Moxie Living: Courage and Confidence

Let’s jump right in,

A client wrote last week, ‘I want to make a difference. But maybe what I really want is to make a name for myself.’ Another wrote, ‘I think I’ve confused finding my passion with seeing my name in lights’. And another, ‘I want to do work that matters, I want my work to be seen, to stand out, but I feel like I am losing who I am in the process. Help!’

Background: They all are making (or want to) a living doing what they love while making a difference.

If that’s you, read on. If you aren’t self employed but want to make a difference in your career, read on. If you’re curious because you want to do work that matters, read on. If you know there has to be another way, read on.

Everyone else, you’re excused. But you may want to read, to really silence the inner critic know what you’re dealing with first, that went up last week.

All settled who want to be here?

Okay, lets keep jumping.

Have you ever noticed that in order to really get something you’re shown it over and over again in different forms until it finally goes in.

Me too.

I too have confused making a difference with making a name for myself. I too wanted to see my name in lights. I have sooooooo lost who I am  – letting my ego lead the way – because I wanted to stand out.

I explained to the people who wrote, I started with my heart in the right place it got ‘kinda messy when I didn’t know how to merge the make a living part with the make a difference part.

I choose to remember this,

“The basic foundation of humanity is compassion and love. This is why, if even a few individuals simply try to create mental peace and happiness within themselves and act responsibly and kind-heartedly towards others, they will have a positive influence in their community.” ~ Dalai Lama

We can’t make a difference just for ourselves.

We can’t make a difference to simply satisfy our ego: to be acknowledged, approved of, known, famous, or to have our name in lights.

Now, at more than any other time, we are leaping into who we really are and fearlessly allowing ourselves to not only do what matters but what is needed at this time to heal the planet (and it’s residents) that has been driven and destroyed by fear for a very long time.

This is where we find ourselves.

Us.

Alive at a time when we are collectively agreeing that we will no longer wait for things to get better or be different, we are choosing to make the change. And it’s needed. It’s already began.

There are billions of people on this planet connected to you by heart and compassion. And the common connection to do work that matters and makes a difference is ultimately – for those choosing to take part – is to bring all suffering to an end.

That’s the path.

It’s an important walk.

It’s a big deal.

The road to make a difference while making a name for yourself is in the opposite direction.

And yes, some will want to make a living while making a difference, and that’s okay. Choosing to do work that matters and meet all their earthly needs, because, hey, banks don’t accept ‘hugs’ for mortgage payments as far as I’m aware.

However,

Ultimately.

Money and making a difference are not related. I know you may disagree. That’s fine.These are my thoughts.

But can you open your heart for a moment and allow me to explain and go deeper?

The yearning for peace, kindness and compassion to all beings is no longer a nice idea and a members only spirituality club. It’s happening. Now. Everywhere.

The old ways on how our home has been run – including business and careers – are crumbling and breaking down, the unjust rules that have been in place to keep us asleep – locked in fear – are falling apart at the seams because we are just done with the struggle and suffering.

Watched TV lately? Yeah, it leaves me asking ‘are we going to make it’ on some days.

We are.

You know it, so do I. We haven’t been taught this, we just know it on a level we don’t even have the words to explain.

We are choosing to wake up voluntarily, to no longer be caught and trapped in mindset of the political, economic powers and systems that perpetrate suffering further.

We are in a time when people – us – are asking questions and coming to a new understanding that, ‘What do you know, we really are connected!’ and the bigger realisation and we are co-creators. We’re in this together.

People are opening their eyes all over the world and are leaping willingly into a new era of asking different questions that will – we know – will work for the greater good, not individual return.

We are choosing to do work on ourselves because we know now that’s all we can do.

We are way past trying to change the outside world, mostly. That’s the old way and the route was to condemn, blame, shame, tell people they are wrong, do or say anything to get them to fall in line to our scripts of how it should all go.

We are now accepting that the change and difference we want to make is happening faster now that we stopped fighting with the external and returned to Love on the internal.

We are working the inside to automatically impact the outside.

 Intuitively we know that we aren’t here to live in fear, we are Love and we want to live in peace and joy, forgiveness, kindness and compassion.

Instinctively we know we cannot end or heal the suffering left over from the old way all alone. Nope, we need one another to do this.

All suffering has been caused by fear – in all it’s forms. As long as we are a willing participate in the fear we aren’t allowing the healing that needs to take place to happen. We can’t have our cake and eat it for want of a better metaphor. This is not the time be sitting on fences for want of another one.

We are acting from a place of compassion, love and truth.

If, like those words wrote by individuals above, you’re in business to make a difference you’ll know that many teach in order to reach more people and connect with your tribe you have to become the authority and expert in your field, and you have to choose to go big or go home, become the big fish in the pond to make what you want to do work.

I can see how many become confused and eventually lose who they are. I can see how I did.

You’re innocent.

The shift that is taking place is more radical than dressing up the old lessons from the old school in a new outfit in attempt to sell it to those who haven’t made to connection fully yet.

“We are all students in the Earth school,” writes Gary Zukav and Linda Francis in The Heart of the Soul. “And the time has come to create a whole new lesson plan. What we need now is an inward focus, in which we cultivate the heart and live in alignment with our souls.”

The lesson plan is in your hands. It’s written. It’s who you’ve always been. It’s not being taught. You don’t need to schooled in what you already intuitively know. You only need to be it.

I believe we are all going to make it. Together.

The world is in session. You have a place at the table. You always have.

So,

You can choose to stand out, or you can choose to stand up, stand with and stand connected.

You can choose to have your name in lights, but why choose something so insignificant when you are the light?

And if you do rise, there is a risk that the fear energy left over from the old way will throw everything at you – you may risk ridicule, you may be left out, you may never be allowed back into the old club – the fear that has been running this planet when we have been asleep would prefer you paid attention to a light you shine on others instead of beaming your own.

You can choose to go big or go home.

You choose what to focus on.

You can choose compassion, love, the divine or you can keep trying to jump up and grasp at the illusion of recognition, fame and fortune and lose yourself in the process. That choice is yours to make.

But what you decide, will be your decisions everywhere. What you choose, will impact your choices everywhere.

I believe in us. Let’s not confuse making a difference with wanting to feed the needs of your ego to be something special.

Making a difference happens in each and every relationship you have with any other being.

It’s the smile at a stranger. It’s aligning yourself fully with your core. It’s recognising we are all carrying pain left over from the old ways and responding to what’s needed not reacting to what we don’t understand. It’s knocking a neighbours door to see if they are okay. It’s answering in the best way you can at that moment to suffering. It’s offering yourself fully and expecting nothing in return. It’s being here.

Gandhi wrote, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” He didn’t say, “Be famous and you’ll become the change wish to see in the world”. It includes the world directly outside your front door,  it’s the world going on your living room, street, immediate community . It’s the world that you walk about in every day.

It’s the world inside you.

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over. The kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

You want to make a difference, do work that matters, be the change – don’t leave home. Eh? Let your heart, wisdom, intuition be your guide, you will never, ever, lose yourself again.

Name in lights? It’s a past story.

Name for yourself? You are more. So. Much. More.

And maybe, you need to lose who you think you are in order to become who really you are.

Connect and align. Walk. Do the work that matters and is needed. Let your work be seen.

Everything else is just noise. A distraction. It has nothing to do with the cause.

What about you?

What do you think is needed now – at more than any other time – to make a difference and do work that matters?

Do you want help aligning yourself with what you ‘do’ in the world? Download the Core Values Workbook. I may be able to help you bring together making a living and making a difference.

The inner critic.

The term used to describe that inner voice which judges, belittles, berates and attacks you. You know the one, yes?

It’s vicious.

Relentless.

The voice that will quite happily remind you of your mistakes and misdemeanors from the past. The voice that ensures that you compare your life to others – success, achievements, what they have, what you’ve not got. The voice that consistently reminds you that you are not okay.

The voice that tells you that you aren’t good enough and worthy enough … as you are.

It has – should you ever need it – a detailed blow-by-blow account of all your past failings and screw-ups (sometimes with a nice image to boot) neatly stored away ready to remind you whenever you want to listen.

It can tell you that your best is not good enough, so it sets for you such high standards and unrealistic expectations (perfectionism) that when you don’t meet them it dutifully reminds you of all the times in past when you didn’t make the grade.

It knows all your shoulds, can’ts, must do, ought-tos – like a spammer it keeps sending you the same emails over and over and over – it can feel like you can’t unsubscribe.

It knows the names that hurt you, learned from the past, all the left over emotional scars that you’ve picked up – thick, stupid, worthless, waste of space, fat, ugly, unlovable, [insert your own] – it latches on to the thoughts and beliefs you have about you.

It’s good at it’s job. Super effective – especially your self-esteem is already low in certain areas of your life – your inner critic has always ‘got your back’ to remind you when just aren’t making the grade. Don’t worry, it won’t let you forget.

It appreciates that you listen well, and loves it when you act upon it’s instructions as if they were true.

It loves a good story, but not a love story. It likes making them up about you. It takes some of your thinking and creates sweeping generalisations and distortions of your world and your place within it. It doesn’t matter whether these are true or not, it’s simply following the script of who you think you are deep deep deep down.

It’s can speak to you all through the day, and you might never hear it. You know it’s shown it’s face by the way you feel. Sometimes it’s hard to work out what is it’s voice and what is that of the usual chitter chatter in your head. Sometimes it shows you images. Stills. It’s so well woven into your thinking. Usually don’t know it’s wittering a away in the background.

It’s such a familiar voice, and yet a complete stranger.

It talks you down, not up.

It talks weaknesses not strengths.

It falsely accuses you and places upon you unreasonable demands that no human could meet.

It’s toxic. Poisonous. A weapon of healthy well-being destruction. Give it air time and it will play for you repeats and reruns of your own worst movies.

It adores the fact it’s words leave you utter helpless, and that you can’t find your peace when it’s around.

Popular opinion is you have to silence it, talk it down, ditch it. Or, embrace it, own it, make it your best friend, respect it?

How can you silence a voice that you aren’t aware of?

How can you talk it down when you don’t know how to speak compassionately to yourself?

How can you ditch a voice with kindness, when you have never spoke to yourself with loving kindness?

How can you switch from loathing to love, critical to compassionate, kicking to kindness if you don’t actually know what you’re dealing with?

Yes, you can change the thoughts you have – it will help – for a time. But your inner critic doesn’t start with your thinking, it starts with the negative identity you have about you. 

It’s not ‘the inner critic’ it’s ‘your inner critic’. It belongs to you.

See, the inner critic didn’t just appear in your life one day when you weren’t looking.

You two go w-a-y back.

You grew up together.

You had the same parents/carers. You were both there when you took your first steps, the first bollocking you got, your first kiss, first crush, first love, first day at school, first job interview … and everything in between.

It probably wasn’t around much the first couple of years of your life. When it did pitch up, it didn’t exactly announce it’s arrival. It just moved in, shuffling in the back door. No invite was ever sent. Gatecrashing your party.

Like everyone else on the planet your inner critic showed up on the scene when you were being taught the rules you had to live by. Sometimes these rules were given to you very clearly. At other times you had to decipher what they meant. 

You were taught by others – who also had this class in their own time, and their learning has influenced your teaching (good to remember that) – given instructions on what was right and wrong, what was lovable and what was punishable, what was acceptable and what wasn’t, what was good and what was bad.

For some of you, you may have been given mixed signals.

Perhaps one day you made people laugh when you accidentally dropped your dinner all over the floor you heard, ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s not your fault, it’ll clean’  but the next day when you did the exact same thing you heard, ‘You are so ‘effing careless, watch what you’re doing clumsy!’ 

You’ll forget the dinner on the floor as an adult, but your inner critic will remind you to not make mistakes unless you want to be viewed as clumsy and careless.

For some of you, you may have been taught you are your behaviour.

Exploring how electrical sockets work you may have tried to stick your finger in one. Instead of being given the stern warning of what could happen, you may have been told, ‘You are bloody stupid. Why are so daft?’ 

You won’t remember the electrical socket but you could be left with emotional residue and thinking (inner critic) that you can’t do anything wrong or people will think you are just stupid.

For some of you, you may have got repeated signals and messages telling you that you aren’t okay. You probably don’t remember learning how to speak, but someone somewhere probably got you to repeat words so you could learn them.

Repetition is key to learning and mastering a skill. It also works in advertising, how many jingles do you remember form TV adverts? What about TV shows.

The same technique  – repetition – could have been used on you as a child messages need to be repeated over and over again until eventually you learn them. Maybe you got repeated messages and signals that you just weren’t good enough and not okay?

Are you rewarding your inner critic?

If I asked you, what does it feel like when you listen to your inner critic? I bet you would tell me you feel awful. And maybe a mix of helpless, scared, lost, fearful, afraid, anxious, angry, upset … we know how it feels when we are the mercy of that voice and we don’t like it.

We want it to stop and quickly.

However instead of using compassion, kindness and acceptance we feed and reward the critic by using it to make the feelings stop.

Say you are going for a job interview.

You feel anxious about it and you think, ‘Why bother, everyone is better than me.’  

Your anxiety increases.

Instead of accepting that yes – of course – there will be people in the world who have may have stronger strengths in certain areas for this job. Instead of showing yourself compassion by owning and being proud of you do have and what got you the interview.

You don’t.

In pipes your inner critic, ‘There are better people than you, you’re right. Remember when you lost every race in your high school sports day? People laughed. Yeah, you were no good then, and no good now. Followed by, ‘No, you’ll never be ready, you are so lazy, you didn’t work hard enough at school, you flunked out of university, you were told you would never amount to much. Look, you aren’t much. Stay at home. Stick with what you know. Why put yourself through this, you never could get the words out, you won’t in an interview’ .

Making you more anxious.

You decide not to go.

Which reduces your anxiety immediately.

You have just rewarded your inner critic.

And it started at a belief you have about your identity, ‘Everyone is better than me’. 

If I heard this I wouldn’t ask you to only change your self-talk (yet) or write an affirmation. That would be the equivalent of putting a plaster on a broken leg. Doing something, but not the thing that’s needed.

I would ask you, ‘Is that true, is everyone better than you? Better to or compared to what exactly?’ or ‘What evidence and proof do you have that everyone is better than you?’ or ‘Is it true that you know everyone?’ 

Because in the statement you had about you (everyone is better than me) sits a part of your identity.

All the inner critic did (it’s job) was provide you with the so called proof and evidence that what you thought about you, coming from your identity was correct.

My point, if you really want to silence and tame your inner critic, go to the source of where it originated.

The identity, not the thought rising form the identity.

 

You do that, and I will write a post about how to disarm your inner critic with compassion and kindness.

Meet you back here in a few days.

PS: There as a group of us coming together in The Moxie Project, it’s where, for 6 weeks, you will undo the false stories and scripts you have about you. I would love you to come, I promise you will learn how to stop being so hard on yourself and how to practice self-compassion, not self-criticism.

Disclaimer: This was going to be a post about how quickly we can have a belief change, but by the end it became something else. And that’s okay sometimes you have to remember a story so you can change the way you feel about it. 

So the story goes like this,

When I was 8, I bit the school dentist.

Like a wolf. I drew blood. And I didn’t release my pearly whites until he moved his hand away from trying to prise my mouth open.

Backtrack. Said dentist had been trying to give me a filling for six months.

Twice a month they came for me, I was taken out of my class and along with a few classmates and we would head up to the surgery. The first few months he was all child-have-a-Mr-Men-smiley-badge-friendly and then I think he got fed up with me.

I was scared. I mean, prior to this he had gassed me – no warning. Drilling was not going to happen.

This was ’78? ’79? – Pain Dentistry was chic.

Novocaine? Hell no. Which is probably why a huge portion of my generation is traumatised about visiting the dentist, why our teeth aren’t pearly whites, and why hypnotherapists are kept busy.

Adult years. I went to the dentist. Many of them. I did open my mouth. I didn’t maul them. And the one I loved had a side hustle as a hypnododah, and I loved that he froze everything from the bridge of my nose to my chin. But he retired.

Fast-forward. Two weeks ago I found myself just going ahead and making myself comfortable in a pink chair with a new dentist at the helm.  A quick pain-free check up in December, I needed a filling, the day had come.

I opened my mouth ready for the drugs that would leave unable to speak for 6 hours. They didn’t arrive. Drilling began instantly. I got his attention by flapping, with something to prop my mouth open all I can manage to say to him is, ‘Hhhtoopp, eh avent ubed ee’. 

Which to my surprise he managed to decipher, ‘You said in your form you were nervous of dentists, 90% of anaesthesia for fillings isn’t needed, it’s just a little filling on the enamel. I can numb you if you like. But I promise you won’t feel a thing. ‘

He carries on, ‘The numbing, the needle anyway, can – for most nervous patients – be more traumatic than the filling itself”

I signal for him to carry on. All done. Five mins. Didn’t feel a darned thing.

Back home I’m instantly searching on Google, ‘Is my Dentist a sadist?’

Well, no, apparently not. I came across lots of information and stories from 70’s dentistry survivors saying they ask for no numbing: quicker, less painful, no effect from the drugs.

Thought shift happens but,

Still not 100% convinced I text my sister and she replies, ‘No (insert f-word) way would anyone get near my mouth without numbing it first. You went to Sweeney Todd!’

At which point I want to make myself happy smile badge. How brave am I? She’s given birth 4 times, and I am the proud owner of a new filling managed without drugs. Who’s courageous, who’s courageous?

Why am I telling you this?

Mmmm, well,

I thought this was going to be about,

1: A thought about a belief can be changed an instant. If we’re willing to change our mind?

2: Moments of clarity and transformation can happen anywhere, and at any time, even in pink chairs. I mean, sometimes a piece of learning comes to us in a form we didn’t expect. Pay attention.

3: If you are determined to see things differently, you will. You simple have to decide.

4: You can learn new ideas about everything that is rooted in time (past), even though it may appear difficult and full of disbelief at first.

5: When you are given another way to look at things, try it on, then try it on again, a few more times, then decide.

But something else has emerged …

I have laughed so many times at story of ‘the day Dawn bit the dentist’.

But right now writing this I’m feeling a little uneasy. I’m totally preoccupied with the age I was.

That little girl isn’t frozen in the past, she’s not in time, she’s part of all time.

She’s still here.

And I’m thinking about us, and all the times when we couldn’t – didn’t know how or dare to – stand up for ourselves.

And I’m thinking about be who you really are and how many layers and perceptions of experiences we have to undo to remember.

So what I really want to say is,

• you have the right to question. Maybe you’ve learned to keep quiet and not upset the boat. Perhaps as a child, you couldn’t ask for clarity when you didn’t understand, you are an adult, you can ask as many as you like.

• you have the right to say, ‘No, this isn’t for me’.  You can choose to end the traditional stories of how it should go, and write it the way you want it to be.

And,

• you can dare to express yourself fully.

• you can step in front of the story.

• the process of understanding more of who you are can take a second or 35 years+. And that’s okay. Sometimes we are only ever one thought away to see things differently.

• you can question the rules. Or at the very least discover who made them up in the first place.

• you can switch paths, maybe what you thought you had to say isn’t what you really needed to say. And that’s okay.

And maybe in all of us, there is a little part of that is so courageous, wild and untamed, that perhaps – if pushed – we may just bite a dentist (not recommended, however).

Love.

Dawn

 

Every now and again on Facebook there is a new round of some tag and share thing.

Last year it was throw a bucket of ice on yourself. And the most recent I’ve noticed is, ‘7 Things You Don’t Know About Me’. How it works, the first person posts their list of seven unknown facts and tags (nominates) one of their friends to write their own list.

And on it goes, 1.23 billion times until 2020 when it pops up again.

I love reading what my friends have shared.

Snapshots of their journey. A story in two lines. Even though a friend and I could have shared deodorant for two months while travelling, there is so much more.

These posts on Facebook are popular.

(Mmm, maybe because it’s not so much about the Face, but more about the Book?)

And,

I think it’s because we have space and opportunity to be heard.

For someone to say, ‘Tell me your story’, it’s the ultimate invitation to connect.

I think too many of us have been taught we don’t have the right to be share – children should be seen and not heard – and we spend many years in systems where we are taught to listen to facts instead of people.

As humans, we crave to share our stories. By sharing we don’t feel so lost. Isolated. Alone.

I think it’s in all of us to be intimate and connected with one other.

When we share we don’t feel the distance between us. By sharing we can put down what we don’t want to carry alone anymore. Stories – unforced – always seem to come at the right time so we can learn from them.

And, I think we crave life conversations. Real conversations.

But,

I am aware that there are many stories within in all of us we aren’t ready to tell, not yet.

Choosing to throw a blanket over parts of ourselves, to never expose them to another because they lay bare (and we fear the judgement?) all our shame, fears, flaws, regrets and weaknesses.

If Maya Angelou hadn’t told her story in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, I’m wondering right now if would I have become aware of inclusion, human rights and discrimination.

If Julie Chimes didn’t tell her story in a Stranger in Paradise, or if I hadn’t heard the story of George Castrinos, I’m wondering right now what I would really understand the human capacity to forgive fully.

Maybe their teaching would have reached me in another form, but really, really, I don’t know.

Stories transform: in the telling they can change the entire direction, meaning, and purpose of our lives.

We are filled with them, all of us, no exclusion – it’s our stories that connect us and stitch us invisibly together.

I think we have two books: the one we open, read and share with others willingly, and the other we keep on the shelf, for our eyes and night time reading only. And I think it’s the content of the second book is where we can help each other the most.

Just last night I was listening to Eva Schloss. Eva is the step-daughter of Otto Frank, the father of Anne Frank. Eva is a holocaust survivor, in the interview she said that it took her 40 years to tell her story of her experience in the concentration camp.

Why am I writing this? To remember to listen, it may be the first time someone has been heard.

Our stories are powerful. Sure, there is a time and place for the telling.

But the power that fuels them comes from the storyteller – you.

You don’t need to have the ‘Happy Ever After’ to tell them.

Our stories can imprison us, and at the same time, they can set us free us.

What’s the narrative in the second book that may set you free in the telling?

Love.

Dawn