Experimental Phase

Apologies for the radio silence last week. As Fab Towers is plagued by technical difficulties, ie another dead laptop, we’re throwing caution to the wind and becoming even more techie by joining the flock of Twitterers.

As a bit of an online experiment, I Am Fabulous is going rather zen-like by becoming short-form for a while. You’ll find the updates here in on this page in the Twitter bar or you can follow on Twitter itself. There will be more mini-updates sharing things that inspire and delight, raising questions and sometimes just making you laugh, rather than offering a lengthier one-off piece every week.

Let’s see how it goes. Feel free to join in the debate, raise points of your own or demand a return to the old ways. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, mix it up yourself. Do something different, even if the way you’ve always done it still works for you. Who knows what you might discover?

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Heart Of The Matter

This week, folks, we’re dealing with the universal question of self-esteem and the way it manifests in relationship. I could just do a riff on that, but having received a really touching message asking for some inspiration, it reminds me that some questions apply to us all. You may not be experiencing exactly these circumstances, but somewhere, somehow there’s a good chance that your own self-worth isn’t entirely weatherproof. If we take a look at one person’s story, we’ll see our own reflected there too. Time for a Coach Fab moment ...

Dear Coach Fabulous

I’m really not lucky when it comes to affairs of the heart. I’ve had two failed relationships and it really pains me, because until now, I still have nightmares. I was traumatised by the bad experiences that I had and could not move on. My first relationship was a failure, the man I married left me because we couldn't have a child and his mother was affecting all of his family decisions. It was extremely painful and left me wondering if I really deserved it.

After him, I met the second man in my life. I loved him so much, accepted him for what he was and we had two children. I have to admit that I fell in love easily with a person I really didn’t know. I lived with him for a year and was able to see his worst and best attitudes. I gave him my best and helped him financially to sustain the growing needs of our children.

Suddenly, I felt that he was trying to control me, trying to take away all of my money which was hard-earned and he was becoming jealous of my children. I felt his coldness, felt that he didn't care. He came home late and only talked about me being always wrong, criticizing my every move.
I almost lost my self-esteem entirely, and I felt extremely humiliated, even by his family. What’s worse is that I've heard from his sister that he didn’t love me and he informed them that I couldn't give him the things that he wanted. Unfortunately, those things he wanted were just material things that would make him happy and make him stay with me. I couldn't help but cry because I know that it's my fault that I fell in love so easily. Most of the time, I easily trust others.

I'm living as a solo parent now, with my mom who has been constantly helping me a lot, and somehow I feel I’ve lost the ‘spark’. I feel the stiffness of my heart and it shows in my eyes. I’ve been lonely for the longest time. Lonely not because I don’t have a partner in life, but because even now, I'm not completely healed from the bruises of my past relationships. He just left me, broken, no sorry, no apology, no nothing.

I need you to shed some light for me - please help me move on and forgive. I love my children more than my life and I hope that I will be able to give them love at all times even though their father left us and doesn’t even think of giving financial support.

Broken

Dear Broken

First of all, let’s clear up some terminology. You might be heart-broken, but you’re not broken. Not by a long shot. You’re a mother trying her very best to hold it together and provide for your children and even after all you’ve been through, you’re looking to find a way to forgive. That’s nowhere near broken in my book.

What shouts loudest to me from your letter is the heavy dose of blame you’ve laid upon yourself for the circumstances you’ve experienced. It’s not helping. Yes, it’s absolutely about taking responsibility for the part you’ve played in how you got to this point, but responsibility recognises that you did the best you knew how at the time and now seeks to find a way to learn from the experience. If you stay in blame (of yourself, the other person or fate), nothing is going to heal anytime soon.

It’s a really important step that you’ve chosen to ask for an outside viewpoint, because you know you don’t want to keep doing the same thing and getting the same results, or take a ‘why me?’ victim stance. It means that while you feel your heart is hardening, there’s a part of it that’s still open to possibility. Take great pride in the fact that your experiences have not made you bitter. You’ve struggled with them and they’ve challenged your trust, but you’re still willing to try to stay open-hearted.

Without blame, let’s look at the fundamental issues here. First of all, no relationship is a failure. We don’t always know why we get together with people. Sometimes they bring us joy, sometimes we learn tough lessons in relationship and not all of them are meant to last. The relationship you thought was the worst might well have been the one that taught you the most, even if it simply taught you that you’d never put up with that again.

There is a paradox going on here that we all fall prey to – that of like meeting like, but in a perverse way. We think that if we give all the time, that will be rewarded or met by a partner who is equally giving. Wrong. That kind of giving – which is in essence low self-worth manifesting as a way of ‘earning’ love – is actually energetically matched by someone who holds you in similar low esteem and is more interested in taking than giving.

There’s a comedy skit on YouTube called BadMatch.com that perfectly illustrates this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k2q1LQBwhg). The woman says to camera “I don’t think I’m worth very much” and her boyfriend chips in “She’s not”. That’s exactly the dynamic we’re talking about – the people in your life will reflect the deepest feelings you hold about yourself. At heart, whether you know it consciously or not, a part of you does not think you deserve any better. This is the part we are going to love into submission.

We all have that issue, to a greater or lesser degree. Don’t think that this is something you’re doing that’s different to or worse than anyone else. You think you fall in love too easily, but I suspect that your battered heart just wants to rest somewhere and feel loved, because there’s precious little love going on inside for yourself. Not having the deadbeat dad around to criticise you and make you feel even worse about yourself is a gift. Use this time to heal and don’t try to escape into another relationship too soon. I know you’re lonely, things are tough and you could really do with some comfort, but while you’re feeling so bad about yourself you’re unlikely to draw someone into your life who would treat you well and you certainly don’t want more of what you’ve already had.

The recipe to heal and ultimately to forgive, is to really get that it’s not about blame but about realisation. Think of this as relationship 101 – we are really only ever in relationship with our deepest opinion of ourselves. On a spiritual level, our partners hold up a mirror for us in which our own self-love is reflected. If we want better relationships, we need to hold ourselves in better esteem so that others will too. When we really get that our partner was matching some part of us where we feel unlovable, undesirable or unworthy, then we can get on with the business of healing and eventually forgiving. Don’t rush to forgiveness until you really feel it. That’s another detour where you can mask pain by pretending to have healed before you’ve actually let go of the hurt – sooner or later it will burst open again and it won’t be pretty. Clean the wound thoroughly before you put a band-aid on it. Be honest with yourself and don’t try to be ‘good’ or forgiving when you don’t feel like it.

What’s enormously hopeful here is that you have it in your power to make very different choices for yourself. Your spark has gone because your love for yourself has gone. All you’re seeing is failure and you’re blaming yourself for it. To move on from this, look at what’s gone before with clear vision. See the ways you abandoned yourself, kept on trying to please someone who treated you badly and then blamed yourself for not receiving love in return. Yes, you chose someone who didn’t know how to love, but we’ve all done that. The real issue is that you don’t know how to love yourself. Sacrifice is not love. There’s a reason why they tell parents to put on their own oxygen masks first in the event of a plane crash – you’re no good to anyone unless you take care of yourself.

How do you start loving yourself? That’s probably one of the toughest questions on this earth, but the answer comes in a million little ways. Self-worth is built stone-by-stone, moment by moment, in the way you speak to yourself, in the way you treat yourself, in the choices you make that help you to feel good about yourself. Here are some basic building blocks to be getting on with:

• Every time you look in the mirror, find something to like about yourself. Cut the criticism dead. Just stop doing it. If it happens, make yourself find something to like. It’s just a bad habit you need to break. Just cutting out the self-attack will take the heat off. If someone else criticises you, don’t collude with them by believing it. For the most part people’s criticism says more about them and their fears than it does about you.
  
• Watch how you abandon yourself and say ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no’. Make a new habit of not doing things to please others when you don’t really want to do them. This is a big one. No excuses – just say no. Don’t be afraid to say ‘no’ to your children either – their self-esteem comes partly from how you model your own self-worth. Show them you value yourself so they will learn to do the same for themselves.

• Start doing things you love, that make you feel really yourself. They don’t have to be expensive, but they do have to be fun.
  
• Hang out with people who like you and show you that. Get your close friends to tell you what they love about you. Maybe you have some great qualities you don’t even realise you have.
  
• Give yourself treats. Make them small and make them often. Make them treats of time, of luxury, of joy, of creativity – whatever it is that you need and value most. Each little gift to yourself sends a message to your deepest self that you really value it and honour it.
  
• Get a mantra that you can roll out whenever you’re feeling a little flat. You already know the ‘I Am Fabulous’ one and you can make up one of your own. Even something as simple as ‘I love and value myself’ or ‘I am loving, lovable and loved’ will work. You can up the ante on a spiritual level by saying ‘I am beloved of God and beloved on this earth’ or go for a bit of a spark with ‘I’m a hot, sexy, lovable babe’. If you want to really go for broke, this one can have you turning heads in the street if you work it with focus and attention: ‘I am a goddess – a radiant, creative, magnetic being of divine beauty, divine love and divine power’. Get creative and work up one that suits you. Whenever self-doubt creeps in, roll out one of these.
  
• Start a self-worth journal. Write up all the good stuff you’ve done, the things you like about yourself, the compliments you’ve received, what you really know to be true about yourself and return to it often when you’re not feeling at your best. Do the same with the things you’re grateful for – the more you focus on what’s good about you and your life, the more the spark will return.
  
• When you’ve done the mental makeover, get a physical one. Re-jig your wardrobe, try a new hairstyle, commit to exercise, buy some new make-up – do whatever it takes to start feeling good about yourself and your appearance. Swap clothes with friends if money’s tight. We all have something lurking in the back of the wardrobe that would look a hell of a lot better on someone else.
  
• Stay in your body and in the present moment. Your pain is in the past and you don’t want to live there. Exercise, massage, sitting in the sun, being in nature – all these things make us focus on how we feel in the here and now. Sensory and sensual things ground us and keep us out of head-spin. Resist the temptation to awful-ise, by projecting past pain into the future. Stay present and keep your focus on positive things.

The ways to love yourself are myriad and every single one of them is a choice – a choice to believe you’re worth taking care of, worth loving, worth giving time to, worth treating well. The more you make those kinds of choices, the more you build a kind of inner radiance that casts off those who don’t recognise your worth and draws to you those who do. You become lit from within and that’s totally irresistible.

Don't stay lonely waiting for Prince Charming to rescue you – get very clear that you are absolutely adorable and there will be no shortage of mirrors in the outside world keen to reflect that back to you. That’s not a fairy tale, it’s how attraction works. When you can truly see your own beauty, others cannot see anything else.

Coach Fabulous

So, Fabulistas, this week take a close look at your own current experience. If you’re having a tough time in a particular area of your life, take this opportunity to examine your beliefs about yourself. Could the people involved be reflecting back some unconscious belief you hold? What could this be showing you about your own deepest beliefs about yourself? Let this be the week you commit to giving yourself the love you deserve.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

When The Spirit Moves You

Whenever things turn tough in my life, the only way I can get through it with any semblance of grace is to go within and re-connect more deeply with spiritual practice. Yeah, I love a good party and I’m shameless when it comes to shopping, but bottom line I feel most myself when I’m connected to something greater than myself. Holy paradox, Batman! It’s just the way it is – too much worldly focus and somehow we become less ourselves. By returning to an inner connection we come to know who we really are at heart.

And nothing entertains me more than getting a dose of sage spiritual advice – apart, that is, from a new episode of The Mentalist, featuring the world-class hottie, Mr Simon Baker – but I digress ... the point is that I found a fine collection of wisdom on matters of the spirit lurking about in an Oprah newsletter a while back and it seems timely to write about it today.

Most of all, I love the common thread that runs through these pieces of advice that transcends religion or background. Each of the spiritual leaders is speaking from his or her own point of reference, but the emphasis on stillness, awareness and compassion is shared by all of them.

Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth – the book much-touted by Oprah herself – says “To be spiritual is to be in touch, connected with that dimension of depth in yourself ... increasingly you become rooted in the aliveness and the fullness of the present moment. That’s to lead a spiritual life.”

Marianne Williamson, celebrated author of A Return To Love, talks about compassion, saying “The most important thing is that we learn how to forgive each other and that we learn how to love each other. How to live in the spirit of blessing and not blame.” She adds, “The spiritual path doesn’t always mean an easier path, but it means a choice – a choice that we’re making to try our best and be as loving as we can be.”

From a Jewish perspective, Rabbi Irwin Kula notes “You have to practise becoming alert, becoming more conscious, becoming aware. And you have to practise becoming kinder, more compassionate and more caring.” He encapsulates those principles beautifully by adding “You have to develop your head, your heart and your hands.”

The advice of the Christian minister, Rev Ed Bacon, is to use the world to bring you back to the stillness within. He prescribes, “To be in nature, to connect with the arts and to connect with ritual. It is in moments of serenity, stillness, that we experience something much larger, transcendent, more cosmic than we are.”

The final blast of inspiration comes from that ace spiritual dude, Rev Michael Beckwith. For him, spirituality is all about soul. He says, “When one really begins to feel into the spiritual dimension of their beings, they bump into love. They bump into beauty. They bump into compassion.” When that happens, and you become grateful, then, he adds, “You see potential. You see possibilities. Then you become an open vehicle for more inspiration, more wisdom, more guidance coming from the spiritual part of your being.”

I love that thought – bumping into love, bumping into beauty, bumping into compassion – and the idea of becoming an open vehicle for inspiration. I’m going to throw in an added bonus here of a great phrase I picked up from Sandra Anne Taylor’s show on Hay House Radio the other day. She suggests you use this to summon up any quality that you feel is lacking in your life right now or that feels like to much of a leap for you to believe is possible for you. Add anything you like to the end of this mantra: “I open to my spirit’s capacity for ....”. Go for it and call in love, joy, peace, stillness, serenity, abundance, confidence – whatever you need.

This week, it’s a no-brainer. Try getting quiet and bumping into love. Or dial it up with the new ‘I open to my spirit’s capacity’ mantra. Give it a whirl and you could get fabulous results. What are you waiting for?

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Can't Stand The Heat?

Some characters loom large in the public imagination for reasons we cannot always explain. Just being a bad boy surely isn’t enough to hold our attention over time, so it was fascinating to take a closer look last night at the persona presented by the culinary world’s enfant terrible, Marco Pierre White, currently giving his best Don Corleone impression in the latest series of Hell’s Kitchen.

For those of you who aren’t obsessed with foodie reality shows, Marco has taken over the reins of the programme from his one-time protégé, Gordon Ramsay, injecting it with new vigour and his own particularly curious taste in PLO-style headgear. Whereas at one point the student had become the master, now the master is back with a vengeance, striding the set like a culinary colossus – albeit a notably quirky one. When leading his team of celebrity rookies in the kitchen, Marco’s speech takes on a strange and heavily-laboured dramatic intonation, as he attempts to imbue himself with gravitas via the most extraordinarily ponderous pauses at the oddest of moments. It’s like he’s attempting to read autocue while trying not to pass out, and comes off as just plain weird, rather than the threatening mafia don impression we have to assume he had in mind. Coupled with the Yasser Arafat style of head-scarf he sports, it’s so not a good look.

However, to give him credit, the man is obviously one hell of a teacher in the kitchen. He’s managed to whip a motley crew of celebs with no discernible culinary skills into a cohesive team capable of preparing restaurant-quality meals for sizeable crowds in under a week. It’s an amazing job he’s done. Having seen previous series at this early stage, my hopes were not high for what would be on the menu last night or even that we would have been served at all. Quite frankly, I’d contemplated eating before I arrived and, time permitting, would probably have done just that. So it was an extraordinarily pleasant surprise to sit down to an amazing foie gras, followed by perfectly well-cooked veal. Best of all, though, was the theatre unfolding at the pass, liberally sprinkled with classic MPW expletives, incessant chivvying and general berating of his raw recruits.

Some handled Marco better than others. My money’s on Ms Dynamite to win. She’s cool-headed, knows how to stand her ground and seems a genuinely lovely person to boot. It takes guts to give it to MPW straight and she’s stood up for herself (and the team) calmly and assertively, stepping forward when others have stayed silent in self-preservation. It’ll be a travesty if she doesn’t pick up the prize at the end.

So what have I gleaned from the experience, apart from a fun night celeb-spotting and the chance to get up close (but not quite personal) with the rock star of the restaurant world? Simply put, attitude is everything. I watched a good friend of mine go up to the pass to talk to Marco and saw him try out his best intimidating act on her, which didn’t wash at all. It was very clear in the moment that his was an act, a bit of theatre, but one that he does exceedingly well. She wasn’t phased at all, so it was rather like watching the irresistible force meet the immovable object. Not a clash, but a moment of respect between two forces of nature. Now that was definitely worth the price of admission.

Later on we saw the more relaxed, charming off-camera Marco and that was a whole other person – with a whole other (natural) way of speaking. Of course the on-camera and off-camera split personality is a function of show-business, but it reminds us just how we create personas for the various functions in our own lives – work, home, friends and family. We are rarely the same person in every aspect of our lives. Sometimes this is a necessity for professional reasons, but largely it’s because we become adaptive to our environments, creating personas that we believe will be helpful in keeping us safe or advancing our desires in the world. Sometimes these personas help us on to great success and sometimes they trap us into inauthentic relationships and experiences. Even the ones that have helped in the past can become outmoded and limit our ability to express ourselves authentically as we grow and change.

This week, folks, I’d suggest you take a look at the theatre going on around you. What roles do you play? Do they serve you or do you feel restricted by them? Are you falling for the myth of a persona someone else is projecting? Are you allowing yourself to be intimidated by someone or are you the intimidator? If you step back and look carefully, are you experiencing people as they are or how they would like you to see them? How do you think the people around you are experiencing your persona? Are you aware of how differently you behave in different circumstances or around different people? Which of the roles you play feels more authentically you? Can you feel relaxed simply being yourself, rather than playing to the crowd? What would it take to make that happen?

Put your outmoded personas through a baptism of fire and burn off anything that’s not authentically you. This week light a bonfire of all the vanities that hold you back. We all love a good show, but never at the expense of sacrificing who you truly are.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Venus Retrograde

Due to a rather busy schedule and a slightly over-enthusiastic appreciation of Stoli and cranberry all-too-recently, this week’s I Am Fabulous will be necessarily brief. To wit, I am shamelessly plagiarising the work of Robert Ohotto, the rather fabulous (and rather hot) intuitive astrologer. Well, I say plagiarising, but quite frankly I’m just going to pass on some sage insights from his newsletter, duly credited. Can’t be too naughty, even when it’s late and I’m on deadline …

For those not up with the astro-lingo, Venus retrograde is the period when the planet that symbolises self-worth, money, relationships and values appears to move backwards in the sky. It’s not actually happening that way – it just looks like it from our viewpoint on earth. When that happens, symbolically we experience what the planet represents through a kind of filter where things seem to be less clear in the outer world and we become more reflective about those issues. It’s a collective experience where we all get a chance to have a re-think and re-focus about who we are and what we value.

Ohotto sets out what’s required of us during this period, saying that this time “demands that you come to know what is personally right and wrong for you as you continue to mature into your authenticity and how that is measured against the values that society and culture feeds you daily. Thus, this retrograde period brings with it a time during which we all must reassess where in our lives our values are in need of refreshing. I think it's important to recognize the ways we are continually told by our media and culture that we should continue to find value in the same thing for the whole of our lives. For example, we are told to keep valuing our youth and fight aging; keep valuing your wedding vows, though they were taken by an older version of yourself that has grown beyond them; keep valuing the stability of your job though it has become claustrophobic; or keep valuing your purpose as equating your job though you just lost yours.”

He adds, “Each Venus retrograde asks us to take forty days and deeply look at our values and their relevance to our soul's current needs in a certain area of our life. And with Venus currently retrograding back in Aries, the discord we may be feeling signifies the amount of distance that has formed between our ego and the fundamental core passions, values, and higher creative inspirations of our soul. It's time to risk for new beginnings and take courage.”

The good news is that this cycle started in early March and will be over by the end of this week, so if you feel like your self-worth has taken a beating during this period you can relax because the finishing-line is in your sights. What would be a total waste, however, is if you experienced all the pain without finding the gift hidden in the dark. So here are a few questions that Ohotto suggests you take the time to reflect upon to gain insight on the issues this period was meant to highlight.

Do your relationships allow you to keep your own individuality to participate in interdependent dynamics of loving yourself and others?

What affirms your life and gives you a sense of personal value, fulfillment, beauty, and pleasure? What do you find attractive? What turns you on? Are these things being challenged for review?

What kind of experiences do you tend to attract in love relationships? How do you like to be affirmed in relationships? What is your ideal mate like? What archetype would that be defined as and do you play the opposite role in your relationship myths (Like the Knight and the Damsel?)

What do you value most in friendships? Are you finding yourself competitive and jealous of others that seem to possess what you feel you lack or would like to have? How do you manifest that urge? Have you been scapegoating others with your issues or have others been doing the same to you?

How do you respond to being ignored? Are you currently discovering that you need a lot of external attention to validate your own worth?

Are the choices you make in life in alignment with your values? Or do they betray what you say you value and reveal something else?

What do you consider to be your worth? What will you sell yourself for? What can buy you? What defines your honor code?

Before Venus starts heading direct again on Friday (which, interestingly enough, is traditionally known as her very own day of the week), make sure you take a few moments to reflect on your experiences with others over the past six weeks and how you’ve dealt with that in terms of your own self-worth. Those experiences – for good or for ill – should also have shown up what’s important to you and how much your life is in alignment with those values. Where it’s out of kilter, get on it – make those changes you know you need to do. Mythologically speaking, Venus is one hot babe, with a pretty clear understanding of her own beauty and worth. A rather fabulous approach worthy of emulation, I’d have thought.

For a little extra inspiration, here’s a translation of the Hafiz poem, Venus Just Asked Me, by Daniel Ladinsky …

Perhaps
For just one minute out of the day
It may be of value to torture yourself
With thoughts like,
"I should be doing
A hell of a lot more with my life than I am
Cause I'm so damn talented."
But remember,
For just one minute out of the day.
With all the rest of your time,
It would be best
To try
Looking upon your self more as God does.
For He knows
Your true royal nature.
God is never confused
And can see Only Himself in you.
My dear,
Venus just leaned down and asked me
To tell you a secret, to confess
She's just a mirror who has been stealing
Your light and music for centuries.
She knows as does Hafiz,
You are the sole heir to
The King.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Change Begins Within

This weekend Radio City Music Hall hosted a most unusual benefit concert, staged by the David Lynch Foundation, with headliners Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Moby, Sheryl Crow and Ben Harper. The funds raised will support the DLF’s aim of teaching one million underprivileged children how to meditate. As the director David Lynch himself says “The more you meditate, the better life gets … it’s really the most fantastic experience to meditate, then out of meditation in whatever you’re doing – that just gets better, more ideas flow. Negativity inhibits creativity – it squeezes the hose, the big conduit of ideas. So when negativity lifts, we expand consciousness, negativity starts going away. All these things that are restricting us become less – you work in freedom with all these positive qualities growing.” He wants to make the Transcendental Meditation – made famous when the Beatles met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 60s - that has made such an impact on his life “available to any student anywhere in the world who wants it”, so they can begin the process of change within themselves. George Harrison – also a lifelong meditator –who staged the first major musician’s benefit, Concert for Bangladesh, in the 70s would be mightily proud of this one.

Another celeb doing their bit for a greater sense of self-awareness was JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, who gave the Harvard Commencement address last summer. With easy humour and a total lack of pretension, she reminded the privileged Harvard graduates of the fringe benefits of failure. Her rags-to-riches story of impoverished single mother on welfare becoming a multi-millionaire is well-known. Less well-known is the value she places on the difficult times and how much she credits them with shaping who she later became.

She recounted “I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairytale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality. So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to redirect all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter I whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

Telling the students that some failure in life is inevitable – unless they live so cautiously as to not make it worth living at all – Rowling added “Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected. I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies. The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.”

At a time when we have all been challenged by failure and loss, it’s a timely reminder that something stronger and more beautiful grows within when outer circumstances are challenging. As the French philosopher, Albert Camus, said “In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer”. You can only know the terrible beauty of those words when you have experienced that winter personally.

In our collective winter, it helps to see a purpose behind what we’re experiencing. Leaders in new thought, Marianne Williamson and Deepak Chopra, are about to run a workshop on weathering tough times, entitled ‘The Soul of Success’. As they describe it, “The economic recession offers us a unique opportunity to understand the difference between money and wealth. Money is a symbol that expresses how we value ourselves and others and also represents society’s values at a particular time and place in history. Wealth, on the other hand, is a state of consciousness that represents generosity of spirit that translates into material abundance.”

So, with a stellar line-up of musicians telling us change comes from within, JK Rowling reminding us that the gift of failure is clarity and the Williamson-Chopra event stressing wealth as a generosity of spirit, what else can we do this week but go within and ask ourselves what we really value? How wealthy are we in what we already have? If failure or loss is stripping away the inessential, what needs to loom large in your life? How can you find the gold in the dark, the gifts in the loss, the peace that arises from having survived the winter? We’re not going through this to come out the other end exactly the same. We’re collectively going through a value-shift, so what is it that you may have thought important that you now need to release? What needs to take its place? Redefine your own experience of wealth this week. Honour what is truly fabulous.

Just as I finished writing this, I opened today’s Note From the Universe, from www.tut.com, which is spookily on-message …

These are the times when hopes are dashed and chaos abounds, that golden opportunities, prized ideas, and new friends emerge into the view of all, but are only seen by the few who look.

Let's go crazy,
The Universe

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Play It Forward

You got the science bit on Tikkun Olam, ‘repairing the world’, last week and now it’s time for the fun part – playing it forward. Random acts of kindness have been around for a while now, immortalised in celluloid in the film Pay It Forward, but now entrepreneurs are finding new ways to formalise the process and make it easier to join with others for the full internet-savvy virtual experience.

In Canada, there’s a new site in beta called http://www.akoha.com/, where you can buy a set of cards with missions on them, like ‘buy someone a cup of coffee’ or ‘donate an hour of your time’ or ‘give someone a book’ and then start handing out those missions to your friends. As the mission is completed, you and your friends get karma points and the cards stay in play, as the recipients are encouraged to play it forward to others. As they do, they can blog about how they’ve done it, so you can see the entire history of a single card and who it’s affected on the Akoha site. It’s a genius idea that’s still in its early stages of development, but it concretises a move towards greater compassion for others, particularly at a time when we all realise we’re in the same boat.

On this side of the pond, Danny Wallace started http://www.join-me.co.uk/ to create a karma army some five years ago, with the intention of creating a network of people to give random acts of kindness. Now a worldwide phenomenon with thousands of members, it promotes where members are encouraged to do good deeds on Fridays – as well as any other day of the week.

ARK clothing is another socialpreneur enterprise, set up by an 18-year old Irish guy who got the idea to create clothing with acts of random kindness (hence ARK) written in to them. Beyond the small acts which wearers are asked to perform each time they use the clothing, ARK also encourages larger acts of kindness in communities and will consider supporting them financially too through a profit-related fund.

This week, become part of this new groundswell of compassion and do something spontaneous and kind. Here are the fabulous rules:

· Do something nice for yourself. It doesn’t happen that often.
· Surprise someone you love with something that doesn’t cost money – time, kisses and recycling gifts are all permitted.
· Shock someone you don’t know at all with a small act of thoughtfulness – pass on a ticket you can’t use, share some food at lunchtime, buy a coffee for someone sitting on their own, chat with someone who looks like they could use a little support.

Be creative. Be kind. Play it forward.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column archive by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com/. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. The I Am Fabulous archives can now be found at http://fabcentral.blogspot.com/. All material ©2009 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.