nugget I learned from News for the Soul. There was at least a two-year period that I listened to it constantly while working and I used a lot of great ideas from it and learned from many different perspectives. If I had to point to one thing it would be discovering EFT.

Come back next week for 10-6!

Welcome to the first annual Placebo of the Year award. Placebo of the Year goes to the event, book, class, or workshop that has brought me some lasting happiness or skills that have helped me with my life. To be eligible for Placebo of the Year the event or book has to be something that I did, read, or learned something from during the past year.. For example, even though I discovered Richard Bandler in 2008, he is eligible in 2009, because I read two of his books this year.

Read my blog Find Your Placebo to get a better explanation of what I mean by placebo.

The candidates for the 2009 Placebo of the Year award are:

Adyashanti: I discovered him early in the year and he has been a great teacher in my life so far. This year I purchased his book Emptiness Dancing which gave a wonderful take on enlightenment. This book illustrated the idea that the Ego is something I let go rather than fight against. If you have read Eckhart Tolle’s work and you are looking for more on enlightenment, I highly suggest this book. It has a way that isn’t softer, it just won’t make letting go of the Ego such a battle.

In addition, I checked out Spontaneous Awakening and End of Your World from the library and downloaded many of his free satsangs and purchased Accessing the Ground of Being from the Portland satsang, I also purchased his CD set Dawn of Awakening and went to one of his satsangs.

Adyashanti is an amazing teacher if you are interested in enlightenment. He is very good at explaining something that is unexplainable. He also seems very genuine.

Main Learning: In the Dawn of Awakening, a member of the crowd asked something along the line of, “When does the resistance end?” Adyashanti gave a perfect answer, “It never ends.”

From his simple answer, I went into my life and looked at where I was waiting for resistance to end. How was I waiting for resistance to end instead of doing or feeling what I wanted to feel? For example, I was waiting to be in the flow for a fun spiritual life that was easy instead of just being in the flow. If I am waiting to be in the flow, I would be always waiting rather than beingin the flow.

Now I am practicing his main teaching, “Stop” from the live satsang that I attended.

Sedona Method: The Sedona Method is a simple technique where one feels something and then lets it go. It is as simple as it sounds. They go into much more detail in their CD series. This method has been around since the 70s.

Main Learning: The holistic approach in the Sedona Method is allowing myself to feel something as much as I can and then allowing myself to feel better at it or the opposite of that as much as I can. For example, if I was jealous because my wife cheated on me, I would allow myself to feel as mad as I can at my wife and then let it go. Then I would allow myself to be as fine with my wife cheating on me as I can and then let it go.

This is one of the first steps I do when I start to feel an emotion that feels bad. I allow the feeling and let it go, and then I allow the opposite and let it go. This allows me to feel what I feel and honor my feelings, while allowing me to let it go and think about how things are going to be OK. Plus it allows me to work and learn from the feelings that are not known to be positive such as jealousy and disappointment. I am able to feel it and learn from it instead of throwing a pity party.

Invite Change: Invite Change is the coaching school that I attend. This year I have taken three classes through them, Essentials, where I learned the basic of being a coach, Power, where I learned that I am a very good coach, and Dynamics, where I learned that I am a Awakener. I am very excited about my future as coach.

They are very supportive and amazing people. I am honored attend this school. A special thanks to my teachers, Susan McKay, Amaorah Ross, Jan Berg, Janet Harvey, BJ Levy, and Beverly Marsh.

Main Learning: The main thing I can take away from Invite Change is both an excitement and a huge desire to coach. I do not believe I would be where I am with my personal beliefs without going to Invite Change. The growth I have gone through due to this school has also been amazing. I look forward to building my business in 2010, mostly due to the work I have done in Invite Change.

Byron Katie The Work Live: I learned of Byron Katie in 2008 when I listened to the audio book A Thousand Names for Joy That was the first time I listened to someone and I thought to myself, “Yea, that is where I want to end up when I am done with this journey.”

In early 2009, I was able to go to her six-hour workshop at the Center for Spiritual Living in Seattle. Seeing her do the work live was absolutely amazing. The greatest part about it was witnessing the strength of those who did the work and what they were able to go through. Seeing the love that she showed each person she talked to was amazing. It was a magical experience for me.

Main Learning: I can get through anything. I have a tool called the work that is able to accept anything in my life and work from there. Having it reinforced that it is my thoughts that cause suffering and not the events. It is my relationship with them that causes me pain. I can change my relationship. Hearing the story of someone who went through a what most people would call a horrible ideal and how the work helped them not be defined by it and trapped in the past was amazing. It was like seeing a real life Victor Frankl in the audience.

Richard Bandler: Richard Bandler is one of the creators of NLP or Neuro Linquistic Programming. This year I listened to an audio recording of his, Your Own Personal Genius. I also bought two of his books, Conversations with Richard Bandler and Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance-formation. His take on personal empowerment is very similar to Katie’s however it is more grounded in the mind. His is more on the line of, “None of your thoughts are true, so you might as well believe the good ones.” He believes that absolute power is being able to listen to something and not allow it to affect you. Allowing anything anyone says to hurt you is you giving your power to them. During a demonstration NLP workshop to feminists during the middle of the Equal Rights Movement Bandler calls them sweetheart, doll and all sort of words that would rile them up. He illustrates that creating a situation where these words cause you to lose your power is not very empowering. Empowerment is being able to listen to anything without giving your power away.

Main Learning: The biggest thing I learned from Bandler is “spinning my feelings.” In his book he shows an exercise where I look in my body where a feeling has started. I start with a negative feeling and find where it starts and how it spins in my body. From there, I take the feeling out, flip it upside down and spin it backwards and put it back in the body. What I noticed is that the feeling feels so much better in that situation. Then I repeat what I’ve just done to anchor the feeling into one super glorious mega feeling. This for me is thumping my chest twice and pumping once in the air while singing We Will Rock You by Queen. This is something I do before I coach to get me into the right mindset and feeling.

I also use the Sedona Method holistic in this approach. This helped me a lot with the feeling of disappointment. I was able to take the feeling of disappointment, spin it opposite direction and then use the Sedona Method of allowing me to spin the feeling of disappointment as much as I can and then spin the opposite direction as much as I can. For me this gives me choice when the disappointment trigger arises. Then I make the intention to feel the new feeling when the trigger arises for the rest of my life.

Jed McKenna: Jed McKenna wrote a series of books about enlightenment Spirituality it is the Darnedest Thing, Spiritual Warfare and Spiritually Incorrect Enlightenment. His books are defiantly not for everyone. If you read the books with an open mind you will get something out of them. This is especially true if you enjoy enlightenment, spiritually and self development.

It is nice to read someone who has a completely different take on everything than what I learned. Instead of spirituality and enlightenment being about rainbows and sunshine, he thinks that spirituality is the opposite of enlightenment and enlightenment is a drag out war to the literal death of the ego. He also has many nuggets that are interesting and will help people stay on track and look at what they are doing. If you want to take responsibility for your own development it is nice to read someone who is very, very different. That is someone who isn’t a blinded by spiritually or just a skeptic. I definitely plan on re-reading the trilogy in the future.

Main Learning: Two points stick out in my mind. From the first book I think of the quote, “If you are not amazed by how naive you were yesterday, you are standing still.” This has me always striving to move forward in my development.

The other is from his second book when he writes about a group of people trying to figure out the Bhagavad Gita. He mentions to them that, “It’s not about the people IN the story, it’s about the person READING the story.” This is beautiful. I have had many discussions with people about a book and people struggle with them because they are trying to figure out exactly what the author is talking about. The truth of the matter is the fact that it is not only nearly impossible to know exactly what the author meant, it is not nearly as valuable as what he said means to you. This has changed the way I read books as now I am looking for inspirations that help deepen my development and take me further than trying to figure out what the author meant. Plus it also opens up my own intelligence and gives me 100% responsibility for what I get out of it.

The winner of the 2009 Placebo of the year award goes to . . .

Invite Change

It is almost not fair to the other participants because I have been to three of their classes this year and they have been very supportive of my growth as a coach. I have received so much out of working with them that they have been worth every dollar that I have spent with them. They are a group of amazing women and the classmates I have met have been outstanding. The entire experience I have had with them has been completely special. Congratulations to the 2009 Placebo of the Year award winner.

Since eight is my favorite number in the world, the eighth key is my favorite key. It allows all of the other keys to be even more joyful and happy. It is something that is so easy, yet something that a lot of people just do not do enough.

The 8th key to living a joy filled life of wonderful amazingness is celebration.

Celebrate!

Celebrate your life. Not only is it amazing that you are here on this earth, it is amazing that you are able to do the amount of amazing actions in your life. There are many victories in our lives. It is easy to see why we do not spend time celebrating our lives. Since we started living with people on this planet, they have spent their time showing us what we are doing wrong. They tell us all of the fun things we are not able to put in our mouths, the cars that can hit us, the strangers that can steal us, the answers we got wrong, the foods that we should not eat, the toys that we forgot to clean, the spots we missed, the bad words that we say and even what clothes we shouldn’t wear.

The people in your life were doing the best they could to help you succeed. Now that you are ready to be a deliberate creator in your life you can train yourself to see the victories in your life and the actions and accomplishments that bring you joy. Even with all of the negatives that were pointed out to us, we still have to learn how to celebrate the big things such as getting Christmas presents, graduation or getting an A on a test. It is time for you to celebrate anything that brings you joy. Do not just discount it as something that happens. Celebrate when you make it to work on time, get your work project done, clean your house, finish a quarter mile of your 3 mile walk/jog, eat only half of piece of cake, meditate for 10 minutes, or that your car started even if it is a new car.

“When you celebrate the little things in life, you make life one big celebration.”
-Brett Dupree

The beauty is the more you celebrate the more you will have to celebrate. You will be training yourself to look at what you want in your life. As you focus on what you want in your life you will be drawn to more of what you want in your life. You will notice more things to celebrate and you will create more causes for celebration. This will create a huge snow ball effect of celebration. You will notice that there is more blank numbers in your life than there is numbers that are crossed out with a big red X, like when you got your school work back.

My Services

Hiring a coach has helped me celebrate my life more. In fact, some of my calls have been an hour celebration of what I am doing. Our calls are time each month dedicated to getting you where you want to go and celebrating of your life. Celebrate your life with me.

www.joyousexpansion.com

Homework of the Week

Celebrate at least one thing that you love in your life or awesome occurrence that happened at least four times every day this week. It can be at a set time or when you wake up, get to work, get home from work and then go to bed.

This blog is a rampage of appreciation about the wonderful people in my life. The way to read this blog is to think of your own life and how you appreciate how these people show up in your life. Enjoy.

The 7th key to a joyful life will be available next week.

Rampage of Appreciation of the People in My Life.

I appreciate the many wonderful people I have met through out my life. I love the people who have taken their time in their day to spend time with me. I enjoy the fact that I know so many fun people. I am thankful to all of the amazing people who have taught me so many things. From the people who I know in everyday life who teach me how to live by their actions and how I do not want to show up by their actions as well. I appreciate when I look at another human being and notice an amazing quality they have that I want in my life. Also when they show me a reflection of aspects of myself that I am not comfortable with. Showing a light on a part of myself that I was covering up so I can work on this piece of my life. Without people like this in my life I would never grow and expand into the person I am today. These people in showing what I want and what I do not want help bring in my reality the growth that I am feeling even at this moment.

I appreciate all of the people who have shown courage in their lives. Showing me what is possible and how strong the human spirit truly is. I am so thankful to all of the wonderful people I have attended seminars with. Their excitement they generate is very contagious. I appreciate all of the amazing people who I go to www.meetup.com groups with. Going to these meetups has been a very positive force in my life. Surrounding myself with positive deliberate creators just feels so good and raises my joy vibration.

I am sending love to all my teachers, from the ones that are in a book, to the ones who taught me in real life. To the ones in book, I appreciate the fact you take time out of your day to not only learn how to live a joyful life and other knowledge that has been helpful, you also write them down on paper for everyone else to share. I am thankful for all of the teachers I have met in person. Showing me your capacity to love through your art has shown me that I can increase my capacity to love. I would not be where I am right now if not for your loving guidance. I am thankful that I have attracted you all into my life.

I appreciate my loving friends and family. I love seeing you as you truly are even if you do not notice how wonderful you all are. You are all wonderful, beautiful, capable, powerful beings. I am so happy that I am able to share this wonderful gift of life with every one of you. I just have to hold back how much I want to say I love you when we are around. You have each enriched my life in your own way. It has been so much fun to know all of you. I am looking forward to many amazingly fun adventures together.

I am so thankful for you to read this blog. Taking time out of your day to read my thoughts is one of the greatest gifts you can give me. I love you for who you are and you are wonderful and beautiful just the way you are.

Homework of the Week

Write your own rampage of appreciation for the people in your life. Write one thing you appreciate about someone in your life in the comments

Last week I wrote part one of the illusion of being done based off of the quote, “Always Being and Always Becoming.”

The second quote is one of my favorite quotes of all time. I am constantly using at this point when I talk to myself.

“It is not that you must be free from fear. The moment you try to free yourself from fear, you create a resistance against fear. Resistance in any form doesn’t end fear. What is needed rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance is understanding fear; that means watch it; learn about it; come directly into contact with it.”

-J. Krishnamurti

Every time I think about areas where I am afraid I think the first line of that quote, “It is not that I must be free from fear.” Soon after, I look at what I can learn from this situation and what I can do right at that moment to feel the fear and do it anyway.

When listening to the enlightened teacher Adyashati’s CD “Life without Center,” I was able to expand on this idea. One of the audience members on “Life without Center” asked Adya the question, “When will the resistance end?” The answer Adyashanti gave the man expanded my thoughts on the idea of the quote. He said, “Never.”

By allowing this thought in, I realized I was waiting for resistance to be done in my life, before I choose positive actions. I was waiting until I was enlightened, had a certain skill, was a certain way, had the correct thinking or the right level of joy, lived in the perfect situation before I would feel, do, or have, something. An example of what I was waiting for was for things in my life to be easy. I have read so many books about how when I am in the flow then life is just simple and things just click. From this one passage I realized that I was waiting for the resistance of surrendering to who I really am and giving my gifts full out. Waiting for something to happen before I was living the way I wanted to live will just create a situation where I am waiting for something instead of living.. It is not that I must be free from fear, resistance, pain, sadness, resentment, anger, revenge, worry, or any other negative emotion. When I try to free myself, I create a resistance. When I created resistance, I moved my focus to the negative feeling that I resisted. When I focus on this negative feeling, I notice more areas of my life where the negative feeling exists. As I notice more areas of my life where these negative feelings exist, I gravitate towards them because they are my focuses. When I gravitating towards my focus , I am then experiencing more and more situations where I want to free myself from this fear. Thus, I am creating an endless cycle of noticing fears, trying to free myself from them, and then creating them for the rest of my life. All I did was waiting. I was living in the illusion that there will be a finish to the negative feelings in my life.

In many conversations I have had about negative emotions those I am talking with have a desire to be free from them. They never want to feel fear again. This is very popular in the spiritual and motivational circles that I attend. When people live to remove the negative emotions from their lives, they set themselves up for disappointment and create a fake Pollyanna attitude of positivity.

When a person has the illusion that they are done with their negative feelings, they have an excuse to punish themselves when those feelings return, . They can now think the thought, “I thought I was over this, what is wrong with me?” They do this as they have a fake smile on their face telling the world that nothing is wrong. The truth is there is nothing wrong with them. Thoughts are kept in the brain and emotions are remembered. Triggers will happen in the future. Not being free from the triggers in the brain is not important, it is having the tools and the knowledge of what to do when these life occurrences happen that will lead to a wonderful life. What is important is having the ability to notice them, learn about them, come into direct contact with them and then turn them into art. In his book, Living Ecstasy, Satyan Raja writes about the negative happenings in your life and calls them your kinks. When you have these kinks, using them is your biggest gift. Take what you desire or feel is missing from your life from these kinks and give them away to other people.

For example, due to choices of people and myself in my life, one of my kinks is a fear of abandonment. I have spent many years trying to eliminate my fear and escape from its prison . Knowing that I’ll never be done doing this is a sense of relief because now I don’t have to beat myself up over it. . I would think, “I should be done with this fear.”, “When will I be done with this fear?”, or “how much work do I have to do to finally be done with this fear?”

Giving up the illusion of being done with my fear of abandonment allows me to learn from it. I take the desires from that fear and give the desires that are created out of those fears to others, making it my art. The desire I have that no one feel that they need something outside of themselves to be happy and learning more ways to deepen the love I feel are ways that I have taken this fear and turned it into my art. This blog you are reading and my entire coaching practice is an example of me taking my fear of abandonment and turning them into something wonderful that helps many people.

Giving up the illusion of being done also means it is time to stop waiting. Stop waiting for something to happen to give your gift to the world. Stop waiting for something to happen for you to be happy. Stop waiting for something to happen for you to live your dream. It is time to stop. The resistance will not be over, the fear will not go away, other people will not change, the government won’t change, and the economy will never be good enough for you to do what you want to do. There is always a good excuse for mediocrity.

Stop waiting and do what you want to do right now. For the sake of the people around you and for the sake of the world, stop.

My services

Now is the time to stop waiting. Working together, we will find the areas in your life where you are waiting for something and get you to stop. You will reach your goals faster and live a much better life. We will also find the gifts that you have hiding from your kinks and find new ways to look at this wonderful world where we live.

Homework of the Week.

1. Find something in your life where you are waiting for something to happen before you begin. Find what you can do this week to begin and do it.
2. Think of something that happened in your life that you believe still bothers you and keeps you from where you want to go. Notice what you need to happen for you to be over this or what feeling you need to be over it. Think of someone who needs the same and give it to them.

The sixth key to living a joyful life is based on the previous keys. Moving from joy to joy, living your purpose and receiving abundance all leads to this key.

The sixth key to living a joyful life is giving up the illusion of being done.

Giving up the illusion of being done can be split up into two general ideas. Since both of ideas are a basis for the seventh key, I decided to break this blog into two parts. Each one idea can be summed up in a quote:

“Always being, always becoming.”

“Always being, always becoming,” is a zen saying I first heard when I went to a satsang given by Adyashanti. It is the Buddhist way of being. We are beings who are always living our lives the way we are now. We are beings who are also always becoming something different.

Giving up the illusion of being done is giving up the idea that you need reach your goal to feel finished or happy. This process brings us the joy in our lives. While you are moving from joy to joy, you realize that when you reach one of your goals, it is time to move to the next goal. There is always a new adventure to live. Abraham has an analogy about taking a vacation. Look at your itinerary for your vacation and notice that at the end of the vacation you will be at home, do you then think, “Well I am home now, so why go on vacation?”

The process is where the fun is to be had. Instead of thinking of your life as a collection of goals to accomplish, think of life as a practice. This way you will deal with every occurrence as an event that will allow you to grow as a person. Living life as a practice will not allow you to stagnate in any area, because you will always have a way to go deeper into practice with all parts of your life.

Real life examples of giving up the illusion of being done.

Relationships are areas in people’s lives where they hang onto the illusion of being done. Many sitcoms have jokes about people in relationships not having to tray. Common examples are when a woman finds a man they do not have to work out or when a man puts a ring on a woman’s finger they no longer have to court her. In both of these situations the person “has” the other person.

In real life, both the man and the woman who chose to live like this example will not be happy. Instead, if they realize that the courtship is never done, the woman still takes pride in looking good for her man and the man doesn’t stop courting his lovely lady. He takes pride in knowing he is still showing her she is appreciated and loved. Not only would these lovebirds continue their courtship, they would find new and deepening ways to expand their love for each other. The relationship they build will be a roller-coaster full of thrilling passion, instead of a carousel of comfort and ease.

Keeping the illusion of being done in your job will most likely get you fired. As technology and knowledge keeps on growing and changing, so must you evolve. If you do not keep learning, someone new who has will take over.

In goal setting having the illusion of being done can also be a huge trap. For example, I set a goal of being out of debt. Once I was out debt I was left with a feeling of, “Now what?” I didn’t have a plan of building savings after paying off my debt. Soon I built a new debt, so I started the goal again with a new more complete plan.

Losing weight is another good example where a person has an idea that there is a “done.” The average American loses weight and then tends to put it back on. They go on a diet plan and reach their goal weight. . When they believe they are done with the diet, they then go back to their old ways. Soon they find themselves noticing that not only did they gain their weight back; they also added some extra pounds. Having the illusion of being done while goal setting sets us up to regress once the goal is accomplished. There needs to be more in your goals, because there is always more in life.

Our health, relationships, financial situations, and vocations are all always being and always becoming.

My Services

Working with me you will not only set up goals, you will help create a mindset where you will always be working to grow. Together we will find the traps that you are setting for yourself and find ways to remove them from your life. You will have both goals and a big picture at the same time.

Homework of the week

Look at your life and notice an area where you think “when this happens I will be finally done with it.” Notice if you have a plan set up after this goal. Be open to creating a plan and become excited for what comes into your life next.