Powerfully Processing Pain

I invited a friend over to my place yesterday.

The homebody-recluse that I am, I rarely invite people over, although I yearn to host guests more often. Instead I get worried about the consequences of people judging my space, and I close down. This time though, instead of refusing the visit, I chose to suspend my discomfort and do my “work”.

This morning I processed it. I asked myself what was stimulating my nervousness about him seeing my place. The answer that surfaced was, “I want him to like it.” I asked myself, “if I got that, what would it get me?” The response I heard was, “if he likes the place, it’ll mean he will still like me.” I again asked myself, “if I got that, what would it get me?” What emerged was, “if he likes me I might have a possible life partner.” Again I asked, “if I get that, what would it get me?” What emerged is, “possibility for home….stability, security, peace…joy.”

As I connected to this core, underlying yearning, this root desire for stability, security, peace and joy, I noticed muscles in my body relaxing. As I exhaled more of the tension, and rooted myself to the fundamental beauty of stability, security, peace and joy, I felt softer and softer. More and more, I shifted to a state of clarity, equanimity, and ease, absolutely free of tension.

My experience this morning got me thinking about the process I live for “Powerfully Processing Pain” – and the freedom and benefit it’s brought me.

And then I got excited about sharing it with you.

• Would you like fewer arguments and more power with others?
• Would you like to finally live a life with full choice and freedom?
• Would you like better, more sustained and more fulfilling relationships?

When we cultivate habits of Powerful Pain Processing, we cultivate the capacity to thrive and to find the freedom and fulfillment beyond our wildest dreams.

Our culture doesn’t teach this core skill, the skill of how to powerfully deal with pain.

No matter what, pain happens. How do we live with it in a way that is most likely to open us and the world around us into greater ease and fulfillment?

For the sake of simplifying the conversation, let’s say that as human beings, there are generally four ways that we tend to respond to pain:

- We can close down around our pain, trying to protect ourselves from it. Ex: I don’t want to be hurt so I will write off the opposite sex. Ex: I don’t want to risk hurting myself to I will never ski again. Ex: I don’t want to stir him/her up, and if I talk about that it’ll blow up, so I won’t talk about that with him/her.

Especially right after a painful experience, this ‘withdrawal’ tactic can give us a short-term shielding to give us time to heal. Long-term, however, this tactice closes down our life energy and limits possibility, reducing our choice in the world. Less choice = less freedom.

- We can recycle our pain - resort to blame, wrong-making, labelling, “shoulds” and “have to”s to close others down to prevent our pain. Ex: I’m a jealous spouse, when I see my partner talking to people of the opposite sex. I won’t do my work about my pain, instead I’ll tell my spouse that they “shouldn’t” act that way and that they “have to” stop. I’ll tell them what they are doing is “wrong” and “bad” for our partnership. Ultimately though, all of my attempts are so that I don’t have to hurt or feel pain. What I may or may not realize, though, is that I’m demanding my my partner close down his or her life energy to suit me. Ex: I broke my leg skiing because of those “bad” snowboarders who “shouldn’t” be in the way. It’s “wrong” to allow snowboarders in normal ski trails. The owners “should” pass rules to ban snowboarders so that people don’t get hurt. What I may or may not realize though, is that I’m attempting to limit someone’s choice and joy in order to accommodate me. Ex: He/she gets stirred up every time I talk about this – what an idiot! Anybody with a little sense would be different. What I may ro may not realize though, is that I’m choosing to close my heart to the humanity of the other being, dropping compassion in favor of me feeling better.

- We can choose not to address it, and let it grow into greater pain. Don’t want to attend to it now? No worries, it’ll get bigger. Don’t want to attend to it later? No worries, it’ll keep getting bigger until it can’t be ignored anymore. Ex: I bite my tongue when my spouse flirts until one day I blow up, or decide I’m fed up and divorce. Ex: I spend years not skiing out of fear of hurting myself. I also do this with other areas of my life, relationships, work, my dreams. Over the years, all of the ways I’ve chosen closure instead of freedom catches up to me. I feel disgusted with myself and how limited my life is. I have lots of stories about why I can’t do the things I most yearn to do with my life. I wind up diagnosed with depression.

- We can work with pain to find a way to metabolize it so that freedom and equanimity emerges rather than closure or more pain. Ex: I want to talk about this, but I’m afraid my partner will get all stirred up about it. Why does this scare me? Because I want peace between us. What would that get me? Hope that our relationship will stay in tact. What would that get me? Security in my home. What would that get me? Peace of mind and joy. Now that I realize my core desire is for peace of mind and joy, I can exhale the tension and fear I was feeling, and root myself in the beauty of my deepest yearning. Connected to this root yearning (this desire for peace of mind and joy), I can 1.) Find 10K strategies to bring me peace of mind and joy without fear of expressing myself. 2.) I can release the frustration around the thing that orginally irritated me, so that I find peace despite it, rather than only finding peace by changing it / solving it. 3.) I can connect to the deepest truth of who I Am, realizing my conscious connection to Infinite Source. Here I discover I have no discomfort to begin with about this. From my connection to Source I find freedom and equanimity.

From this equanimity we can act, or not act. From this released state of peace we can express our concern and our desires, or not. We can find other strategies for our desires, or not.

In any case, we are at choice.

The freedom of choice is far more powerful than the limitations of fear and closure.

Basic Prerequisites

Working with pain powerfully requires a few foundational skills:

a.) the ability to translate our experience to the underlying yearning and needs that are often unconscious within us

b.) the ability to recognize shift in our physical body and shift in our emotional body, so that we can easily see when our work is powerful or not powerful

c.) the ability to recognize when we’re doing closure, contraction, fear, insecurity, or worry – and a desire to work with those moments (either instantly or after-the-fact) as opportunities to increase our freedom and peace of mind.

Huge Benefits

Living with this as a life practice eliminates huge amounts of stress from my life, and brings me huge results in terms of finding peace of mind where it didn’t exist before.

And people say I look younger, too.

Want some?

If you’d like to cultivate greater skill in Powerfully Processing Pain, you can email me at gail at integratedcoaches dot com, or call me for a free consultation. 914.882.9667.

For the record, he said my place is nice. Not that it matters – ironically I no longer feel concerned about his opinion about my space. Isn’t it funny how, in the Infinite Greatness that we most deeply Are, personality / ego still emerges?

Me, I love practicing mastery both in cultivating my connection to Source and cultivating mastery in attending to the personality phenomena that arises.

Join me there?

Exercise on Increasing Joy

Here’s an exercise I offered in one of my teleclasses toward cultivating Gratitude and Celebration. In this case, the exercise is applied to self-acknowledgement. And how many of us couldn’t use a bit more acknowledement from time to time?

For me, gratitude and celebration isn’t just about feeding my high of joy – gratitude and celebration are subtle-body life blood. If our passions, our deepest purpose, and our desire to contribute are the soul that unconsciously keep us waking up in the morning, still we need to nourish our energy cup to have the strength to continue and to press on in the face of daily challenges. As I increase my frequency of letting my subtle-body fill with the impact of my gratitude and celebrations, so too do I have increased energy and capacity to move forward, to press on, to climb even to the top of the peaks of Mount Everest.

Click here to listen – it’s about 20min long.

In hopes it serves you!
Warmly,
Gail

Campbell’s Bliss, aka Gross, Subtle, Causal Alignment

“Follow your bliss. There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.”

– Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The Present

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
– Rita Mae Brown

Living in “the now”…what a gift, what joy, what appreciation and gratitude…I suppose that’s why they call it The Present.

Recommended Treat – The Joy Diet

In hopes of inspiring even more opening, fulfillment, and joy,Love,
Gail

The Joy Diet – Martha Beck

Note From the Publisher

Welcome to The Joy Diet, a menu of ten behaviors you can add to your way of living and thinking to enhance every day’s journey through the unpredictable terrain of your existence. You can add these behaviors gradually and watch your life become steadily more vivid and satisfying. Or you can go on a “crash Joy Diet” to help you navigate life’s emergencies.

The ten menu items are:

• Nothing: Do nothing for fifteen minutes a day. Stop mindlessly chasing goals and figure out which goals are worth going after.

• Truth: Create a moment of truth to help you unmask what you’re hiding—from others and from yourself.

• Desire: Identify, articulate, and explore at least one of your heart’s desires—and learn how to let yourself want what you want.

• Creativity: Learn six new ways to develop at least one new idea to help you obtain your heart’s desire.

• Risk: Take one baby step toward reaching your goal. The only rule is it has to scare the pants off you.

• Treats: Give yourself a treat for every risk you take and two treats just because you’re you. No exceptions. No excuses.

• Play: Take a moment to remember your real life’s work and differentiate it from the games you play to achieve it. Then play wholeheartedly.

• Laughter: Laugh at least thirty times a day. Props encouraged.

• Connection: Use your Joy Diet skills to interact with someone who matters to you.

• Feasting: Enjoy at least three square feasts a day, with or without food.

No matter what your long-term goals are, The Joy Diet, written with Martha Beck’s inimitable blend of wisdom, practical guidance, and humor, will help you achieve the immediate gift of joyful living in the here and now. Begin your journey today.

3 Steps to Finding Fulfillment

Wallowing: the act of focusing on what we don’t like, don’t want, don’t have, and/or what isn’t working, at the expense of taking the next step. What is the next step? Articulating what Is It We Do Want, Would Like, Wish To Have?

• Last week I had a call with a client who said, “I just realized I’ve spent so much time focusing on what I don’t like about my life that I’ve put no energy into trying to understand what I want.”

• A woman in Nevada so consistently focuses on what she does NOT know that she never takes the step to ask others if they know, so that she can know.

• A man in Colorado finds his life so terribly unfulfilling that he’s crushed under the weight of his loneliness and misery, but he doesn’t cultivate the skill of asking for what *would* bring him fulfillment.

When I watch these clients and so many of you living the same habits, these moments break my heart, because I so so want for your opening, your thriving, your joy, and your exquisite-cup-overflowing-fulfillment.

Would you consider taking on these 3 steps toward finding relief for yourself?

3 Steps To Finding Fulfillment:

1. Track your list of what isn’t working, what you don’t like, what you don’t want, etc. This first step is vital, as a first step. But when we stop there, we merely cultivate our own misery, disempower ourselves, and piss in the ears of people around us, perpetuating more misery. Writing them down gives us a place to move from.

2. Next, for each line in your list of #1, ask yourself – what is the YEARNING behind that voice. If the line for #1 says, “My life sucks.” (what I don’t want) – write in column 2, “I want more XYZ”. If your line for #1 says, “My boss is a jerk.” (what I don’t like) – write in column 2, “I’d like to be treated with more respect.” What does that voice in #1 yearn for? What do you need that the voice in #1 is dearly (and tragically, in its style) trying to ask for? What does the voice in #1 want more of?

3. Make a doable request to *get* the thing you wrote about in #2. Write down a request you can make of yourself, or that you can make of someone else. If in column 2 you wrote, “I want to be treated with more respect,” ask yourself to stop your boss the next time you want it and say, “Listen, would you be willing to speak to me at a lower volume?” Write it down.

What? You can’t think of a request for #3? Try this: I request myself to ask 3 people what they would do if they were in my shoes and wanted what I want in column #2.

Now what? Do you have to actually MAKE this request? Oh, you may do it, you may not. However, learning to translate your wallowing into an actionable request about what you DO want will take you miles further toward finding fulfillment. While you wallow, you are 100% guaranteed to NOT get what you want. While you translate wallowing into what you want, and try to get better and better at making requests to fulfill what you want, you have at least a 50-50 shot! Maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t. But at least you’ll have a chance.

If you’d like more information about “Powerful Requests”, or if you’d like support to make the 3 steps work for you, or if you’d like help to come up with doable requests that will actually help you meet your needs, call for a coaching session: toll-free 1.877.535.5438.

Visuals by www.PDImages.com

10 Keys for Finding Happiness

Delighted to share this with you,
Gail

http://lightisreal.com/findinghappiness.html

Directing vs/ Informing

Many of my coaching clients get tremendous results and benefit from a body of work I’ve created called “Powerful Requests”. Although it goes in tandem with another body of work I call “The 10-Minute Manifestor” – “Powerful Requests” elements also often stand alone.

Here’s an excerpt from “Powerful Requests” that I hope you’ll enjoy using!

Warmly,
GailDirecting versus Informing

Directing and Informing are two styles of how we can make requests. In Directing, we explicitly direct the person to fulfill what we’d like (we ask that they tell us something, or do something that will meet a need for us, or agree to a change that will gift us both). In Informing, we simply give them information and let them come up with a thought about what they’ll do about it.

“I’m cold.” – Informing
“Would you grab me a sweater please?” – Directing

Both styles are powerful. In the play of energies of yin and yang, if we imagine that the Informing style is yin, and the directing style is yang – by having full skill to use both, we can more effectively support the world around us. Some people will resent being directed; meeting them with yin Informing style may be a gift that opens them. Some will be confused if they are met with the Informing style and not take action to attend to the needs at hand. They may find it a gift to be simply directed at what it will take to contribute to the need on the table.

Often when clients come to me for help to manifest the kind of ease, fulfillment, and thriving they’d like, they may be adept at Informing but not so adept at Directing.

The skill of clearly, explicitly speaking to your underlying needs and what you want others to do about contributing to your needs can make or break your life thriving.

Extract on Stronger Directing:

When making a request, be sure your request tells the person (or yourself) what you want Done – not just the outcome you want or the circumstances you experience.

Client: I told him I wanted a lighter schedule!
G: As him, I hear you giving me information, but it doesn’t tell me what you want me to do. You might opt to strengthen your request with:

Ex: I’d like no more than 3 hours this week. Could you tell me if that’s workable?
Here you’re telling them to do something – to tell you if they can honor the prior sentence.

Other direct requests (ones that tell the speaker what you want them to do) might include:
Ex: Please tell me which 3 hours you’d like of me.
Ex: Please erase 7 of the 10 hours from my schedule.
Ex: Please schedule me only on Monday from 9-12.

The more you direct, rather than inform, the more likely your request will be met.

Would you like 5 free ideas for how to turn something you want into a more “Powerful Request”? Include it in your comment, and I’ll respond!

Knowledge and Adventure

Henry David Thoreau said most people “live lives of quiet desperation.” Are you one of them, or are you a seeker of adventure, knowledge, growth and fulfillment?

What if a 24-hour program could give you everything you need to find an infinite source of knowledge and adventure?

It’s not enough to rage against the lie.. you’ve got to replace it with the truth. - Bono

Isn’t it about time you got to replace desperation with adventure, knowledge, growth, and fulfillment?

Here’s a 4-question interview that could increase thriving – for you, your family, your work/group/community, and beyond!

———–

QUESTIONS:

1. If you could see more fulfillment in 1 area of life, which would you choose to start with?

• more for myself
• more for my existing love relationship
• more for my family
• more for my office/organization/work environment
• more for my group/community
• more for my culture/subculture
• more for the planet/humanity at large
• more fulfillment for Isness / Emergence

2. In the area you chose to start with in question 1, imagine 1 thing that could contribute to your sense of fulfillment in that area. What comes to mind?

3. Quantify it – How could you describe your answer to question 2 in measurable terms? How much, by when; how would you be able to know when question 2 were satisfied?

4. Request it – What request could you make (of ourself or of someone(s) around you) that would contribute to your answer to question 3 happening?

5. Skillful Means – On a scale of 0-10, how effective are your requests at getting what you outlined in question 3? 0 = not at all; 10 = I have gotten my request so abundantly met that I’m utterly and completely fulfilled in the area I chose in question 1.

——-

If your answer to question 5 was 6 or below, you could be more effective in delivering Powerful Requests. You may want to consider enrolling in a coaching program or in a Teleclass directed at helping you strengthen that muscle.

If you had difficulty answering any of questions 2-4, consider calling to schedule a free coaching consultation as a gift to yourself. You cannot fulfill what you cannot name, quanitify and ask for. Give yourself the gift of clarity as a first step.

If you found questions 1-4 easy, and you *still* don’t experience the level of fulfillment you want in your question 1 domain, this is good news – the next step is obvious. Here’s why:

Like a dealt hand of cards, we each hold a specific set of skills, perceptions, tendencies, and inclinations on how to respond to our world. And, like a hand of cards, this set of cards is limited and often insufficient. Imagine you hold a whole deck of cards in your hands – you could win basically any card game you want to play!

If you already had the cards you needed to win the game of fulfillment in the domain you chose in question 1 – you’d already be winning. If you’re not winning, it’s because you don’t have the cards you need – it’s time to get them from someone else. This is why more and more people are turning to Coaches: life coaches, career coaches, financial coaches, organizational development coaches, spiritual coaches, communication coaches…or Integrated Coaches.

Integrated Coaches are coaches trained in The Integrated Approach (TIA). TIA Coaches a trained to help you uncover and recognize the areas where skills, perceptions, tendencies and inclinations are insufficient to expand fulfillment. TIA Coaches can then ask questions or provide recommendations for how to build those skills, widen those perceptions, balance those tendencies, and integrate new inclinations with the prior ones.

Ready to take the first step toward leaving the “quiet desperation” behind?

A single free hour could enhance your adventure, knowledge, growth and fulfillment.

Call and set a free appointment today! 1.877.535.5438

Here’s to your thriving!
Gail

It’s All For You

To see reality transform and to see your power bloom, revisit and create the truth that everything you experience is in your favor.

A woodpecker woke me at 6am, hammering away at my chimney. I am SO not a morning person. So, no surprise, I was *not* a happy girl. Twenty minutes after burning paper in my fireplace in hopes of smoking the feathered brat …erm…friend….out of my morning space, I was still awake, my mind full of chatter and things to do. I finally gave in, got back out of bed, and scratched a nuggets from the chatter into my journal.

Habitually a morning like this would have lead me to a routine of answering, “How was your day today?” with, “Oh a woodpecker woke me up early so I lost 3 hours of sleep this morning.” Not pretty.

Then I remembered a friend who has a curious outlook on life. He’s from the D/s community and says, “A true Dominant knows that everything is in his favor.”

The thought crossed my mind…so I tried on the coat.

Yes, the woodpecker woke me….but what’s also true is that during the hours I normally would have been sleeping, I learned about blogging, I learned how to do streaming audio on my website, I fetched groceries for the month, and wrote 3 new entries for one of my new books. Pretty good morning!

So now my new framing for the morning is, “Oh clearly the Muse wanted me up this morning – I’ve had a wonderfully productive day – totally unexpected.”

Thank you, Michael, for helping me turn losses into gains! How much richer my life is now, and all the while nothing outside me has changed.

3-Minute Invitation: try an experiment – think about a “loss” you’ve recently suffered and then spend 3 minutes with the question, “How is this actually in my favor?”

Funny what I discovered. How about you?

I’d love to hear what you wind up with!

Curiouser and Curiouser,
Gail

Invitation: Start with the belief that, “Everything happens for the best,” and “Everything happens for a reason.” Looking at a circumstance that apparently failed you, or that was apparently a loss, or that you don’t like. Where is it true that this was ultimately “for the best”, “happened for a good reason”, and/or was “in your favor”?