Hello

Often it is the milieu in which a person is raised that allows her to see the world from a distinct paradigm that changes her perspective and leads to innovation.

I was a huge Star Trek fan as a kid.  Loved the original and the Next Generation.

Shatner’s character Kirk had an episode where he was challenged to get rid of the trauma of his life and be free – he said he needed his pain, it’s what made him who he was.  And Piccard did a vignette wherein he had a whole lifetime of experience, that was distinctly different from that of being a captain, all transmitted in a dream.  Through that dream he was able to know an entire group of people who had since become extinct and it changed his perspective of what to do in future situations.

I remember even as a young person these ideas held deep meaning for me.

In my experience, your response to adversity is what makes you unique and can create space for a new perspective in the world, a new paradigm through which to view your world or circumstances.

Parenting offers a way to transmit your gifts from your early experiences to your child so that he or she can learn through your adversity and have innovative approaches to old problems.

This is one of the very best actions that you can take to assist your children, to openly and directly approach and discuss controversial and profound issues with innovative and honest ideas.

Certainly one of the things that interferes with this is when you are holding on to a hurt and feeling injured.  That injury can cloud your full capacity to understand and learn the gift presented through your injury or trauma.  That clouding can actually create or allow for the transmission of prejudice, hatred, and stereotypes.

The best way to clear up the injury or cloudy perceptions is to use a mindful approach to the traumatic experience.  To use a paradigm shift in how you perceive the events, making an effort to shift from figure to ground – from the injury (figure) to the background and context of the event (ground) to more fully understand their relationship to each other – it gives you a more holistic picture.

This isn’t to say to negate the pain but rather to look at what benefits came out of the trauma. To investigate what aspects of the experience were due to a lack of clarity on your own part, what had to do with an internal misbelief or misunderstanding, and what about the experience was a catalyst to change your life for the better.  There are experiences, like the death of a child or loved one, which will not offer any of these kinds of insights – in those circumstances the way through the cloudiness or pain is to discern how to change your response to the adversity or how to keep the positive memory of that person alive through your actions.  In my own personal experience I learned to always let my loved ones know they matter whenever I took leave of them because that may be the last time I would see their faces or hear their voices.  I learned to think about how I relate to others so that it is mindful and not hurtful.  I have seen others start profound agencies to help others in response to a profound loss.  In this way the loss has given rise to the gift of helping others on  a large-scale.

Through this process you can allow yourself to perceive events in a new way and offer a new perspective on how to be or act in the world.

Your actions create a webbing or thread connecting you to others and your future to your past.  Acting from  a mindful perspective increases your focus and purposive action/creation in your world.  Transmitting your gifts through parenting assists your children to have fuller more clarified lives.

It is a ripple effect; you are transmitting a new way of being that is based on mindfulness and wellness responses to adversity and stress.  The effect of which will be more balance and health for your children.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

The hardest thing to do is to stay true to yourself in the face of adversity or in the face of another’s desire for you to leave your truth and follow theirs.

One is challenged to deal with this when engaging in group dynamics.  It is a function of most aspects of life, blending projects and collaborating in complicated, multilevel ventures in business or social interaction such as bringing together families in marriage or partnering in business.  This is the challenge to remain true to yourself while incorporating another’s perspective when negotiating between individual and group needs as well as negotiating integration of ideas, theories, and groups.

Knowing your truth is helpful when evaluating how to integrate with another.  And because not always what the other says is what the other wants, listening to the whole of another’s message and resisting the need to just swallow whole the other’s position is important.  It is necessary to pause and be mindful in these encounters.  Then you can hold to your truth while being flexible with the other.

I have a facility for languages.  Not just formal languages like French and Italian, but also personal languages of individuals and groups.  It is important to understand what it is that underlies the language of others – what has meaning and how the words contain idents of what matters to people.  The style and quality in which people speak gives clues to what it reveals and conceals.

This is a natural talent, it is second nature to my being.  I can blend in easily and enjoy the experience of seeing through different paradigms, which is a fantastic asset in my life’s work.  It gives me the freedom to experience life from a variety of spaces or perspectives.  I learn a lot by trying on these various styles and viewing from the inside out.

Anyone can step into another’s world, his  language and the paradigms that underlie his style of speaking.

In America you can get the culture of various parts of the country through language.  The south, midwest, west, and east have specific qualities hidden within their word choice and sentence structure, even what is or isn’t said.  The facial gestures, and impressions that assist the verbal language are highly specialized and carry specific meanings.  This can be traced to religious, cultural and personal heritage and experiences.  Additionally, there are unique patterns within families, working groups, and educational backgrounds.

Part of what makes us feel comfortable with another is this similarity or familiarity among and within groups – often first felt and understood through verbal and non-verbal language.

This whole repertoire of behavior and language has its own manipulative force.  There is an underlying push to agree and align, corroborate and connect, underlying the most normal and natural of group dynamics.

I am one of those people, who when talking with another whose speech pattern is interesting and distinctive, may begin to speak in the same way or take on a  funny gesture which strikes me as having character.  Having this natural facility is like being a chameleon.  I find that my ease at being a chameleon is problematic when holding to my truth.  The balancing agent to this is to have a strong and secure sense of who I am at my core.  This allows me to have the capacity and freedom to enter another’s world, even try on some of the more fun or fascinating characteristics, and still remain true to my authentic self.

Holding to your truth is an interesting process of being connected with an even hand-strength:  too strong and you are inflexible, not strong enough and you can get lost.  Being overly flexible leads to instantaneous understanding and connection but when overly expressed it can dilute authentic purpose or self.

I find the best ting to do is to remain in a mindful state, an open, observing, interested curiosity.   The use of a mantra or phrase which allows you to tether yourself to your authentic self so you don’t lose your way can be very efficient.  This allows you to explore with others their world without losing your own center.

It’s like a safety rope that frees you to explore and negotiate with a fullness that can be exhilarating.

See your tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

When thinking about child development it’s important to apply the rule of balance in comfort and adversity to develop inner strength.

When things are too easy the child is unable to tolerate adversity.

When things are too challenging the child develops a learned helplessness.

I remember when I was in college and I learned this I was determined to be the Mom who put the toy just a little too far away, thinking I would be able to encourage  mastery through one’s own efforts.  Over time what I observed is that there is enough adversity in the world, enough that gets in the way of being there for your child that you don’t have to go out of your way to create it artificially.

What’s important is to maintain a balance of response and inner strength development.

My friend likened this to the idea of hardening-off with seedlings.  When starting plants from seeds the first thing to do is create the most supportive and nourishing environment to get them to sprout and grow into seedlings.  In time they need to be hardened-off by creating a slightly less nourishing environment so that they can develop a degree of hardiness – a capacity to tolerate adversity.  If they don’t go through this hardening-off process the seedlings are unable to tolerate the change from perfect conditions to life in the garden – more little plants don’t survive.

The issue is when and how. When to develop the hardiness and How to create the balance of comfort and adversity.   You aren’t always in control of this element.  However, creating pathways to earning rewards, challenges to the development of skills, and teachings about how things work helps.  Significantly, it is a matter of reading your child and offering opportunities for challenge while simultaneously creating a space to retreat to for comfort.

Humans need a dose of adversity to develop resilience and inner strength.

The children who always have things their way and are pampered have difficulty identifying within themselves the strengths required to be resilient, persevere, and try again.  They don’t have the inner mechanism to figure out how to get through the maze.  Often they fail by not trying.

Conversely, the children that have big challenges through which they continually fail to succeed learn to NOT try – it’s a type of learned helplessness.  These children may be extremely gifted in their intelligence but they do not have the mechanism to push through to succeed because they do not believe they can succeed.  Often they fail through not trying.

A balance of adversity and comfort is the key.

Get to know your children.  They will be different from each other even though they will have similarities.  Observe to what they are attracted and repelled.  Note their temperament:  do they have a natural perseverance and stick-to-it-ive-ness or a natural desire for ease and easily give-up.  This will give you clues about how to structure the balance of the comfort and adversity equation for each.

The goal is to focus on how your child learns and notice when your child is showing signs of overwhelm.  In those circumstances you can break up the problem into smaller more graspable parts or offer opportunities to review ways in which he or she has previously succeeded in a similar endeavor.

The temperament that seems to be most complicated is the child who has a strong internal will and is willful but has an internal sense of insecurity due to trauma or significant adversity.  This child will look over-powering and create many power struggles.  The mistake on the part of the parent or teacher is to try to squash the willfulness and power struggles.  This is a mistake because often it squashes the inner sense of strength in the child.  The more useful action is to separate the inner strength and the power struggling behavior through verbal discussion and also creating a tiered response to power issues.  This allows for the guidance to use the power in a productive way.

What guides a child to learn, grow and develop is significantly different among children, even among siblings raised close together – because it is a unique function of nature and nurture – or genetics/temperament and experiences.  Inner strength and resilience are developed through a balance of comfort and adversity.  These tools assist you in developing a strategy for guiding your child from the perfect nourishing environment to the garden of life.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

As children we are free to focus our playtime toward what is attractive and feels fun.

From here we develop an attraction to specific structured activities where we exhibit talents or skills.

Then children go to school and develop those talents and skills, even, if it seems right, to extra training in college or other training centers.  Through this process we choose a way to spend our work time that feels as much like play as we can fit into our jobs/careers.  This is that theory of following your bliss.

At least that is the plan, but what I have noticed is that somewhere along the way individuals stop driving their path; and the structure, expectation, or needs of others starts to drive that path.  So instead of a person’s skills and talents guiding them to the perfect bliss-filled job  other people’s expectations and desires pushes a person onto another path.

This is what I think leads to a lack of satisfaction in one’s life, to depression, and to disillusionment.  A lack of motivation and people just not wanting to go to work – it’s uninteresting because it isn’t derived from an inner state of joy.

It’s a subtle, pernicious thing, related to managing outside expectations and inner needs.

The way to shift out of this is to get back into the driver’s seat of your life.  And the way to do that is to bring fun, or what Depak Chopra calls bliss, back into the equation.

This seems like a simple suggestion, even obvious but it is harder than you think.  People are unhappy and bored but they are also habituated to the routine of their lives.  Change, even change for joy and fun, seems to be deeply resisted.  Weird but true.

The best way to move over into the driver’s seat from the back seat or passenger seat of your life is to start by simply observing when you feel good and when you do not.  Don’t take any action at first.  Just notice and maybe even document what you are noticing.

“Do you wait for other’s goals to be presented and then fit your needs into their goals?  Back seat.  “Do you observe a problem, secretly or privately solve it for the other person before identifying it to them, while simultaneously doing your required work?”  Passenger seat.  “Do you not take the lead even when it is offered, ie:  “Where do you want to go to dinner?”  “Oh I don’t care, wherever you choose is fine.”  Removal from Driver’s seat to Back seat.  “Do you plan for and even push for your desired goals?”  Driver seat.

Notice how you go about your days, your interactions with others at work and in your personal life, are you consistently putting yourself into the Back Seat of your life, even removing yourself from the Driver’s seat?  Then you may want to consider what is driving that habit within you so that you can choose to move into the driver’s seat of your life.

Remember notice and document first then once you have enough information you may be able to re-choose what action you want to take in a given situation.

If your change is going to upset another’s expectation of you – then you may want to let them know about your plans for change first and to involve them in the process.

This is an enlightening process both in how it can open your eyes to your actions (bring light to the picture) as well as free you of some burdens lighten your load).

Being in the driver’s seat of your life has its own responsibilities, but what it allows you is the opportunity to connect with your authentic self and live the life you want.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I think one way you can look at change is from the perspective of how to recreate yourself.

Going through your closet and ridding yourself of clothes that don’t fit is a great metaphor for this.  You can see that an outfit, pair of pants or dress don’t fit.  Maybe your shape has changed or the item is out of style, in each case the clothes and you don’t match.  This is a metaphor for how certain beliefs or paradigms can become out of date or a mismatch to your true self.

A belief that is no longer a fit needs to be discarded; a new more authentic belief taking its place.

Sometimes when you are doing spring cleaning with your clothes you find an outfit that doesn’t work in its current shape or style but with altering can remain a part of your wardrobe.  Beliefs can be like this.  The whole belief may be off in some way but with altering and a make-over it may be just right.

Clever metaphor to get you on the right track for evaluating what aspects of your beliefs are a good fit and congruent with your authentic self and which need to be discarded or altered (what I call unlinked) in some way.

The best way to start to apply this metaphor is to think about what pattern in your life repeats itself in a way that is discouraging or bothersome.

Once you have that then look at what belief underlies that pattern.

For example:  If the pattern is that you seem to always be a giver in relationship but not a receiver – look at what YOUR belief might be to drive that (not the other person’s belief).  Why your belief?   Well, think of it as part of your wardrobe – a covering that you are choosing to wear – then you can look to see if it fits, if it needs to be completely discarded or if it needs to be altered.

Then you can make the appropriate adjustment to the belief so that you can create more of what you want in your relationships – like more give and take.

In the above example you could find that you have a core belief of feeling like your are not enough – that you have to give to be loved, that who you are without giving is not lovable.  This could have developed from an early childhood incident that gave you the impression that being yourself, in and of itself, didn’t result in love from a primary caregiver.  Without blaming that caregiver or getting stuck in that old memory try to view the event from a more objective, understanding, lovingkindness perspective both toward yourself and the other person.  Then see how you can unlink that belief.

Start with an affirmation:  I am lovable.  And then identify proof of that affirmation – if you can only identify proof of the feeling that you are unlovable – go deeper and apply more compassion toward your being.  Ask for some proof from people you love and trust about your lovableness.  Keep working with this until you can feel an inner peace or sense of grace about the situation.  Once you have achieved this you will know whether you need to discard the belief completely or alter it by unlinking some part of it.

The result of this kind of action and focus is a sense of competence and contentment with yourself.  Think of how you feel when you wear an outfit that fits perfectly and is completely in style – that is the same feeling as living inside the paradigms that best fit too.

This is a powerful process.  It can result in amazing growth.  Have fun with it and be kind toward yourself.  And keep that metaphor of spring cleaning in mind.  Sometimes you know something doesn’t fit but you want to hold onto it for some other reason.  That can happen with beliefs too; be gentle with yourself.  It will work out perfectly in the long run.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Change creation is the main focus of my career.

Being in the business of change is challenging and rewarding.  The most important part is identifying what you want to change.  This sounds obvious but it isn’t really.

As a rule identifying that things aren’t working is much easier than identifying the cause.  It’s a little bit like an archeological dig through a person’s belief systems, internal paradigms, and accepted misperceptions.  Even language is laden with personal meaning.  Dissecting that meaning can provide invaluable insight into the etiology of a problem.

People tend to feel discomfort or a lack of happiness but for the most part this doesn’t move them to change.  Usually they ignore it or misapply the reason behind their discomfort.  After a while that uncomfortable feeling or lack of happiness causes the person to do something that really shakes up their system.  If it shakes it up enough then things can fall away and change is possible.

When a person gets to change in this way it is generally very painful.

I encourage a more peaceful, compassionate way to change.  This requires an active relationship with your sense of comfort, similar to responding to cues that you are hungry, tired, or in need of exercise.

There are cues that can direct your response efficiently.  When you are hungry your first cue may be a loss of energy or focus, or it may be irritability (hypoglycemia).  Then if you ignore this you may get a stomach ache, increased confusion or irritability.  You can follow this trajectory for other physical needs like sleep deprivation or exercise.  The earlier you pay attention to the clues the earlier you can right the course.

Things that need changing in your personality, work, or relationship follow the same course.  Developing mindfulness and compassion as a style of being in the world will provide opportunities for the cues to present you the necessary information and to

Sometimes what obstructs our change is exactly what needs our attention.  It’s often the thing you want to hold on to that is the thing you need to let go.  This is not an absolute rule, but rather a guideline.  When you want to hold onto a situation or relationship because you interpret it defines you in a positive way, but to keep it you have to deny your authentic self, then this becomes an obstruction rather than an asset.  This kind of equation results in negative habit reaction patterns, self sabotage or destructive behavior.

This is actually the kind of change needed that brings a person into a counselor or psychotherapy office, a personal growth seminar, or groups like EST, Landmark Forum or Avatar.  The person feels very uncomfortable, has a general sense of what she feels is wrong, feels powerless to change her situation and is at the end of her rope.  She is desperate to find the answer and seeks guidance.

The process through this is sometimes bumpy.  Often the best guidance is within yourself.  Paying attention to those cues, listening to your quiet inner voice, and allowing your instinctive knowing to lead the way will get you to the necessary information more quickly and with less drama.  It is the most efficient way to allow a peaceful and compassionate change to present itself to you.  With this you can shift you perception, paradigm or habit to fully meet you true need.

Facing your fears is the often the fastest way to bring about change.

The issue that what you are afraid to change may well be what needs to be changed is a bit counter-intuitive and it is hard to look at or face.  Our knee-jerk reaction is to run in the opposite direction of our fear, to avoid what we fear, but turning to face your fears is the most healing prescription and often results in lasting, healing change.

Talking to friends or a counselor can help you to clarify what you need.  Seminars and groups can open a pathway.

It’s important that in these conversations you take the lead in the course of the discussion.  Sometimes others mean well but they are projecting, seeing through their paradigm rather than yours; it is important to go through the discussion thoroughly and with a sense of reverence toward your inner feelings, fears and personal meanings to things.  Through this process you will be able to decipher the clues so that you may let go of that which doesn’t serve you and hold onto that which defines you in an authentic way.

You hear the words catalyst for change to describe an event that shifts you so that you can change.  The generally accepted definition of catalyst  is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change ; or a person or thing that precipitates an event.   Change  in your environment or thinking is a catalyst for redefining yourself in a more authentic and true way.  So that you can be your true self.

If you are struggling with something that just doesn’t feel right but you aren’t sure what the real problem is, see if there is something that you could change that brings you complete peace.  If it is related to a change in definition then you may be on the right track for responding to the cues that are available.  Face your fear and shift that definition.  See what develops as a result of that change, that shift in perception.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I have been working on a seminar about healing trauma and so it got me thinking about creating an identity and how that relates to traumatic experiences.

Identity formation begins in early childhood.  It has to do with the psycho-social stages identified by Erik Erikson.  How one resolves the conflicts of each of these stages imparts a special and unique spin on how one see himself.  This is very important and much has been written about these stages.

The use of mindfulness as a parent is very useful in assisting your child work-through these stages to a confident and positive conclusion or resolution.  (Read more about this in  every twelve years, and book Turning No to ON: The Art of Parenting with Mindfulness.)

This is further developed in adolescence where it has a crystallization effect until middle adulthood.  The crystallization process is confronted by different components for different people based on how each resolved the early stages of social-psychological development.  Mistakes or missed interpretations can become hardened in adolescence such that an individual has an inaccurate picture of self onto which she places her identity.

When a person is traumatized while in the process of working-through these stages, the trauma affects how she perceives herself.  This may be something that she inputs into the core of her identity.   This can have a strengthening or debilitating effect on the child depending on what message is imprinted from the trauma. If the child feels she has successfully dealt with the event and perceives the event has made her stronger, then she will be able to incorporate that into her identity.  If however the opposite is true she will incorporate a sense of insecurity.

Sometimes these misinterpretations are the basic foundation onto which the adolescent places her desires, goals, and personal expectations.  If these misinterpretations do not get corrected they can negatively affect what path the individual chooses and how she goes about completing goals and aspirations.  A person with excellent artistic skills may not go into an artistic field because he believes he has no talent.  Or a person with a high IQ may not attempt to go into college because she feels stupid.  Sometimes the resolution to the trauma leaves the person feeling as if he has no power; in this instance he may have difficulty consolidating his inner sense of self to make any attempt to participate in social, academic, and athletic ventures, and as a result his environment mirrors his inner sense of discouragement.

Specific interpretations developed in early childhood are required to help children work through trauma in a successful and affirming way.  Children need to feel that somebody cares about them, that they are significant or important to someone, that they are connected to a family that provides stability and belonging.  They need to  have a belief  in their innate, inner goodness, and to experience feelings of mastery and personal power and control.  These are all part of the early stages of Erik Erikson’s model of social-psychological developmental stages.

To assist your child through a trauma you want to align with him and create a loving, safe, and stable environment.  Many times a traumatized child will regress or lose skills previously developed.  Responding to this with understanding and providing opportunities to redevelop those skills offers an opportunity to increase a sense of caring, significance, connection, stability, and creation of feelings of mastery and personal control.

If your child tends to be more of a doer – offering projects to physically work on puzzles and build things will assist in the healing process.  If your child is a talker – offering projects to write, report, act-out or play-out puzzles and process the situation will assist in the process of healing.

If your child tends to integrate information in both ways allowing a choice and options to work-through redevelopment of skills and integration of the trauma into his inner landscape is most healing.

Having this information can help you feel prepared.  Knowing you can provide an avenue for your child to increase his sense of self and authentic identify when affected by a trauma can increase your sense of security.

This information is also applicable as we age.

Take the time to evaluate if you have built your identity onto a false foundation, a misinterpretation due to an early trauma.  Sometimes the way you suspect this is true is through an inner sense of emptiness or loss.  If you find that you have a false foundation use some of these techniques to see if you can discover a new sense of self and  a new perspective of your talents and skills.   It may open an avenue of work or enjoyment that you had closed long ago.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

When we are speaking we are creating.

The words have energy.  This is written in a number of the spiritual and religious texts.  Many philosophers have written about the power and energy behind words and anyone who has been involved in a persuasive argument can agree.

I have a favorite book that talks about the power and life of words called Words as Eggs, by Russell Lockhart.  The idea behind this title is how we speak our images into words and they, then mold our perceptions.  Words are symbols, and they have both universal and personal meanings which is to say they are multi-level in their meaning causing both clarity and confusion in their use.

I find this is a useful concept when speaking to oneself or thinking about one’s circumstances as much as a useful concept in communication.  When speaking to oneself often the style is to get down on oneself, to say negative definitive things that create a negative internal sense of oneself.  An example of this is to say things never go my way or I am going to do a bad job at my presentation or I can’t do anything.  These statements send out a negative energy vibration.  They shift ones internal position from neutral to negative thereby giving power to the words to create the negative expectation.

A better more mindful way to deal with fears and anxieties is to say I am afraid that I will not perform well but I am going to do my best and believe in myself.  This allows for the fear to be acknowledged and the negative power of creating that which is feared to be neutralized.  This speech when combined with specific examples when you have been successful in the past allows for the negative energy to be dissipated.

A word may have the meaning attached to it from the accepted dictionary as well as charge from ones own experience with the word.  This can create a dissonance in communication if one assumes that all others fully understand the word choice.

This is important from the perspective of mindful speech.  Especially when in a position of leadership, parenting, and relationship.  I like to look for feedback from the person with whom I am communicating to determine if my communication has gone in the way I intended.  If it has they will be on the same page with me, if it has not their response will seem to be out of sync with my intended communication.  I can then retrace with them what word or thing I said (or did) that caused them to go in a different direction than my intended communication.

The best way to remain in mindful speech is to be both descriptive and empathic when speaking.  To pause and consider how you are presenting the information.  From a parenting perspective it is helpful to consider setting boundaries by saying what you want to see from a positive perspective for example:  To a young child in a store full of breakables you might say Be gentle rather than don’t touch.  The first identifies a way in which to be that sets a careful boundary but allows the child to develop her skills at touching and not breaking.  The second sets a boundary but gives the child nothing to do but stay still.  This may be what you want under certain circumstances but as a rule it doesn’t provide guidance to developing an internal boundary and skill at touching without breaking.

In relationship mindful speech allows for the continued development and negotiation of the relationship without  blaming or divisiveness.  Again providing information in a positive and inviting way is better than a negative and blocking style.  Unless the goal is to end the relationship, at which point clarity in the boundary and concern is best still with description and specificity.

An example of positive collaborative mindful speech is to say I am having difficulty with something about how we are interacting.  I would like for us to work on this together to resolve the problem rather than take opposite positions that push us further apart.  Following this it is best to describe with non-charged words what you experience as a problem in the relationship.  Using description and inviting collaboration to create a mutually positive resolution is best.

Mindful speech is an attitude and communication style that you can develop over time.  As you become more acquainted with how you bring yourself out of a mindful speaking place you will be able to easily move yourself back to neutral.  This will also assist you in moving those you care about to neutral as you are interacting.

Keeping your attention on mindful speech will help you to focus your energies to create exactly what you want with the least amount of strife and the most ease.

Once you are doing this in a natural fashion then you will be role-modeling this behavior for your child.  This will become an easy way to re-focus the situation when things go awry.

See you tomorrow.

Beth