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effective spiritual habits

TELL ME, WHO ARE YOU?

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If you don’t let go, you’ll get dragged. As humans, we strive, we grasp, we control, we grab anything and everything, and refuse to let go unless it’s taken from our hands. This is America. We never surrender, never stop, and Die Hard. Because of this attitude, when someone or something precious to us — a pillar of our lives– has been ripped from us,  it threatens to obliterate us.

When we’re obliterated, the things we already know aren’t accessible to us. We’re lost in the woods in the dark, with no flashlight.  We can’t remember how we got here, much less, how to get out. We no longer know who we are without this person, dream, talent, possession, etc.

For example, I had two treasures that were the two halves of me, I thought, and temporarily lost them both. All that was left of me was weeping pieces. I was erased.

I ‘m a lawyer. Translation: fast on my feet, at ease verbally, sometimes insufferable, love a challenge, incapable of being intimidated, tough and strong. I liked those traits. But, on December 6, 2012, all of that changed, and the fearless part of me was erased, along with my short- term memory, my ability to drive without panic attacks, and my identity.

I was stopped at the yield sign at the 290 and I 35 interchange. Someone hit me from behind, going 50 mph, and I felt my brain shake in my head.  I don’t remember much else except looking up at the 18-year-old with no insurance who was driving her grandmother’s car without her permission asking if I was ok. As a typical American, I said “sure”. I was tough and strong.  By the next day, my way of being in the world vanished.  I was the Scarecrow needing the Wizard  of OZ to give me back my brain. That was 8 years ago. This year, I got my memory back, but have still felt lost.

 God wasn’t finished with the tour de force in which he had me enrolled.

I was a concert pianist. If there was any place with a baby grand or grand piano, I would sit down and run through my repertoire, compiled through my 11 years of piano lessons.  It was my meditation and peace. It was the gentle other side of the hard- charging warrior persona. I needed it to feel whole.

 In October of 2018, I fell and shattered my hand, and it mended in such a way that my fingers couldn’t move across the keyboard. So, here I was without my familiar touchstones to guide me back to myself.

But, these “essential” parts of my history were hiding something more important I couldn’t see until the obstacle—me–was removed.

When we’re obliterated and detoured, the only thing to do is retrace our own footsteps.  The people God puts in our lives are no accident. Only very recently through the perceptions of my wonderful friend, Anita, did I get a glimpse of the truth and the purpose of this detour.

She’s an Enneagram Yoda, and assessed me as a 4. But this wasn’t who I thought I was. I was strong and tough! I was objective and analytical. I had these skills, but they were not who I was. What I lost was my crutch, and what I received was the gift back of my true identity.

For a 4 to be happy and optimally functional, she must live from the heart. That’s where her confidence comes from. But I’d been living in my head since law school!  How insane.  My heart had been starving for decades.

I received a course correction, and a reminder the part about being a lawyer that I loved didn’t come from a fancy law school or prestigious law practice.  It came from my childhood dinner table! Some law professor didn’t give me my gift of oratory, debate, or confidence. My parents did! It’s always about relationships, isn’t it?

The piano was always calling me back to my heart, back to myself, back to vulnerabilities, out of my intellect. It took losing it, to shed what Thomas Merton calls “the false self.”

So, who we think we are, often isn’t even close. We put on “temporary costumes” * to cope with loss, change, and the ambiguous nature of life, and then forget we’re wearing them. In doing so we refuse to surrender to something bigger than us, something better to our own true selves.

Our hearts are our North Star, if we don’t let loss and confusion blind us to what’s been in front of our faces all along.

 We may pray for divine intervention and look for grandiose flashes in the sky as an answer. But, the answers inhabit the everyday miracles in life right now—friends. Music. Even lawyers.  Pianos. The things we have that we love call us back to ourselves and the world with renewed purpose and vigor. Above all else guard your heart, for it’s the wellspring of life.

So, tell me, who are you?

*Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ.

4 LAMEST NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS FOR 2106

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These are my lamest resolutions, found in my journal almost every New Years going back at least a decade.

1) Drink less red wine.

This is a dumb resolution, but made for a good reason: There is the potential for abuse where alcohol is involved. But, if I’m honest, it has more to do with others, their own issues, or what they might think, than it does with me. I like red wine. It’s beautiful to smell, see swirling in a gorgeous glass, and to sip and enjoy at day’s end as I play the piano, or indulge in something covered in tomato sauce. I’ve already given up gluten and most vegetables by necessity. Small pleasures are not inconsequential.

2) Eat healthier.

What does that even mean? Healthier for whom? Gwyneth Paltrow?  I’ve been “ watching what I eat” for years, with decreasing levels of enjoyment. (See number 1) I’m not overweight, and though my cholesterol may be a tad high at times, my heart is healthy.

Basically, I’m watching what other people eat and trying to copy them. That’s stupid.

Maybe my body needs what it craves.

3) Exercise Every Day.

I’ve spent years lifting weights. I hate them. I also spent years running on a treadmill like a gerbil, which I only enjoyed on days where I felt so stressed I would stroke out. I wanted to look good, compared to others. Who cares? I got to about 9 or 10 percent body fat and discovered I looked like a well- muscled, but very sick skeleton. Exercise is never a bad idea, nor is eating well, but my body type does not look good doing exercises I hate. I’m never going to look like Ronda Rousey. I loved running outdoors and put in about 6 miles a day doing it, until my knees mutinied. Now, I swim outdoors. The common denominator is the outdoors. Today it was 40 degrees and I still swam, because I love it.

4) Lower my stress level.

This has never happened because starving and doing things I don’t like makes me irritable and nervous. I’m all for pushing past my comfort zone, but if I push and still hate kale, can I stop eating it?

 

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These resolutions are all extremely desirable and effective habits, but they were lame for me because they attempted to impose dramatic changes from an outside source, like a prison warden.

They fail, because my life is the manifestation of my thoughts, and those are so much harder to control than my waistline.

If I get no joy from something, I’m not going to keep doing it.

This year I resolve to renew my mind and soul, thereby changing from within at just the perfect, organic pace. I resolve to collect friends, joyous moments, and time with my own spirit until I become a better version of myself that pleases others and my Higher Power. That might be something worth putting in my journal.

 

HOW TO MAKE PEACE PORTABLE

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beachblogDo you ever wonder why you can be so peaceful on vacation but can’t keep that feeling when you get home? Is there a way to take your vacation ” to go?”

 

Once immersed in the warm ocean water of Florida and sinking my feet in the brilliant white sand, decades of Epic Fail meditation training suddenly kicked in. My mind slowed down and blanked until all I was aware of was my immediate place in the cosmos: spinning on this planet, swimming in jade water and walking on a tiny silken thread of beach.

Is there something I can drag from this experience to my daily quest for and practice of peace? There are 3 elements of every successful vacation that are, in fact portable that we can click and drag with us when we are ” back on the chain gang”.

1) Distance

airplaneDoesn’t the view at right make one’s concerns not only seem small, but ridiculous? The problems are still there: what happened?

We focused on something beautiful, instead of something scary or vexing. We also focused on something happening right now, something right in front of our eyes; not a phantom or something we created in the future with our minds.

… And what else happens after a great vacation? We can’t wait to get home. Why is this? Because we remember what we treasure most, and with renewed focus, we return home with new zeal. We can do this without a plane ticket because distance isn’t a physical destination.

2) We step into our proper role. Our thoughts and emotions are like the storms portrayed in these pictures. If we watch them objectively, they simply peter out on their own.

While on vacation, I was able to view these magnificent storms from the proper perspective: that of spectator.

There was nothing about this storm to threaten anything I have or am: it was simply a wonderful and transient piece of performance art, to be watched and enjoyed. This storm brought every person on the island to his or her balcony at the same exact time to revel in what was going on. It wasn’t menacing, It was spectacular!

In a matter of minutes, it was gone.

This is how our crises are most of the time. If we drill right down to it, 8 times out of 10, what we are driving ourselves mad about is something our thoughts have created: there is danger to our precious concept of ourselves: our wealth, our power, our beauty, our youth, our creativity, our freedom: all of which are mental constructs!

Who we are has nothing to do with these things. Life is not the sum total of our challenges, neither are we. Life is an adventure and a teacher, not a sentence to be endured.

We cling to these fears because we think they are part of who we are, but they are just a storm of the mind and the heart.

3) Limited Time Only! Who on earth would waste a perfectly wonderful vacation obsessing for even one minute about what could be going on at home? These storms and life itself only last briefly. Why contaminate one transient event with another?

In his book, the Untethered Soul, Michael Singer uses the example of someone who has always dreamed of hearing a certain piece performed by a certain orchestra live. Then it happens. Transcendental peace occurs in a few notes. The point is made to illustrate that peace isn’t a miraculous set of circumstances all coming into alignment like the planets every eon.

We can do this any time; the key is the same transcendence that occurs on vacation or when hearing this favorite piece played: we become fully engaged in experiencing what is actually happening— life itself, and all that is good in it and, sometimes without our knowing it, peace creeps in.

 

If we do this, then peace becomes portable… until the next time we need to press the reset button. It’s a practice, like reading the Bible or meditating, not a transitory event. Thank God!

It’s 100 percent optional whether and how often we decide to reset and begin again.

 

 

 

DON’T FEAR THE THRESHOLD!

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God has opened a lot of doors for me in my life. But, not a single one of these opportunities looked like a door at the time. They looked like failure. They looked like defeat. They looked like unbearable conflict and loss, eventually driving me from that particular situation to find something more peaceful. They looked like sudden physical limitations, springing from nowhere, that forced me to limit and change my focus. They always looked like crisis and change. And pain.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I see that these events that I perceived as horrible at the time, were answers to my own prayers for direction, deliverance and other things. They were thresholds.

My entire writing career resulted from being fired from a job as a lawyer. I had been charging down the legal path for decades at full tilt with success, which blinded me to the unpleasant changes happening in my life and my personality. Law is a great venue for believing the fantasy of control: if I just work harder and longer… what I want or what my client wants will be mine.

I had two very young children at the time. My daughter was 4 and my son was 2, and I never saw them. They were in bed when I went to work in the morning and in bed when I got home. Their father had to take care of almost everything, while I worked sometimes until 4 am answering e-mails, worked on holidays, worked on weekends. I was in pursuit of “ success’, and was going to crack this code, if I just worked harder.

One day, I was at work, of course, and I got a call from our nanny, frantic because she was at the hospital ER with my son, and they would not let her check him in. He had fallen down a flight of stone stairs. He was ok after some emergency surgery to put his teeth back in his mouth, and fortunately I was able to be there with him through this ordeal he doesn’t even remember.

This was a huge signpost that I missed. But, my subconscious was working on me. I did not want to give up being a parent to be a professional anything. My love for the job never really returned after that, and it was just a matter of time before my employer saw it. It was humiliating and painful and horribly unjustified I thought at the time. After all, who worked harder for these people?

It was merely a threshold God was asking me to go through. I began writing in journals to get my myriad emotions out. The emotions erupted in the form of poetry. It took all of these events for me to remember that I had originally wanted to write. I finally remembered that I had started writing poems at age ten.

God had returned me to who I really was, and I had fought him every step of the way.

I started a poetry blog, which led to a book, which led to this blog. I may have been a lawyer by trade, but in my heart, I was always an artist, with the soul of a poet. God had returned me to myself by erecting a threshold, and creating circumstances that urged me to walk through.

In retrospect, he was removing obstacles from my path, which a large portion of the time was I. My ambition. My will. My hunger for approval.

What a God! …Every God direction is road- tested. Everyone who runs to him makes it…You cleared the ground under me so my footing was firm.

Psalm 18, Message Version.

 

We don’t suffer because of what happens to us. We suffer because we struggle against it. That struggle is based on what our thoughts tell us about where we are versus where we should be. But our thoughts lie to us. All the time. Our minds lie to us, because we want our will instead of God’s, and we tell ourselves stories justifying it.

 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 

When it seems that I have tried everything and am beating my head against a brick wall, I am. There is no door there anymore. It’s scary, but all I need do is pray, look for the prompts, and take the next step in faith. It isn’t the end. It isn’t a death. It is only a threshold. Don’t fear the threshold; fear the cage that forms around us when we refuse to go through, struggling and fighting what is, and therefore, what could be.

 

YOUR WINTER IS OVER!

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I spent the better part of Easter Weekend digging in the dirt with my kids. It was glorious! We made the spring pilgrimage to Home Depot and Lowes and bought a cart full of vibrant blooms. One child graduated college in December, and the other is a sophomore in nursing school, so it had probably been a decade since we enjoyed this family pastime. Long enough for the soil to go completely fallow, for all of our ” curb appeal” shrubs and potted plants to have gone to the Great Nursery In the Sky. We had all been so busy with our lives; we didn’t notice how dead things were. So we raked, hoed, dug and brought in healthy soil. It came back to us, as if no time had passed. We were really working our bodies hard— quite joyfully we discovered, together. It was, in its way, a very holy celebration. We were ridding ourselves of all remnants of winter, and death, and planting the seeds of spring and summer. The very act of planting the seeds and blooms was an expression of faith in the future. mountainlaurels

 

We are all seed planters in some way, aren’t we?

In an interview with Meet The Press, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said, “God is The God of Spring, renewal, birth, and growth– not winter and death.” While so much is complicated, that is a theological concept easy for me to focus upon.

So often, we don’t know what our next step should be. There is so much that is difficult, trying and confusing. But, we can help keep it simple.

All we can do is the next task that seems to present itself to our attention, having faith that it is, indeed, where we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to be doing.

Dig, plant, water, and grow. It’s your time to bloom! Winter is over!

 

2 BENEFITS OF SPIRITUALLY GOING PALEO

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Image provided by Gary Halvorson, Oregon State Archives

 

The truth of any teaching can never be found in the words. Rather, the truth is found in that which is revealed inside our own selves. By exploring in this way, we make the teachings our own. And by making a teaching our own… we come to awaken to a view of life that is whole and unified…and addresses the deepest yearning and longing of the human heart.

Adyashanti

 

I so want to consider myself a mystic. I’m always looking for that next burning bush, while ignoring that my left foot is on fire. Can’t see the tree, for looking at the forest. I want to have a positive impact on the world. But, the true point of impact is the fundamentals, not the polished product. I have learned this again and again and yet, the lesson is far from over. When I am trying to accomplish a lot, I focus so intently on the finished work that I literally lose myself, and lose these critical benefits in the process:

 

DIRECTION AND PERSPECTIVE

I can’t accomplish big things, if I can’t even accomplish little things consistently. I must remove all the fluff, drilling down to the most basic level first, before doing anything else.

If I don’t put my spiritual life first, my entire perception of everything and everyone becomes skewed.

I am a person of words, but words can and often do lie. In his wonderful book, Falling Into Grace, Adyashanti posits that the reason for human suffering is that we believe our own thoughts.

My thoughts are just a story I tell myself. If I don’t make my time with God my top priority, I start to live in the story, instead of the truth. I have a story about everything: the past, the future, and my motivations for doing what I am doing. I even tell myself a story about my spiritual time:

“ It’s something I have to do, or God will be mad at me.”

“ I need to master the art of prayer and read scriptures or books about prayer.” Well, that’s just the enemy telling me another story.

It is best to start my day with God, before things get too far afield. Otherwise, I will take off in the wrong direction going 200 miles an hour until l hit the wall and finally collapse. My time with God can be 30 minutes or 3 minutes— it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be fluffy or perfect. My prayer and meditation time is where I find the fount of truth, which becomes, freedom, insight, purpose, direction, energy and inspiration. It starts out being like spiritual broccoli, how I get my antioxidants. But, soon it becomes the most pleasurable part of my day, because it leads me to:

 

IMG_2925AWAKENING. I get out of my head and my stories, and focus on what is true, and what is happening right in front of my face or even in my own beating heart right now. There is no truth, or happiness or peace or love living in my head. It is happening in this very moment. I even tell myself stories about the truth, wanting it to be bigger, something I can’t miss, like a neon sign. It isn’t.

It is amazing how often the truth for which I search is hiding in my own body. I drive and drive myself, ignoring the evidence. Am I sleeping and eating well, in other words, treating myself like I matter? If not, why?   What am I feeling? Is fear or resentment from the past driving me? What is my true motivation for the present course I am charting? Have I been feeling sick or tired for a long time? What is the story I’m telling myself about this? Is it even true? The evidence is not just physical: it is spiritual. Something is off. My life is skewed and out of balance and the cure is not driving myself harder, but drilling down to the Paleo: finding the truth in each and every moment. It is far from easy; it is peeling an enormous onion, but it is the seed from which everything else grows.

 

I FOUND JESUS AT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER

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Clean your finger before you point out my spots.

Benjamin Franklin

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I’m bearing witness to how I can trick myself out of miracles by imposing rules or limits on my Higher Power to appear “appropriate “or holy, not being flippant or disrespectful.  If I have free will, doesn’t God? Won’t he show up where and when it suits him best?

I spent years in an Old Testament box awaiting punishment, because I put God in a box, and refused to believe he was big or limber enough to find me outside of that box. I wanted everything about my faith and my relationship to God to be intellectual and complicated. If it is important, it should be complicated and difficult, right?

If there is one thing on which those of us who believe in a Higher Power can agree it is this: whatever we choose to call this divine being, it is omnipotent, infinite, omniscient, and omnipresent. For grammatical simplicity, I choose to use the pronoun, “he”.

His holy presence is everywhere and cannot be labeled or limited in any way. A host of amazing things follow from this:

Miracles are possible anywhere, anytime.

Sanctuary is too, because it isn’t a building. It is the presence of grace.

Spiritual community can happen anywhere, because true community is about joy and the freedom from fear and shame.

I used to think that thinking was the highest function of humanity. Now I know that loving is our supreme function, because it can transform both those who receive it and those who give it.

Through love, my faith has become about freedom, not labels and limits. Through the eyes of freedom, life becomes a simple adventure: I ask for help, blessings, and even miracles, and then just let them fall on me like summer rain. They happen when and how God wants them too. They don’t and can’t look the way I forecast them in my head, because my imagination is too small.

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Lift up your eyes all around, and see;

they all gather together, they come to you…

Then you shall see and be radiant;

your heart shall thrill and exult,

because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you.

Isaiah 60:4-8

So, why wouldn’t I be able to find my God at the Jewish Community Center, regardless of whether or not I am Jewish? There is such warm and loving acceptance of individual beauty there, such a beautiful spiritual atmosphere that is spacious and has room for me; I am immediately receptive to divine guidance, love and presence.

I swim laps outside, and, more often than not this winter, I have literally been swimming through clouds. Tell me, that isn’t 3 steps from Heaven! The warm water carries me and I don’t have to struggle or fight or try. It’s literally a communion between nature, spirit and body. That sounds like sanctuary and spiritual community to me.

Don’t I believe that God loves me enough to reveal himself to me in a way that I can see and understand? You bet I do! I’m not going to cheat myself out of another miracle.

This blog was partially excerpted from my book, Undamned, My Escape from the Old Testament, which just happens to be 61% off March 7-10th. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_6?ie=UTF8&k=undamned&sprefix=Undamn

Happy Spring:)

 

 

 

DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING. SIT THERE!

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My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

Albert Einstein

 

God speaks to me in metaphors because it is the only thing I understand. Every year, I go to a retreat at Laity Lodge to get closer to the Creator and his creations and foster the creative process in myself. Usually, I am presented with a lesson or several on the last day. I offer this, for what it may be worth to you.

I had been feeling severely depleted and removed from my Higher Power due to some serious and ongoing personal crises, aka life. I just wanted to hunker down somewhere and hide and try to find my center again.

I found a cool spot on the footbridge facing some waterfalls and situated myself where no one could see me.  I tried to get still and quiet, but the beauty of it all was too much. I tried to catch the 4 big waterfalls with my iPad camera from every angle, but they didn’t show up.  I got up and changed position, but it didn’t work. I resorted to my phone, because it had a zoom, and I figured I could capture the beauty and crop it after the fact.

Finally, I gave up and sat back down. I resumed staring at the falls. As soon as I did, a 5th big waterfall came into view.  I don’t know how I missed it, but I did.  This sent me into a new tailspin. I began to try to capture the 5th fall with my cameras; it was the biggest one! This effort to capture a moment was even more fruitless and frustrating than the last.

Slowly, I realized the sound of tumbling water was coming from more than 5 places. My eye was drawn, each in turn; to 3 other small falls spewing from the rocks.

The lesson just kept coming.  I tried to capture these new, hidden sources of flow with my camera, but they didn’t materialize either.

I looked around again at my surroundings, paying attention and noticing two additional falls staring me in the face. This was getting ridiculous!

All of these sources had been there all along, biding their time. Not waiting to be revealed, but waiting to be noticed.

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I ‘m always trying to capture the infinite and reduce it to a sound bite. But, then it disappears. This is complete insanity on my part, but we all have those moments of craziness, when what we are trying to accomplish for ourselves, for others, or even for God completely takes over our thoughts and makes us completely lose perspective. What is required at this moment of lunacy is to sit there and do nothing, reconnecting with our Source of infinite peace, intelligence, wisdom, love.

The Infinite Source is magnificent, but not necessarily glamorous. It is like the support girders that keep our national highways humming without falling down. We are supposed to keep driving: not stop and take pictures of them as we make our way down the road. Imagine what would happen if we did! Well, that is exactly what does happen in each individual instance of mini-crazy. We go off- course and can stay there until we can stop long enough to check our direction. I can veer dramatically off course before my feet even hit the floor in the morning.

Perhaps, for me personally, the best thing I can do every morning before I bounce out of bed is to simply ask ” God, what are you going to show me today? What’s my lesson? Please help me to see it and receive it.

This is when being a storyteller can be a less than good thing, because I’m so excited about relating the miracle, the blessing or the lesson, that I don’t give it time to sink in. Hopefully, next time I’ll just sit there for a while and take it all in.

LOVE AND QUICKSAND

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

 

What else would I talk about this week, but love? As the quote would indicate, love is a practice, not a gooey feeling. But, what kind of love are we practicing? What is excellence in love?

 

Love can be a super- power, because it can erase fear, and not much else can.

Love can be freedom, because it can create an expansion in our spirit and open us to a whole new perspective on the world and a host of unexplored possibilities.

Love and intelligence combined can result in wisdom.

But love without detachment, can be quicksand for the giver and the recipient. Love that is not detached from judgment is entirely conditional, and can make the giver a puppeteer and the recipient resentful. Love not detached from the fact that we are not anyone’s saviors can ruin our health, take us off of our own path and ultimately take our loved one off of theirs. We can’t save anyone from all pain or consequences, even our children. Any and all efforts to do so only result in the erasure of us.

Love with detachment, gives us the ability to be compassionate and forgive. It allows us to love from the appropriate distance, so we don’t get stepped on for putting ourselves between someone else and their destiny.

Love is an attitude, an intention practiced daily, or even more often, to see others as a gift, a blessing, and a lesson for who they are right now at this instant.

 

 

7 WAYS TO TAKE FLIGHT IN YOUR OWN LIFE

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 Arise, shine, for your light has come,

and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you…

Lift up your eyes all around, and see…

and be radiant;

your heart shall thrill and exult.

Isaiah 60

 

Image supplied with permission by David Eyestone

 

Thank God my friends don’t treat me like I treat myself!

My friends somehow see the me I don’t see.

Why do so many of us find it so difficult to have compassion for ourselves?

Where do we get the idea that driving ourselves relentlessly towards perfection and flogging ourselves for our failings is the best way to go?

I had to finally break wide open to finally let up on myself and discover that gentleness works. The above quotation is the beginning of the cure for this spiritual malady because it stands in stark contrast to the lie at the root of it all: I AM NOT ENOUGH.

Here are some tools to take the weight off your wings:

 

1) Let yourself take off and soar and realize that the belief that it is wrong to do so, is lie #2. If a loving God created you, then hobbling yourself is denigrating something that God made and loves. Quit judging yourself. It isn’t your job. Fire your inner critic and run him or her out of town.

2) If it is true that nothing can separate us from our loving creator, it must also be true that there is no mistake I can make that will separate me from Him or the flight plan he has set out for me, and if that is true, then a host of wonderful things follow:

  1. a) There is no such thing as too late. There is no such thing as too old. There is no such thing as technologically obsolete. There is no such thing as too young or inexperienced. These things do not apply to your Plan. You can be what God wants you to be, because you already are. He doesn’t make mistakes.
  2. b) God loves me unconditionally and he made me. If that is true, then he has compassion on me. If that is true, then I am deserving of compassion and gentleness from everyone including myself. This concept was so alien to me; I had to teach myself how to do it, with the following exercise. This may seem ridiculous, but this daily practice has transformed me by teaching me compassion and love for myself: I face myself in the mirror every day, look myself directly in the eyes and say, Baby girl, God loves you and so do I. I see you. I hear you, and I will never let you down again.

In other words, I treat myself as a loving Higher Power would. If I was created by something divine, I have a purpose, and am worthy of love and affection and joy right now- not when I finally have mastered Everything.

3) Dare to suck and forge ahead. Redefine success as daily progress, not perfection. I haven’t seen Shakespeare’s first poem, but I bet it probably sucked. Those on their deathbeds regret the things they never dared to say or do, not the things not performed perfectly.

Remember the 10, 000 hour rule. I read a book recently that pointed out that behind each and every singular, supposedly unique success story like Bill Gates or Steve jobs was a common trait: each of these geniuses and stellar successes had spent 10,000 hours practicing and honing their craft before they reached critical mass. None was truly an overnight success story.

So keep going, keep practicing, keep singing, playing, writing or programming. It is impossible to fail as long as you are still learning, growing and trying.

Embrace joy instead of perfectionism. The two are almost mutually exclusive. Leave perfection for living saints, dead martyrs and maybe Martha Stewart. Psychotherapy is expensive and treating yourself like a machine will eventually require a major tune up.

4) Ask God instead of beating yourself up. Even if you don’t believe, ask God to change you, instead of using willpower to try and change yourself. In any event, it takes the fear out of your head, and puts it someplace where you can forget it, pause, and shift your attention to what is great in the present moment.

5) Want to be popular and well loved? The kindest thing you can do for your fellow man is be gentle with yourself. If we are rigid and unforgiving of ourselves, imagine how we might judge others. In any case, the constant ” I am an undeserving worm ” recitations are a pain to be around and, as the philosopher, Dr. Phil says, you teach people how to treat you.

6) The past is just a story we tell ourselves (from the movie, Her) The fact that you weren’t perfect in the past doesn’t mean that you aren’t exactly where you are supposed to be right now. Regret is premature. We don’t know how everything is going to work out. Miracles are the things that happen outside of your carefully prepared plan. Take a forensic look back on your life, looking for God’s breadcrumbs. How many “ mistakes’ and detours turned out to be blessed course-corrections?

7) If God never wastes a hurt, as I was told when I was in a great deal of pain, then maybe C.S. Lewis was right. Pain is the megaphone of God. Might as well ask, what is the gift or the lesson in this situation?

I will never be old enough to stop making mistakes, and if I look back with objectivity, those ” mistakes ” were the catalysts to growth, and a necessary change in direction. Labeling myself unkindly is libeling myself, because it isn’t true. Clipping my own wings, hurts me, doesn’t help anyone else and doesn’t glorify my Creator.