A Change Is Gonna Come

By the time you read this, the American presidential inauguration will probably have taken place for a candidate who rode in on slogans of change. My guess is that he probably hadn’t imagined quite how much change we’d all be experiencing by this time – and not all of it feeling too good. But then again, unexpected change is rarely experienced as a joyful event. As creatures of habit, we don’t like it when the walls shake around us and we’re forced to open up to a new way of being. We try desperately to hang on – even to things that aren’t working for us – just to avoid change. Yet, as we grow and change within ourselves, we become totally incompatible with the structures – and often the people – with which we’ve surrounded ourselves.

While we’re feeling the impact of the collapse of so many structures in our collective lives, we’re bound to be experiencing similar breakdowns in our private lives, where relationships, friendships and work environments that no longer bring us joy are beginning to feel totally untenable. Navigating these times is going to take a little faith and a lot of intuition, as we work through our own individual renegotiation of our assets and liabilities, to balance the books on our personal lives.

There’s a sweet illustration of this in a book a friend lent me on the weekend, Petite Anglaise, by an English girl whose blog about her life in Paris became a cause celebre when she lost her job over it (and subsequently won the case). More interestingly, the book covers the impact on her personal life as her social life expanded when the blog became successful, ultimately taking its toll on her relationship. The subtitle tells it all: In Paris, In Love, In Trouble.

Having pursued her childhood dream to live in Paris, had a child – Tadpole – with her French partner, Mr Frog, her life had settled into the deadening routine of metro, boulot, dodo or tube, work, sleep that we all know so well. Her relationship with Mr Frog was as dead as that routine, but still somehow functioning. Then, through her blog, she struck up a conversation with one of her readers, who lit a spark of passion in her otherwise flat-lined life. That’s where the change (otherwise known as trouble) begins. The ensuing story is a real rollercoaster that highlights just how – even when we’re not willing to accept it – change can spread through our lives like wildfire. And just like fire, when it’s done with destruction, there’s an opportunity for new life to arise again.

That’s the bit we usually forget when faced with change. We focus on what we are about to lose, rather than what can rise up in its place – and that it could be even better than what we’re currently holding on to for dear life.
Problem is, none of us are overly keen on a baptism of fire, yet that does seem to be the way life likes to throw change at us. Or, more accurately, that’s how life has to throw change at us when we refuse to read the signposts along the way.

Of course I say this as a card-carrying, world-class, Olympic-standard avoider of change, utterly word-blind when it comes to reading the signs in my own life – although I am getting a little better at that. Let me illustrate.

Let’s see, it took being incapacitated by chronic fatigue so badly that I didn’t even get out of bed for six months (or recover for several years) for me to grasp the concept that the work I was doing (and the workaholic way in which I was doing it) was completely incompatible with who I was at heart, and that it was eating away at my immune system on a daily basis.

Ah yes, and then there’s a relationship that went on for six years when it was probably only good for about six months. We were fabulous friends, but in all honesty, that’s what we should have stayed. Did I leave in the early days when I realised it probably wasn’t going to go the distance? Nah, held on to the bitter end, as it all crumbled slowly and painfully around me.

So, those are some of my qualifications for the How Not To Do It club and there’s plenty more where that came from. Curiously enough, those kinds of experiences are precisely the ones that have given me the greatest growth and wisdom – even if most of it came after the fact. Don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather listen to someone who’d been through the mill, rather than just had a theory about it. Anyway, here we all are, going through the mill together in times of enormous change and my hard-won best advice is pay attention and act early.

This week, really take a look at the structures and patterns in your life and see just how well they’re working for you. If something’s feels stale and lifeless, investigate whether it’s DOA or capable of resuscitation. If there are no signs of life, start looking elsewhere. If you hang on to a dead thing, sooner or later it’s going to stink.

If something’s not working for you, but you can see a better way to handle it, speak up. This is no time to stifle your feelings or your opinions. Maybe the other person or the organisation could do with a new viewpoint. We’re all in this together and it’s a time to look forward, not get tied up in the constraints of the past. You can’t follow your intuition if you’re suppressing what it’s bringing up, so pay real attention to your all your feelings and those uncanny inklings that foretell the winds of change. It feels a whole lot better to be riding the wave than get dumped by it.

If you’ve outgrown something, have the courage to face it head on. Avoidance is not a helpful strategy. Having been the queen of that particular tactic, you have first-hand evidence that it’s not the way to go – and that it makes for a rocky ride. Get with the programme sooner rather than later, as the wisdom gained from taking the long way round does rather tend to come at a hefty price.

Be fabulous – bite the bullet and face things exactly as they are. When you do that, your intuition will kick in and help you find the path that really is right for you. Clarity is your security. When you know what you’re dealing with, you can handle it.

The Art Of Full Engagement

Tough times necessitate creativity, so on some level perhaps the universe is stimulating us all to find more creative ways of living our lives – experiencing them in our own individual ways, as only we can. With that gauntlet thrown down, we need to explore new ideas that open up greater possibilities for us that might not necessarily involve the old paradigm of time and money. Jim Loehr, in his book The Power of Full Engagement, encourages us to think of our lives in terms of energy, saying “Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance”.

Loehr points out that, while it may seem obvious, we seldom take into account the impact of energy at work and in our personal lives. He adds “Without the right quantity, quality, focus and force of energy, we are compromised in every activity we undertake. Every one of our thoughts, emotions and behaviours has an energy consequence, for better or for worse. The ultimate measure of our lives is not how much time we spend on the planet, but rather how much energy we invest in the time that we have.”

Before you moan that life seems to conspire to drain your energy, Loehr has that point covered too, saying “There are undeniably bad bosses, toxic work environments, difficult relationships and real life crises. Nonetheless, we have far more control over our energy than we ordinarily realise. The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. It is our most precious resource. The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become. The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be.”

Loehr asks “If you could wake up tomorrow with significantly more positive, focused energy to invest at work and with your family, how significantly would that change your life for the better? As a leader and a manager how valuable would it be to bring more positive energy and passion to the workplace? If those you lead could call on more positive energy, how would it affect the quality of service they deliver to clients and customers?”

Defining energetic full engagement, he notes “To be fully engaged, we must be physically energised, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest. Full engagement begins with feeling eager to get to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening and capable of setting clear boundaries between the two. It means being able to immerse yourself in the mission you are on, whether that is grappling with a creative challenge at work, managing a group of people on a project, spending time with loved ones or simply having fun. Full engagement implies a fundamental shift in the way we live our lives.”

OK, so it’s not going to be as easy as it first looked. Full engagement is going to demand a commitment to playing full tilt at whatever you’re doing, not just going through the motions. It’s going to ask that you set the boundaries that allow you to say ‘no’ to what drains you and to say a whole-hearted ‘yes’ to the things that energise you. It’s going to require that you stand up for your life.

If creativity feels like it’s failing you right now and you don’t even know where to start, begin by looking at examples of lives you admire and at people you know who show up fully, whatever they’re engaged in. Creativity isn’t always about making something entirely new, but in combining existing things in new ways. Maybe you already have the building blocks of the life you want, but you haven’t quite got them in the right order yet.

The artist Michael de Meng – who makes extraordinary post-modern sacred shrines from the mundane items that make up our daily lives – says “In my view, creativity is rampant thievery mixed with reinterpretation … I see the act [of creativity] as being like a martini shaker, in which you add all those ingredients that you like or admire. Three parts Picasso, two parts Joseph Cornell, seven parts Mexican folk art, a splash of abstract expressionism and garnish with a twist of Dadaism.”

This week, what’s going into your cocktail shaker? What would it take for you to show up fully-charged in every area of your life? How can you keep your energy high in mind, body, heart and soul? Who has a life you’d want? Who has a way of being you’d like to emulate? What’s the purpose beyond your own immediate self-interest that you could get juiced-up about? Come on, it’s going to be a big year. It’s time to bring you’re A-game – do you know what that looks like? Even more importantly, do you know how to sustain it?

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.

Pearls Before Breakfast

Having taken the decision that this year’s theme for me would be joy, I’ve been swotting up on all things pleasurable. In a new book entitled Sex, Drugs & Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure, Paul Martin has a fine old romp through the history of pleasure and the science behind it, coming up with some useful tips for creating a more joyful life.

As pleasure-seeking creatures, we will naturally spend our lives in the pursuit of pleasure, although paradoxically that may not bring us happiness. As Martin writes “Put at its simplest, pleasure is the biological currency which evolved to guide our everyday behaviour. Pleasure and its dark counterpart, pain, are there to encourage us to do ‘the right things’. Pleasure entices us to behave in ways that are likely to be biologically beneficial, while pain discourages us from doing ourselves harm. To some degree, therefore, we are hard-wired to be hedonists, devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure.”

The fly in the ointment of the pleasure-seeking equation is, according to Martin, that “For pleasure to do its job as a motivational common currency, it must be short-lived … we habituate quite rapidly to pleasurable sensations, no matter how earthshaking they may be at the time, forcing the determined hedonist to keep increasing the dosage or to seek new thrills. Socrates likened pleasure-seekers to the damned in hell, who are condemned forever to keep trying to fill leaky jars. Psychologists today prefer to call the phenomenon ‘the hedonic treadmill’. And what keeps the treadmill turning? Desire – the force which compels us to keep wanting new things, new experiences, no matter how wonderful our present pleasures may be.”

Essentially, no matter how much you love getting or doing something, it’s going to get old pretty quickly. Martin notes “Solid research evidence shows that people who are highly motivated to acquire money, material goods, social status or celebrity are, on average, unhappier and have poorer mental health than those whose priorities are more balanced.”

The good news comes in understanding that while the intense pleasure of reaching a big goal will ultimately always fade – leaving space for desire to arise anew – we’d enjoy our lives more on a day-to-day basis if we increased the frequency of our smaller pleasures. It’s the little indulgences that are the bread and butter of a happy life, not just the big achievements. That’s not to say that you don’t keep chasing your dreams, but that you don’t forget to enjoy your life as it is now.

As Martin puts it, “Pleasure-seekers who want lasting happiness should therefore concentrate on finding more frequent opportunities for less overwhelming sensations. This means pursuing more of the pleasures in life that many of us take for granted.” He says those pleasures should be “readily available, repeatable at frequent intervals (preferably at least once a day), not too risky and cheap or free (pleasure is not the preserve of the wealthy)” and goes on to offer the following suggestions:

· Sex and chocolate: Should be high on any pleasure-seeker’s list. When used correctly, they deliver intense pleasure as well as improving your mental and physical health.
· Acquiring new information: Studies have shown that keeping the brain active by learning and processing new things stimulates the release of pleasure-giving endorphins.
· Use your nose: We are so pre-occupied with our other senses that the pleasure of smell is overlooked. For me it is in pencil shavings, damp earth after rain, vanilla and Chanel No 19. You will have your favourites. Remind yourself of what they are – and enjoy a good sniff.
· Sitting in silence: An increasingly unfamiliar experience. Besides being pleasurable in its own right, sitting in silence for a while is the simplest method known to science of alleviating mild anxiety.
· Trust people more: The idea that we can gain pleasure from trusting and co-operating with one another is not just wishful thinking. It is based on hard empirical evidence. Numerous studies have shown that it activates the ‘reward centres’ of the brain, leading to pleasurable sensations.

Martin concludes “There are countless other more obvious pursuits – from a spot of gardening or cooking, to appreciating an uplifting piece of music or an exhilarating view – that will work perfectly well to increase your harvest of pleasure. The point is that when it comes to happiness, many of us would do better to ignore the siren calls of desire that tempt us toward novelty or excess, and instead focus on doing more of the everyday pleasures that are familiar and available to all.” Right – that’s me down the bakery for a cupcake, then!

Lord knows why we need a scientist from the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious to point this out to us, but clearly a life made up of a lot of small, regular pleasures –with its own high points – is preferable to a lot of misery punctuated by the occasional peak experience. Now why is that so hard for us to learn?

Well, apparently the residents of Washington DC are no smarter than the rest of us when it comes to the little things. A couple of years ago, the Washington Post set up an experiment where the renowned virtuoso classical violinist, Joshua Bell, busked to a morning commuter crowd at L’Enfant Plaza metro station with his 1713 Stradivarius to see if anyone would stop to listen. They wanted to know if, “in a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”. In short, hardly.

It took three whole minutes of exquisite musicianship for even one person to turn their head and notice the music, even though they kept on walking. Six minutes passed before the first person actually stopped to listen and in the three quarters of an hour that Bell played, only seven people stopped, while 1,070 hurried by. Of those who did listen, few recognised the extraordinary quality of the performance and only one person recognised the musician. Before we label Washingtonians as total philistines, we have to realise that – given the same set of circumstances in the rush hour commute – we’d probably do the same. How sad is that? Our lives are not built with space for spontaneous beauty and pleasure unless we make them so.

This week, start as you mean to go on. Take pleasure in the small things. Make a list of the things that bring you joy and start scheduling opportunities to enjoy them into the diary – people you adore, places you love, scents that inspire you, food that makes you swoon. Cast your mind back to past pleasures and enjoy the memories. What were the real highlights for you? Were they big things you chased or small, spontaneous pleasures. Remember you can have both, just make sure that pleasure in small doses is a frequent prescription for you if more lasting happiness is what you’re really after.

If you’d like to know more about the Washington Post experiment you can read the full story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html and see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw.

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.

Ringing The Changes

This year, I don’t think just wishing the new year will be better is going to cut it. Something more is being demanded of us, so a few half-hearted resolutions aren’t going to do the trick if we want real change. 2008 has been a wake-up call for all of us, but the question now is what are we going to do now that we’ve woken up?

I’d hazard a guess that getting clear on your intention of who you want to be this year will get you further than deciding what you want to do. There’s not a lot of power in a random list of stuff to do. The juice is in the strong centre of beingness from which you decide which actions to take in the world.

Browsing the shelves in a local bookshop today, I came across a book by Robin Sharma – I think called Leadership Wisdom. Flipping the pages, I saw a line – heavily paraphrased here – about how success really gets activated when your approach moves from achievement to service.

For many of us, service is a charged word, conjuring up images of servitude and little reward. Yet if we see that shift for what it truly is – shifting focus from a self-centred attitude of getting what you want to a more spiritually generous approach of offering what you came here to give for the benefit of others – then we can really see the power of that statement. You can make big waves when you’re coming from a place of enthusiasm about offering your gifts and talents for the good of the whole.

Then there’s the added magic of how the universe conspires to make things happen when there’s a positive intent behind something. Don’t be surprised if things take on a life of their own when you align your purpose with an attitude of service.

So, this week, I think that’s about all you need to know to start making your own inner shift. What kind of person do you want to be in the world in the coming year? What really are the gifts you came here to give? Is there anything really standing in your way or is it just a fear that you might not be good enough? If you’re feeling blocked, remember this is about expressing your talents and bringing something into the world that only you can offer. There’s no need for performance anxiety and you don’t even have to have a master plan. Just start doing it on whatever scale feels comfortable for you. Who knows where that might lead …

As a parting gift of inspiration from 2008, here are a couple of Chinese proverbs that have popped up in my inbox most fortuitously today:

A man’s fortune must first be changed from within.

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

Have a fabulous New Year! May you be all you wish to be and live passionately on purpose in 2009.

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 ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Clean Pain, Dirty Pain

If ever there’s a time to learn that most of the emotional pain we experience is self-inflicted, it’s Christmas. This is the time of year when we bump up against the ancient pain of dysfunctional family dynamics in technicolour, so it helps to have a reminder that we’re at choice about exactly how much suffering we experience in these encounters. We all know that it’s not what happens, but the story that you tell yourself about what happens, that determines how you feel about it.

That’s why one person can say something insulting to you and you’ll laugh it off, but when someone else does it, it activates an old dynamic and releases that charge of ancient pain that sends you spinning off into an abyss of self-attack. It pops the lid off the Pandora’s Box of stories we tell ourselves about why things happen to us. Let’s take the classic of any form of rejection as an example – maybe you didn’t get a job or you just got dumped. You are at choice. You can decide to observe that the job or the person wasn’t right for you and motor on regardless, or you can dust off an old story about how unworthy or unloveable you are and use it to sink yourself into a downward spiral of depression and self-recrimination. The choice is yours.

Psychologist Dr Steven Harvey has - through Acceptance & Commitment Therapy – defined ‘clean pain’ as the emotion we feel when something happens to us. It’s the direct experience of pain in the moment. ‘Dirty pain’, however is the result of the thoughts we have about that pain and what it means about us. It’s the story we tell ourselves about what that pain means – and this is where we endure our greatest suffering.

Coach Martha Beck notes that “The two kinds of suffering occupy different sections of the brain: one part simply registers events, while another creates a continuous stream of thoughts about those events. The vast majority of our unhappiness comes from this secondary response—not from painful reality but from painful thoughts about reality. Western psychology is just accepting something saints and mystics have taught for centuries: that this suffering ends only when we learn to detach from the thinking mind.”

She adds, “Learning to detach starts with simply noticing our own judgmental thoughts. When we find ourselves using words like should or ought, we're courting dirty pain. Obsessing about what should be rather than accepting what is, we may try to control other people in useless, dysfunctional ways. We may impotently rage against nature itself, even—perhaps especially—when that nature is our own. This amounts to mental suicide. Resisting what we can't control removes us from reality, rendering our emotions, circumstances and loved ones inaccessible. The result is a terrible emptiness, which we usually blame on our failure to get what we want. Actually, it comes from refusing to accept what we have.”

This is not a new concept for the Eastern mind, as Lama Surya Das, of the Dzogchen Tibetan tradition makes clear. He writes, “One old Buddhist saying tells us that pain is inevitable in life – but suffering, on the other hand, is optional. How much we suffer depends on us, our internal development and our spiritual understanding and realization. Our pain and suffering point out to us where we are most attached, and what we're holding onto the most; likewise, they point out how free we are. By recognizing this, we can learn to use loss and suffering in ways that help us to grow wiser and become more at peace with ourselves and the universe. Through meditation practice, we come to see that the necessary losses in life - aging, separation, sorrow and death -are inevitable. And when we learn to accept the inevitable changes, through a more graceful letting go called the wisdom of allowing, we will tremendously lessen our suffering and leave room for happiness to arise.”

This Christmas, give yourself the gift of awareness and allow yourself to only experience ‘clean’ pain, if it occurs. Give ‘dirty’ pain the week off. Pay attention to your thoughts and notice if you’re getting into ‘dirty pain’ territory. Watch the thoughts that come up when you’re dealing with old family patterns and indulge only the ones that deal realistically with the present moment. Notice where you’re reacting from old pain and projecting it into your current experience (and the future). When you see that happening, observe it and let it go. Acceptance is the key. If you can laugh at your own mental patterning, you’re heading away from suffering into the direction of acceptance, where you notice the old story but don’t give it airtime. Keep your mind as tidy as you would your house – no room for old clutter.

As an illustration of a clean mindset, here’s an extract from an interview with the musician and designer, Lenny Kravitz, from Elle Decoration. The dude has a pretty good take on life, if the answers to these questions are any indication …

What is your greatest fear?
Not fulfilling the purpose that God put me here for.

What is your greatest regret?
I don’t have any regrets. It’s all part of the journey.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I honestly don’t think I would. Not because I think I’m great, it’s just that it wouldn’t be me.

What is the quality you most admire in a person?
Soul. It sounds a bit vague, but I mean inner strength and integrity.

What’s your guilty pleasure?
If it pleases me, I don’t feel guilty about it.

How do you define style?
It comes from within. It’s someone being themselves.

And here’s a final treat to get you through the Christmas period – a slideshow of Simple Serenity tips from Oprah.com. They’re basic, but they do work - the oldies are the goodies ...

http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/spirit/emotionalhealth/slideshow2_ss_personal

Happy Christmas, Joyeux Noel and Feliz Navidad!

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 ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

It’s official – women’s happiness is more recession-proof than men’s. The recent Nielsen Global Happiness Survey found that men are happier with money, while women are happier with friendships and relationships with their children, co-workers and bosses. Nielsen’s Consumer Research VP, Bruce Paul, notes “Because they are happier with non-economic factors, women’s happiness is more recession-proof, which might explain why women around the world are happier in general than men are.”

Of the 51 countries surveyed worldwide, women are happier than men in 48 of them. Only in Brazil, South Africa and Vietnam were men happier than women. Women are also more optimistic about the future, scoring higher than men on predictions of their happiness in the next six months.

According to the survey, the three main drivers of happiness globally are personal financial situation, mental health and job/career. Being happy with your partner is also important for happiness in many nations.

Interestingly, many of the world’s poorer and developing countries outranked developed countries for happiness and satisfaction levels in nearly all aspects of their lives. Nielsen analysed the survey results to find out if a nation’s happiness level was influenced by low income equality, low corruption or peace. Surprisingly, places which performed poorly on these factors were in many cases the happiest countries.

Here comes another science bit … in another study published by the British Medical Journal, an individual’s happiness was found to be related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends and their friends’ friends’ friends, ie three degrees (rather than six) of separation. The study also found that happy people were most likely to be the centre of their social networks and that each additional happy friend increases the probability of being happy by about 9%. In contrast, having an increase in income of $5,000 only raised the probable happiness by 2%.

The same authors – Christakis and Folwer – also undertook a Facebook study where they found that “people who smile tend to have more friends (smiling gets you an average of one extra friend, which is pretty good considering that people only have about six close friends). Not only that, but the statistical analyses confirm that those who smile are measurably more central to the network compared to those who do not smile. That is, if you smile, you are less likely to be on the periphery of the online world. It thus seems to be the case, online as well as offline, that when you smile, the world smiles with you.”

So, what have we learned? It’s not what you’ve got, but how much you appreciate it that determines how happy you’ll be. Valuing more things in life than just money gives you a more sustainable sense of happiness. Hanging out with positive people will improve your own happiness. Smiling makes you a more popular person and a happier one. If you’re happy today you’re more likely to be happy tomorrow, projecting your positive feelings out into the future.

It’s not exactly rocket science, is it? Still, it’s nice to have a survey or two to remind us that common sense still holds true.

This week, make an effort to up your smile ratio, be grateful for what you have and only spend time with upbeat people. Oh, and thank your lucky stars if you’re a girl – you’ve already got a head-start on the happiness biz thanks to your genetics.

Finally, here’s a freebie that’s a total treat. The authors of my favourite guided meditations of all time, Sanaya Roman and Orin, have released some new mp3s for free download to give us all some upliftment in these changing times and to help focus your vision for a positive personal future. You can find them at http://www.orindaben.com/home/wwmeditationpeace.php. There’s also a link on the same page to transcripts of Orin’s meditations, so you can read them beforehand to get a sense of which ones you might prefer before you download them. Enjoy!

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 ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author.

The Good You Already Know

If you want to have enough juice to get the new year off to a rocking start, you’re going to have to take very, very good care of yourself over the next few weeks. This Christmas season seems to have an even more manic air than usual – if that’s at all possible – so keeping your own energy serene is probably going to be a bit more of a challenge than you might previously have expected.

Normally you might expect me to throw a few coping strategies your way, but when times are tough it’s best to rest yourself deeply in what you already know works for you. Ask yourself this question from the spiritual leader Michael Beckwith – “How have I practised the good I already know?”

We know what to do. The problem is we just don’t do it.

You know you have to take time out to refresh yourself. You know things turn out better when you listen to your intuition. You know doing stuff for others out of sacrifice drains you. You know when you’re taking on too much and your health will probably suffer. You know why your heart sinks when you say ‘yes’ when you really mean ‘no’. When are you going to draw the line and take care of yourself?

Start right now as you mean to go on into the new year. Before you frazzle yourself with over-commitment and busyness that you could actually avoid, start working on your ‘no’ muscle. Give it some exercise. It can’t get strong unless you work it out. Yep, the first time might be hard, but after that it does get easier. Don’t bother justifying why you can’t do things – just say no and leave it at that. Confidence is key. If you’re apologising madly, people are more likely to try to push you into doing things. Be straightforward and matter-of-fact and they’re unlikely to challenge your decision.

We really are in a time where we have to practise what we preach. It’s no good wanting things to change if we never do. It’s about aligning our whole selves with the vision of what we want for our lives and taking the steps we need to take to make that happen. As Beckwith says “For me it always comes back to practice. The beliefs that we hold become a basis for spiritual practice. And the practice becomes a basis for insight and revelation, embodiment of the truth that makes us free. Just merely having a belief about these principles is not good enough any more. We want to do away with believers and we want people to step into a greater embodiment through practice.”

He adds, “The idea is to say to yourself at the end of the day, ‘How have I practiced the good that I already know?’ If I throw myself into practice, now I'm making myself available – a candidate for greater insight, greater embodiment – and I continue to become more and never less than my true self, living up to the true meaning of my incarnation, which is to release life energy, to release sacred gifts and talents and capacities that I chose to release before I came here (which is another conversation). So the tip would be: find a spiritual practice that fits you and absolutely practise it, and then you will notice that you'll move from being merely a believer into actually having some real knowledge through the activity of your awareness.”

What goes for spiritual practice goes for any other practice that supports your physical, emotional or mental well-being. We know what works. We just need to practise it.

This week, think carefully about the things that you know to be true for you. What activities help you stay well physically? What practices keep you feeling centred and emotionally-balanced? What techniques do you know that help you to calm down your mind and give you clarity? What is it that makes you feel spiritually connected? Go with the tried and true and make life a little easier for yourself.

Finally, here’s a funky little graphic to propel you out of inertia and remind you to take care of yourself and put energy into creating the life you want to live. There’s probably nothing in there you don’t already know, but we can all do with a bit of a refresher on basic truths every now and then.

http://www.eightprinciples.com/

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