Self-Rising Me!

Self-Rising Me!

How do I know that I am bigger than my circumstances? Wowza! What do you think about that question? I have been asking that one a bunch lately; I like the feeling I get.

How do I know that I am more than my circumstances?

There are times in our lives when our circumstances seem overwhelming. When every minute they are what we are thinking about, what we are feeling about, what we are worried about. Oh, dear.

In the bygone times, I would endeavor to ignore such circumstances and pretend everything was fine. That turned them into the proverbial elephant in the livingroom. Suddenly, everything was about avoiding that elephant. How do I not think about the elephant in the livingroom? Yeah, we all know how well that works. Most recently, My elephant in the livingroom was my fear of having some cancer. Never mind the fact that it had been excised, never mind the fact that I was being treated, that fear was a cancer itself.  I needed to find a way to shift that.

How do I know that I am more than my circumstances?

Turned out that I could acknowledge that fear, the physical discomforts, the apprehensions,  then let it go and do something else. The equivalent of throwing the elephant some peanuts, I suppose. Turns out that overwhelmed is a choice.

Dang it!

What does that mean, overwhelmed is a choice? Overwhelmed is a feeling, not a fact. It’s a kind of fear, a  stress-response to a series of thoughts, thoughts that can actually make us sick. But we know we can change our thoughts. This is graduate level stuff here, so pay attention.

When I am feeling overwhelmed, I need to stop for a bit. I focus on my breath and my feet, and remind me that I am in charge of my thoughts. I disconnect from my Drama Queen. Sometimes I will imagine sending her off to a room with a giant TV where she can watch something to keep her interest.

Why am I competent? How am I in charge? Why do I make good choices? Why am I calm? What makes me feel peaceful?

Now, I can assess my situation. I can prioritize well, I can delegate, or eliminate things from my list. If I am in a real life or death situation, I am calm and clear-headed. Whew.

How am I so healthy? Why do I know I am more than my physical experience? What makes me happy? How have I changed from living in fear to letting my spirit soar?

Our lives are full of stuff that can seem so big. Some of it we handle like champs, some of it throws us to the ground and jumps on us, but it’s still all just stuff. When I trust that I can manage, when I trust that I will find the resources I need, when I trust that the right support will find me, I can get back up, look those circumstances square in the eye, and let go the overwhelmed. I start making good choices again, I start taking good action again, and I open my heart to wonderful possibilities again. Oh, yeah!

How have I changed from feeling bossed around by my circumstances to knowing that I have what I need to rise above them?

(c) 2016 Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 04262016

I Oughta Be Committed

I Oughta Be Committed

What do you think about commitment? I always think it’s funny when I hear people say that they can’t commit. Commitment is part of living. The question is simply, “What am I committed to?”

All I have to do is look at my life to see my different commitments. For example, I am committed to surrounding myself with excellent people. I am committed to maintaining order at my job and in my car, but I seem to be committed to chaos in my home. I am committed to living a happy life. I am committed to sharing the lessons I have learned about how to do that.

Why am I committed? What makes me commit? How have I changed from thinking I can’t commit to choosing my commitments?

Oh. Right. Choice. When I have taken an inventory of my commitments based on my observations, I can compare them to what I want to be committed to. I get to choose my commitments. I get to commit to choosing my commitments! Ahahahahah!

I hear some of us wondering why we would care about our commitments. You could say it’s all about time and resource management. And about bringing our lives in line with what we want.

When I am obviously committed to something I don’t like, I spend a lot of T and R not liking it. If I whine about it without taking action, I compound the expenditure of resource because now I have involved you, squandering your T and R as well. Dang!

Sometimes we think of our “disliked” commitments more as weighty liabilities, as burdens, as constraints. We say that we want to feel free, but we keep finding ourselves in situations where we feel overwhelmed, or trapped, or suffocated. We feel doomed.

In the days of yore, I was committed to misery. Seriously. I was committed to feeling awful. My commitment was strong, I was also committed to overwhelm and feeling doomed. I would joke that I had three feelings; terrible, bad, and not bad. I hated it, but spent hours everyday talking about how much I hated it. I fed my commitment with attention, with focus, and with practice. I felt powerless to do anything about it.

Turned out I was wrong.

I love to admit I was wrong when it comes to this kind of stuff. It means my life is going to be so much better.

I had to make a commitment to change my bad commitment! I made a promise to myself that I would do whatever it took to become a happy person. I had no idea what that even meant back then, but I was determined. It took me some time. The current spate of information and support didn’t exist back then. One thing I remember doing was wearing a rubber band on my wrist and giving it a little snap every time I had an ugly thought. I didn’t know to change it to a good thought back then, but I did manage to slow down the bad ones.

There is so much help available now. On-line groups filled with like-minded people, wonderful websites, texting, new techniques to help us change. We can, you know, change what we are committed to. We just need to make that commitment.

How have I changed from being committed to icky stuff to loving my commitments to my wonderful life?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 06232016

On Being Here Now

On Being Here Now

Oh, BABY!! I got the Prime Question today! This is the first one, whence all other Creative Questions flow: Why am I aware?

Why am I aware? What a lulu!

“Why is this such a big deal,” I hear some of you asking. Because paying attention to our lives changes everything. When I pay attention to moving around in the world, I stop being a klutz. I see the wall before I walk into it. I see the car before it honks at me. When I pay attention, I notice that I am thirsty, or tired, or satisfied.

 Awareness can be a loaded word for some of us. It can have a lot of connotations based on our learning and mislearning. All I mean by it is paying attention, noticing, being present.

When I am aware, I am using my senses. Food tastes better. Music is more fun. Dancing is wonderful. Kissing is nicer.

When I am aware, I notice my thoughts. I notice how I feel. I make the connection between those two things and cultivate or change what I am thinking. When I am aware, I recognize that I am in charge of me. When I am aware, I can notice the thoughts I have that don’t support me and change them.

When I am aware, the daily passage of time slows down. Seriously! I am paying attention to what I am doing when I am doing it. I am aware when I am being. A day takes a day, a week takes a week, a year takes a whole year. Amazing.

When I am aware, daily tasks become powerful meditations. Washing my dishes is a sensory experience with the scent of the soap, the heat of the water, the rasp of the scrubby, the satisfaction of the cleaned object.

When I am aware, I notice my thoughts. I notice my feelings, I also notice my behavior. Oh. Did I do that? Because I am choosing to be aware, I can see what I’m doing to make my life better, but I can also see what I am doing to stay stuck, to hurt me, to hold me back. And I can change those things.

When I am aware, I naturally grasp that I am responsible for my behavior, for my feelings, for my thoughts. When I am aware, I naturally find joy in the mundane. When I am aware, I notice when I am judging stuff.

Oh, that is a good thing to mention. When I am aware, I can notice when I am judging my experiences as “good” or “bad” rather than letting them flow as experiences. This is high-level stuff. Experiences are not inherently good or bad. Based on my learning and mislearning throughout my life, I judge stuff. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it can hurt me. If I want to go with the flow,for the most part, I do better to let my experience be neutral. If someone is hurting me, or if I am hurting someone, I should judge that and change it. We can learn with practice to when and how to use our skills of discernment.

How have I changed from stumbling through my days to being present and aware?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 03/11/2016

Fill 'Er Up!

Fill ‘Er Up!

I pulled the “Why Can I Choose?” card and you know that is one of my very favorites. As I lolled on the porch, I thought about what I choose, what I have chosen during my Adventures in Wonderland. I realized that the most important, life-changing thing I have done since it started was choosing to be curious over being afraid.

That choice meant I had to change the way I do some things. I am an information nut and a research queen. Under other circumstances, I would have researched the heck out of my new situation. What I quickly came to see was that most of the information out there has a scare-the-pants-off-you undercurrent. This is not useful. I quickly decided that, since I was under the care of so many people, I would choose ignorance, to a certain extent, and become curious about my physical experiences.

Why can I choose? What makes me feel engaged with my activities? How am I so alive? What makes me feel so curious?

Fear is a very low-vibrational thing. It is useful in actual dangerous circumstances, but really doesn’t do us much good as a hobby. Dispelling it takes some doing, especially as we often don’t even recognize it. We call it worry, or anxiety, or tension, or unease, or disquiet, and on and on, but it’s all just fear. Negative fantasies about the future. I’ve even seen it called “praying for the worst.” Yikes! I do not want to be putting my energy there.

When I let my curiosity out, fear melts away. In fact, sometimes just being curious about my fear melts it. I came to realize that I am not afraid of dead. That was nice. I can get afraid of discomfort, but if I stop judging it, that fear goes away.

My appreciations practice is grounded in curiosity. I wake up and wonder what delights I will experience that day. Where will I find beauty? How will I feel joy? What will surprise and enchant me? Where will I experience kindness? That sets me up in a very specific way to seek out those things, and, Lo, I find them almost every single day.

Curiosity helps me change my attitude about stuff. How can I make this (excruciatingly dull) task fun? Why would I choose to be here? How can I embrace my chemo/radiation experiences so I can enjoy them? How can I reframe this physical discomfort so I can do other stuff? Why would I be okay with having to sleep so much?

My Adventures in Wonderland have run on curiosity. It is the fuel that lets my days flow without freakout, without rage, without terror or depression.

Why would I choose to go with the flow? Well, it’s easier for one thing! I don’t know about you, but I like easy. How can I choose to have fun? If I can find a way to make it enjoyable, I can do anything.

Then there is one of my most favored old saws, “This, too, shall pass.” Then I wonder, what good lies ahead? How do I become more myself? How can I have more peace and joy?

How have I changed from choosing fear as my motivator to choosing curiosity as my fuel?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 03102016

How to Forgive

How to Forgive

What do you think about forgiveness? It’s a big idea, full of lots of stuff, lots of emotional stuff, most of it not very nice. There is an old saw I like, “Resentment is letting someone live rent-free in your head. Now, I must say, I have never figured out how to get someone who lives in my head to pay me rent. If you have, please drop me a line and tell me how.

Resentment and forgiveness are quite the pair. Resentment is simply the re-feeling over and over of the bad feelings we get when someone does us wrong by our estimation. Forgiveness is choosing not to re-feel those bad feelings and replace them with peaceful feelings. This is sometimes very easy and sometimes ridiculously challenging.

It’s been my experience in life that a lot of how easy or challenging forgiveness is depends on how righteous we feel about holding onto our resentment.

Why do I forgive? What makes me let go? How have I changed from resenting to forgiving?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should just forgive and forget willy nilly. A lot of what I have now managed to forgive were egregious wrongs that no one should do to nobody. I mis-learned stuff from those experiences about how the world is, how I should be in it, and how I should expect to be treated. I needed to sort that stuff out. I needed a really good teacher. It took me a while. But I wanted to clean out my emo-basement. I needed to work through them, remember them, feel the feelings all the way through, notice what I had mis-learned, and then I could start thinking about forgiving.

For the stuff that isn’t so dire, though, forgiveness is a nice tool. It’s a good thing to practice with because we all experience stuff that gets our goat, so we get lots of things to hone our skills on.

It’s important to remember that resentment mostly just chews on us. That’s why forgiveness is so nice. I have had the experience several times where I found out that someone wasn’t speaking to me because they resented something I had done. No idea. No impact on me. Dang. What’s the point of resenting if it has no impact on the other person?

How do I forgive? You know me, I like to give you specific and easy instructions that work for loads of people if I can. So this is how I do it.

I check to see if I have work to do around the resentment I feel, and if there is, I do it. If not, I become aware of my thoughts. That’s a good habit to cultivate anyway, noticing what we are thinking. We spend an astonishing amount of time thinking the same thoughts over and over. If I’m gonna do that, I would just as soon they be supportive, uplifting thoughts, thank you very much.

As soon as I notice that I am resenting, I think something else. If I can, I will go to compassion for the person. That’s kinda high-level stuff and it took me a while to get there. It’s also good practice. I like to silently sing, “Let it go, let it go, let it go” to the tune of Let it Snow. I do something to distract myself. That is it. Usually, after a few rounds of this, I’m done with it. Nice. If I’m hanging on to the bad feeling, I will look at it a bit more to see where it’s hooked me. Surprisingly simple. Very effective.

The more I practice letting go of something that really only hurts me, the more room I have for nice stuff. I like nice stuff. I like feeling peaceful and happy instead of angry and seethe-y. I like spending my think time on nice stuff like how do I want my life to go? What do I want to accomplish? Why am I successful? So much better than rehearsing all the shit. Heh.

How have I changed from feeling the same bad feeling over and over to letting go and feeling clean?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 01222016

Trusting the Win

Trusting the Win

Today when I drew my Creative Questions card I got two! I love it when that happens. Why do I trust? Why am I a winner? Good Questions! And a dynamic combo.

Two things are really useful for making the most of these questions; a concept called reframing; and a look at our judgments.

For me, my attitude about the world did a big shift when I realized that events are neutral. I know, right? Big stuff. Events don’t shift out from neutral until we judge them. Arbitrary. My POV. We know it’s true because we have seen over and over in our lives how one person may interpret an occurrence as a horrible disaster and someone else may see the same set of events as a great blessing. True isn’t Truth unless it’s true for everyone. Like breathing.

Since my goal is to live my effortless, natural life, I am looking for the neutral, and then the blessing. I practice this daily on the little stuff, going with the flow, carving new pathways in my brain, so that this practice comes to work on the medium stuff and the big stuff.

I had to do this, start this practice, and that meant I had to change my attitude about the Universe. In the yore days, I thought that the point was struggle and suffering. I thought that the Universe sent me trials to test me. Now I think I was full of beans! Now I think that the Universe is looking to help me be my best self, to support me, to shower me with blessings.

Breaking my habit of suffering misery took some doing. I ended up reframing my experiences by asking good Creative Questions like, How could this situation support or benefit me? What makes me find the silver lining? Why would I allow and accept this? How have I changed from going to misery to choosing to find the good?

By practicing this reframing daily, it has gotten to be automatic most of the time. This means that I hardly ever get thrown for a loop, or feel flapped. Usually, when I do, it’s because I am distracted by physical stuff, but I get my sangfroid back pretty fast. And replay the event with a variety of alternative responses so I am more prepared for the next time. One of the cool things is that there is always a next time until I get that kind of interaction reframed, and then it hardly ever happens anymore. Weird.

How could I choose to trust? What makes me believe everything happens for me? Why am I successful? What makes me appreciate my efforts?

Oh, yeah, that’s a big part of this whole process. I need to notice, allow, and accept my successes when it comes to changing my behaving. I need to review them from time to time, then own them. For so many of us, this is really challenging. We get limiting ideas about how we are who we are. We can always recognize these limiting ideas by noticing where we say stuff like, “That’s just the way I am,” or, “that’s just how things are.” These beliefs are like dropping a rock in the sand. They go plunk and just sit there. That’s just the way it is.

Well, it’s not. You’re not. We are so much more than we tend to think we are. We are dynamic, shimmering beings with amazing powers of change, change that happens in our brains, in our minds, in our beliefs. When we start using good Creative Questions, everything loosens up, everything gets softer, and we have wiggle room to be happier, more content, stronger, softer, and more alive.

How have I changed from feeling like a suffering loser to knowing that I am a trusting winner?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2016 all rights reserved 01062016

Grateful to Great-Full

Oh, how I love the “Why am I grateful?” card. Learning to practice this concept changed my life. I hear some of you say, “That’s kind of overblown, doncha think, Pam?” Yeah, no.

I will say that I have a daily appreciations practice and that is different, for me, from gratitude.

Why am I grateful? What makes me appreciative? How am I thankful?

So here’s how I distinguish among these guys. Appreciation is how I live my life. What is the silver lining? How can I spin this into something good? Why would this be beautiful? How else could this be? What makes me change my judgment?

I first started getting this concept looking at the photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin. His stuff is amazing, very challenging, and some of it is stunningly beautiful to me. I found that it challenged not only my ideas of beauty, but also my ideas about my ideas. Ooh, deep!

Listening to others talk about what they like also change my thoughts. I tend to prefer sunny days, but one of my sisters is crazy for rainy days. Why would she like a rainy week? How could I value rainy days? What makes me find the gold in a gray day? Heh. Nice ways to mess with the mind!

Gratitude, on the other hand, is about the outside world impacting me. In days of yore, I searched for the yuck. I looked for ways I got shorted, or hurt, or abused. Then I would worry it and worry it until it festered into resentments. I was very good at that. As a child, I remember being asked a bazillion times to write thank-you notes. I hated doing that. I never felt that the gift I received made a big enough difference in the awfulness of my life to warrant a thank you. Poor little former self. Suffering is so judgmental and self-absorbed.

Gratitude, like appreciation, took me a lot of practice. I had to spend time every day thinking about whom I was grateful to, and why. That meant practice. Hmm. It also meant that I had to take note when something nice happened to me. I mean, I actually had to write stuff down because I didn’t have a Gratitude area in my brain, so stuff just bounced off. I am sad that I was so ungrateful for so long. I am happy that I have changed that.

Now, gratitude feels as easy as breath. Rare is the day that I am not aware of the kindness of most people I encounter; the smiles of strangers, a generous gesture, a kind word. It has changed my thinking about the world.

Now, I keep thank-you notes at my desk, at work, and at home. I write them a lot. I feel good expressing my gratitude to its source. I hear back that the recipients like to get them. Writing gratitude notes also helps me stay in touch with how much gratitude I have every day. You are such a big part of that just by reading this, by considering my ideas about stuff. I am so grateful to you for giving me a platform, and for being so patient with me as I have traveled this year through Wonderland addressing my health topics, my mis-learned beliefs about healing and cancer and attitude. Wowie kazow, have I learned a lot, let go of a lot.

How have I changed from feeling entitled and let down to living a life of gratitude?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 12152015

Owning My Own Self

Owning My Own Self

In the yore days, I was terrified most of the time. One of the things that frightened me the most was the fear that you would catch me out, that you would discover that I was a fraud. I would look at what seemed to be your perfect life, and look at my insides with all my insecurities and fears and failings and wonder how on earth I would ever make it through a day without being caught.

Why am I authentic? How do I know I am the real thing?

So many of us feel like phonies. For some of us, the more we achieve, the more fraudulent we feel. The more we know, it seems, the more we feel like we are pretending.

In the yore days, I didn’t know how to do a lot of stuff; I saw other people doing things that I needed to do. How to be a grownup was a total mystery. I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended I was someone else, usually Kate Hepburn.  If that got me what I wanted, like the job, then I would feel awful.

What if they found out that I wasn’t Kate Hepburn?

Answering this question eventually led me to invent the Secret Name (c) game. What I discovered was that calling myself by a different name made me feel different; it gave me access to confidence in abilities I discounted when I was “Pam.” Calling myself by a different name could make me feel more resourceful. Calling myself Kate Hepburn inside wasn’t being deceitful, it was helping me to realize my potential.

How am I resourceful? What makes me creative? Why am I a good problem-solver?

One of the ways we make ourselves miserable is by comparing our inside lives to what we see of others’ outside lives. We don’t consider the fact that we only see slivers of their lives, we don’t consider that we filter what we see through the filters of our experience and, perhaps, mislearning.

I don’t feel like a bamboozler anymore. It sort of crept up on me. One of the big helps were my wonderful teachers who talked about feeling like fakes themselves, and how that feeling would show up after big accomplishments. And how, as they learned to own their successes, that sense diminished. In fact, the more I talked about feeling like a phony, the more I heard from other people that they felt the same. And I heard wonderful stories about how they changed it.

In the before times, doing new stuff scared the heck out of me. I would feel sick, and often get sick. I would be totally self-conscious about everything, sure that the people I was going to be with would mark every flaw. Now, when I need to do something I haven’t done before, where I used to fake my way through and feel awful, I fake my way through and feel accomplished. It’s a change in POV. I assume that I will get along fine, that I will be seen as at least good enough, that I will do well enough. What a relief!

Feeling authentic is one of the joys of living our natural life. As we let go of feeling fake, as we own who we are with all our attendant stuff, we find ourselves effortlessly feeling authentic, able to step up to new activities, new accomplishments, new successes with a sense of excitement and fun instead of rank terror.

How have I changed from feeling like a fraud to owning my authentic self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 10132015

My Trusty Choice

My Trusty Choice

One of the most powerful decisions I have made in my life was the decision to trust. On the one hand, it’s a huge leap from living in fear to living in trust. On the other hand, at our core, it’s how we really are.

I will freely admit that making this choice was a challenge. I will freely admit that it took a lot of regular practice. I will gladly admit that it was so beyond worth it.

Why do I trust? How do I choose trust? What makes me want to trust?

A dear friend uses the phrase, “faith or fear.” I like that. The point is, simply, that fear is a choice.

I know that it doesn’t feel like that. Believe me. I spend years with terror as my emotional underpinning. It was hellish. And I was living in a bad situation, so it was also reasonable. There wasn’t much I could do as a kid, but as an adult, I have choices. One of those choices is to assess my circumstances and make some decisions. If I am in a bad situation, I can choose to change it. If I am not, but going to fear from habit, I can change the habit.

When I live in fear, I am often exhausted. When I live in fear, I don’t feel well much of the time. My muscles hurt, as do my joints. I often have digestive issues. I may be plagued with nightmares and poor sleep in general. I may feel depressed and not even know it. All sorts of stress-related maladies can plague me. I see the world as a grim and wicked place, I see you as something of a menace even if I love you. I believe that this is the way the world is.

Oy.

Choosing trust is, as the saying goes, a leap of faith. It is coming to recognize that the idea of reality being fixed is a mislearning. Nothing is “just the way it is.” Giving up the notion that I am “just the way I am” means that I can let go of the things that hurt me, the behaviors that hold me back, the relationships that eat my soul.

Choosing trust means that I can start taking responsibility for myself. Wow. I can take responsibility for being in my circumstances and so I can start modifying them to bring me deeper into my natural life. I  take responsibility for my happiness, my state of mind, in general, and that gives me the power to choose how I feel, to choose my thoughts, to choose my beliefs.

When I choose trust, I trust that I will find the resources  I need, that the circumstances that come up for me will be useful and bring me a deeper understanding of myself and of you. I discover that this deeper understanding brings peace with it.

When I choose trust, I stop feeling like everything is personal. I understand that you treat me the way you feel about yourself, I remember that you can only see me through your filters, that I can only see you through mine. I remember that filters are not Truth.

When I choose trust, I am choosing my natural life. My natural life is joyful. It is peaceful and playful, creative, productive, and purposeful. My life feels meaningful. Bliss is normal. I see beauty and kindness.

How have I changed from living in fear to choosing to trust?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 10052015

Leading the Followers

Leading the Followers

How´s your vision these days? I'm not talking about your eyesight. I´m talking about the vision for your life.

In the days of yore, I avoided thinking about it. Instead of thinking about how I wanted my life to go, I spent time thinking about all the things I was afraid would happen. I am serious. I made up the craziest, scariest scenarios. I was particularly brilliant at composing my personal horror stories late at night, stomach-roiling, nail-biting tales of terror. I made myself sick with fear and fretting. Tension headaches that hurt all the way down my back. Leg, knee, and foot pain plagued me. I felt so awful I ended up at Mayo; acute, chronic nervous tension! I did it to myself.

I have to say, I fought that idea, that I was doing it to me, with tooth and the proverbial nail. Back then, I believed that anxious, miserable, frightened girl was just the way I was. After all, my life was horrible, so I should feel horrible.

On the one hand, I was committed to misery. On the other hand, I really wanted to be happy. In those days, I didn't have a clue how to make that happen. I spent a lot of time wishing I were happy. I didn't understand that wishing for stuff reinforces me staying stuck. I have to think about being where I am to wish to be somewhere else. It’s how our minds work.

I inadvertently happened on a good Creative Question. Usually we use bad creative questions like, “Why can’t I get ahead?” Or, “Why am I so miserable?” Or, one of my old favorites, “What’s wrong with me?” What I started asking was, “How can I be happy?”

When we find our vision of how we want our lives to be, when we find our passions, when we feel our purpose, things change. We start to feel focus, we feel more authentic. We are, perhaps, born with our vision.

I was clueless about mine for a long time. On the one hand, I was always a thoughtful kid who loved to write. I had mystical visions as a matter of course. I loved to teach. On the other hand, because that was “just how I was” I tended to discount those things as my purpose while searching with a feeling of almost desperation for my “true” purpose.

Why am I a leader? What makes me happy to do what it takes? Why am I willing to be seen?

As I came to accept my vision, my purpose, I found that I relaxed. As I began to do this work, I felt more joyful in my everyday life. As I allowed myself to know what I know, I felt more confident in sharing that knowledge. Allowing my natural leadership to emerge made my life better in so many ways.

We are all natural leaders. We each have special talents, talents that the world can use to make lives better, to help humanity grow. We may have gifts that impact millions, we may have gifts that impact just a few, but living in our own truth, realizing our own vision, brings us into an alignment that we often fight.  

When we step into our natural alignment, life gets easier, more satisfying. When we allow that we are natural leaders, we find that we have good opportunities to lead. It may be by example, it may be by teaching, it may be through inspiration, but it will be.

How have I changed from fearing or fighting my leadership to relaxing into my natural role?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 09252015

The Fascination of You

The Fascination of You

One of the many tasks I have worked on over the years is learning how to chat. I still don’t feel comfortable with small talk. Frankly, I'm not even sure what that means. I want to connect with you, feel shy and a bit insecure, yet there are so many circumstances where I am at an event and need to make some kind of conversation with strangers.

Why do I like people? How are you interesting? What makes me feel warm towards you?

I used to ask, ¨what you do for a living?¨ That turned out not to be a very good conversation starter. People often have complicated feelings about how they make a living. I found it much more fun to ask, ¨ what do you do for fun?¨ Or ¨what makes your heart sing?¨ Or ¨where do you find joy?¨

They are fun questions for several reasons. One reason is that I hear about what gives someone joy. They tend to light up when they tell me about their passions. Reading, horseback riding, music, cooking, gardening! So much love and happiness! Another reason is that sometimes they look at me blankly and say, ¨I have kids.¨ or ¨I work full-time and go to school.¨ Those responses give a nice entré into more questions about their family or their schooling.

People are so interesting. It is so often worth digging a bit to find out why.

When I ask you about you then listen to your answer, I learn stuff. I learn about activities I didn’t know people did for fun, like ironworking. I find out about books I haven’t read or music I haven’t listened to. Somehow, wherever I go, I meet really interesting people.

In the dark ages, I was afraid of you. I feared that you would hurt me; crush me with cruel words, cut me with sarcasm, or snark, mock me, ignore me. I saw my world as a terrifying place filled with danger. It wasn't true, but it certainly was what I filtered for.

Most people I encountered treated me kindly, respectfully. I didn't notice. At the end of the day, I rehearsed the wrongs that had been done me. Once in a blue moon, I would recall a kind gesture, and marvel at how rare they were.

I was filtering for rotten behavior.

As I worked with my teacher, I learned to look for the niceties, the kind gestures, the smiles. I would pause and take a moment to let that good stuff sink in. I would think about the nice things that happened as I finished my day. I stopped rehearsing the crummy stuff, I stopped paying attention to it, I stopped letting it in.

The more I filtered for love in the world instead of hate, the more love I found in the world.

The more love I found, the less frightening you seemed, the more fascinating you became. The more compelling I found you, the easier it was to set aside my shyness in favor of my curiosity and interest. The more I did that, the nicer my world got. I like having people in my world.

How have I changed from hiding and avoiding people to enjoying connecting with you?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 09112015

Choosing the Choose

Choosing the Choose

I pulled the ¨Why do I choose?¨ card this morning. I just pulled it recently, so I tucked it back into the deck and tried again, and got it again, and a third time! I know when I’m licked, so here we go!

This is my favorite card, my favorite Creative Question. I think that it is the beginning of a most amazing, dynamic, powerful life.

When I decide to start consciously choosing, a lot of good stuff happens. I start paying attention to what I am doing. Wow. Just that single choice can make a world of difference in my life. As I pay attention to what I’m doing, I start to notice what I am thinking. Isn’t that interesting! Wow! As I start to pay attention to my thoughts, I begin to bring up my unconscious thoughts. That is amazing. Now I have the opportunity to make some compelling changes in my thinking, in my ideas about stuff, in my beliefs. Wow!

Why can I choose? What makes me decide? Why would I pay attention? How do I know I can change?

When I decide to choose, I am choosing freedom. I am choosing to own my own power, choosing to respect myself. When I decide to choose, I am deciding what I want rather than being buffeting by whatever is coming along.

When I decide to choose, I decide what I want. Knowing what I want makes life so much easier. How do I like to spend my time? Who do I like to spend time with? What do I enjoy? How do I want to live? How do I feel productive? What do I want to achieve? Where is my passion? What do I want to learn? What kind of an example do I wish to be?

As I practice choosing, I find more and more things are actually in my control. Wow. So many of us feel powerless deep inside, and so act in controlling ways to the people in our lives as though that will give us a sense of power where we need it. It never does, so we get more and more rigid, more demanding, more damaging to our relationships.

As I practice choosing, I notice my behavior more, I notice how my behavior impacts the people around me. And I find that I can choose to change my behavior. That’s power. When I cease to feel like my behavior is ¨just the way I am¨ and realize that it is the result of my thoughts and beliefs, I can choose to change those thoughts and beliefs to ones that are aligned with what I want, what I choose.

How am I powerful? What makes me strong? How do I know I am competent? How do I know I am capable?

When I decide to choose, I may find that I want to choose a teacher to help facilitate my transitions. It has been my experience that often just the act of deciding I want a good teacher will bring that teacher to my awareness.

When I find my good teacher, I do what they tell me to the best of my ability. I have had a lot of trust issues, and learning to trust a good teacher was a wonderful way to start choosing trust.

How have I changed from feeling I can’t decide to enjoying the freedom to choose?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2015 all rights reserved 08302015