But what can I do? I don’t live in the South and I’ve already donated money. I’ve signed petitions and written my letters to the editor.

Then it seems like my heart tells me that I can do something more: I can visualize healing for the ocean and our community. And beyond that, I can lead a visualization experience for people like me who want to help but don’t know how.

But Here’s Where I Get Divided. . .

Another part of me remembers an episode of the sitcom How I Met Your Mother where the character Robin, a pragmatic New Yorker, has a strange moment of meeting another part of herself.

She has recently returned from a post-breakup trip to Argentina, where she fell in with drum-circling, communal-eating, hippy folks. As she returns to New York and her regular life, she starts to feel the pull between who she was on vacation and who she normally is. In a dream, she walks out into her living room to confront the dreadlocked version of herself.

This hippy part says, accusingly, “What about the important things, like…lying on the beach and thinking about peace? Don’t you care about thinking about peace?”

Is Visualizing Just Lying Around and Thinking About Peace?

There’s research that suggests using your brain to imagine an activity can actually make you better at that activity (for example, weight-lifting).

But does that mean that visualizing a larger change, like a clean and healthy ocean, for example, will make a difference? Or am I just soothing myself with a fairy tale?

What Science Doesn’t Know. . .Yet

There aren’t many research studies that can offer proof of the power of visualization or prayer on a large scale. Even though the movie “The Secret” features a woman saying she cured herself of breast cancer using visualization, how can we know that’s what made the difference? How do you measure whether something external (another person’s health, a World Cup game, or even an ongoing tragedy) is affected by something not tangible?

I can’t prove it to you, anymore than I can prove it to myself.

So what do I say to the skeptical part of me who thinks I might be acting silly and wasting time?

It Can’t Hurt

Focusing my positive thoughts and images of well-being on someone or something that desperately needs it certainly won’t make it worse!

I’ve seen and heard of positive results coming through after participation in visualization and prayer. There are so many stories, both commercial and local, that speak to the power of visualization. “The Secret” is just one example of people testifying to the idea that visualization can bring you anything you want.

People report having found lost wedding rings and gotten unexpected checks in the mail. A few celebrities, like Scott Adams, even speak to the power of visualization in their careers.

The skeptical part of me can at least get behind the idea that “positive thinking raise(s) your consciousness to possibilities so they can snag your attention” (Harvard psychologist Carol Kauffman).

It Says “I Care”

More than anything else, I think I keep visualizing and leading people through visualizations because it’s a way that we show our inner parts that the situation matters to us. We’re letting ourselves know that this IS a big deal, that it’s worth spending time on, and that we do crave change.

And how else can we start to create change, if not by declaring that we care?

There’s Hope in the Intentions of Others

I’m not the only one who feels a call to organize people in visualizing and praying for the gulf, by the way. Deepak Chopra, James O’Dea and other spiritual leaders have put together a set of three telephone and internet gatherings, which they’ve named “The Gulf Call to Sacred Action.”

I’ve signed up. And I may still lead my own kind of visualization ritual here. That’s me serving the best I know how.

Have you had an experience where visualization helped the outcome? I’d love to hear about it in your comments.

Learn from Dr. Suzanne LaCombe, aka “Shrink Lady” of MyShrink.com, in the first part of her Brain Wise series.

In it, she describes what happens for folks in therapy, successful and otherwise. She reveals how the brain learns to stay out of “crisis” or “freeze” mode in successful therapy so clients can experience staying in the flow of life.

I loved her pictures and explanation, and I think it’s a great way to understand why certain therapies and therapists work for you, and why others don’t.

Check it out: http://www.myshrinkmembers.com/brain-wise-series/

I was really in a bind. A loved one and I were in some deep conflict, and I really didn’t know how to get out of it.

After several months of inner struggle, I finally got some help and some space, and realized what was happening. And only then was any kind of change available to me.

We Are Often Blinded To How We Feel

Some part of me REALLY didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening.

This part of me felt like that information would overwhelm or paralyze me. And another part of me felt ashamed for being in the situation in the first place.

You could say everything in my system was conspiring to keep me blinded to what my real truth was – how much dread I felt in dealing with my friend, how much I felt I should have known better, how guilty I felt for being upset with him.

It’s Actually More Painful To NOT Know
Yes, it was hard to really see how much anger, shame, and sadness I was carrying around.

But trust me, it was much more painful to have those emotions buried and feel helpless to change. Seeing the reality of what was happening for me was actually a relief.

The Secret Second Step To Change
Okay, so I really acknowledged what was happening for me. And then….?

This is the secret step that most people don’t know about: You find compassion for yourself.

The truth is everything we do, EVERYTHING, is about trying to get more love and acceptance. When I looked at all the things I had been doing with my friend, all these coping and stifled behaviors, I realized that I was really doing the best I could.

All the parts of me that were hiding my truth were trying to keep me from feeling hurt. My anger was trying to protect me from feeling hurt. Even my shame was trying to help me be a good person and treat my friend well so that both he and I would feel loved.

Attention Is The Most Basic Form Of Love
The parts of us that keep us from seeing our deep feelings and needs are working hard to protect us.

One of the most loving things you can do for yourself is acknowledge your inner protection. Yes, even the parts that encourage you to have a drink or eat a bag of cookies or have a one-night stand.

Even those parts are trying to protect you. Even they deserve love.

The Inconvenient Truth
Is this easy? No.
Radical self-honesty and deep self-compassion take work.

Is it effective?
Abso-frickin’-lutely!!!

Why not try it and see what happens? Let me know what you discover.

A date stands you up.
She obviously doesn’t like you.

Your colleague gives you a dirty look across the room.
Your last email must’ve really pissed him off!

In so many places in our lives, we see a behavior and automatically make a meaning out of it. Everything from a glance to an email gets snappily run through our minds and attached to a reaction or feeling.

Part of this is biological. As animals, we’re built to rapidly process information so that we can react quickly, if need be. It’s how survival instincts work.

However, most things we’re reacting to aren’t life-or-death level situations.

Here’s how I work with my own brain to stop getting so upset by all these little situations. I call it “Alternate Stories.”

Every time something happens that starts to get me feeling negative, judgmental, sad or angry, I tell myself an alternate story about what might’ve been going on for the other person.

For example, say a person cuts me off in traffic.

My first response is to think, “Hey, look out, jerk!” And then I could proceed to get mad, feel my adrenaline rise, and start tailgating that car, just to show him he can’t treat me like that.

But before I take any action or speak, I think to myself, is there any other possible reason that guy could’ve made that lane change right in front of me?

…Maybe he’s on the phone hearing news that someone in his family just had to go to the hospital and is totally not paying attention.

…Maybe HE’s trying to get to the hospital because he’s having chest pains.

…Maybe he’s had a horrible day and his wife left him and he’s totally disconnected from anything besides his own pain.

…Maybe he’s just had a bug fly into his eye.

…Maybe he really looked in his mirror and thought he saw no one there.

…Maybe he’s really nervous on the freeway and just made a mistake.

…Or maybe he really is a jerk.
Maybe, but I just can’t know. As you can see from my list of maybes, there’s no way for me to know what’s going on with anybody else as they do whatever it is they’re doing.

(Sure, I may have really good guesses sometimes, but the point of this is this: none of us can EVER know for sure what’s going on with anyone else. Unless we ask them…and sometimes even then, we can’t be sure.)

Going through some alternate stories whenever I feel reactionary helps me to remember that I can’t know what’s up with that other person. And that sometimes my behavior could look just as annoying to someone else, even if I didn’t mean it that way at all.

The power of the Alternate Story technique is that it reconnects me to my compassion, my sense of “oh, yeah, sometimes I do that, too.”

If I don’t know for sure that he meant to run me off the road, it’s easier for me to allow space in my heart for him.

And at the same time, it helps me to un-attach from my belief that I KNOW anything. In this place of unattachment, rather than having to soothe my hurts or calm my anger, I am free.

Try it and see what you think. I’d love to hear your comments!

I’ve been having some difficulty in a close friendship of mine. This person and I have been friends for about eight years and just in the last six months, things seem to have gotten pretty challenging.

In fact, the other night, I sat on the floor with my back to the wall just really confronting whether or not we could still be friends. I thought about how I’m no longer sure if this person even enjoys spending time with me. And I dealt with ALLLL the different issues that come up for me when a relationship feels troubled.

And I cried. A lot.

I’ll tell you, there’s something about just making time to really go into all those stories and wounds and hurt places inside that really helps me to get back to reality.

And here’s my reality: Why am I asking ANYONE else to validate me?

If I’m feeling unhappy because someone doesn’t seem to like me at the moment, I’ve given them permission to decide whether I’m good enough, funny enough, caring enough…just enough!

That’s not anyone else’s job but mine. So I took it back. This friend’s opinion will always matter to me, AND it’s not healthy for my heart to try to feed off of it. I have to feed myself.

And wouldn’t you know it? Ever since I took back that responsibility to validate me and gave it to myself, that friendship seems to have recovered. My parts and my heart are relieved. Life feels much simpler and friendlier to me this way.

(For those of you reading this, I must confess…this is not my first time having this realization. I have it again and again and again. And obviously there are times when I forget it. We’re all human and we all forget these deep things we know. I, for one, forgive myself for this.)

You may have heard this quote by Marianne Williamson a lot in the last few years. It hit me at a deep level when I heard it in the movie Akeelah and the Bee four or so years ago, and it’s stayed with me ever since.

I brought it up with a client today and our discussion got me wondering–is this really true?

Here’s what I think. I think we all have a part of us who IS afraid that we are inadequate. And we have a part that is afraid we are powerful. But now, why would it frighten us to be powerful?

I read “powerful” as “responsible.” I think when we are in a part that fears our inner power, we are worried about not being able to control that power, to wield it for good, to use it in Right Action. And this part of us worries about all that we could destroy…maybe even the world.

I say that our real goal is to attain full Beingness (you can call it Presence, Self, HIgher Self, Union with Spirit, or perhaps Enlightenment). When we are in our full Beingness, we have choice. We have options. And being able to sit among all our options and choose wisely IS power.

Our true power lies in our ability to clearly and calmly perceive our surroundings with deep compassion and wisdom. This compassion tells us we all spring from the same Source and this wisdom tells us that, no matter what our actions, Spirit has got us.

From this place, we can choose how to respond, whether it is to declare a deep “NO,” to place a loving hand upon a friend, or to simply sit in the moment.

And this place of full choice, full comprehension, and full heart…there is nothing scary about it.

* For those who do not know Marianne Williamson’s lovely passage, I’ve included the full quote below.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

My journey to self-healing began when I cracked open my mom’s copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull at age 15. So what you’ll find on my list of resources are some unexpected things mixed among the proper Self-Help books.

As my first Teacher, Richard Bach, says, you have to go through life like a baleen whale, sucking in great gobs of seawater and searching for plankton of truth. Some books are a buffet and some contain just the one kernel you needed.

Enjoy and comment here with your favorite books (or movies or whatever) that turned the lights on inside of you.

Check out my recommendations.

As you evolve in your life, trying to learn to trust your intution, your path seems to become much less….dependable. And not so much a straight-down-the-line-to-where-you-can-see-the-end walkway. It’s more like an invisible yellow brick road. And nobody else can see it or feel it but you.

So how DO you know or learn to trust that you’re going the right way?

Karen Floyd of Innate Design and I talked about this today on my Emotions in Small Business radio show.

Here are a couple gems from our chat:

• Try to release the self-judgement that you’re being “fickle.”
  You have to follow your passion and find your happiness, or else no one (not your clients, your family, or you) will be happy.
• Recognize that a closed door is guidance, too.
  Rather than take your pickaxe to the wood, consider that maybe this a sign that you’d be better served doing something else.
• Reframe your definition of yourself.
  I loved Karen’s clarification that she’s not “abandoning” anything, she’s simply adding passions to her life and career.

Be sure to listen to the end of the show, when Karen shares her Four Questions that help her decide whether to follow any opportunity.  I thought they were beautifully phrased, easy to remember, and insightful enough to show me where I get tripped up sometimes in my decisions.

There’s one moment where Elliot says this:
“…but relationships? I always heard that relationships were easy. That even when they were hard, they were easy.”

I remember watching that for the first time, and thinking who the hell has SHE been talking to?!

Let’s get this clear, right off the bat here: relationships are hard.

Sometimes, when the clouds clear up and the planets are aligned, we have some smooth days together. Nobody gets triggered, everybody is peachy happy keen. And yeah, at the beginning of a relationship, all the stories are new, the chemistry is super fresh, and the things that will later feel irritating are easy to overlook.

But if it’s the not the very beginning of your relationship, and all the stars are doing their own thing, well, you’re going to have to work in your relationship.

Actually, I lie. What’s closer to the truth is that you’re going to have to work inside yourself for the sake of the relationship.

What feels hard about relationships is how they urge us to change ourselves. To compromise or sacrifice…or more often, fight AGAINST compromise and sacrifice.

Working on yourself–learning to pause when you start getting sad or angry or depressed, learning to listen more to your inner observer, learning to stop yourself from saying something defensive and to instead acknowledge you made a mistake–that’s the hard stuff.

But it’s also the great stuff. Most of the time, I think self-work just feels hard because we don’t know where to start and we don’t know what to do. Things always feel hard when we aren’t happy and don’t know what will fix it.

If you just take a step though…find a book to get some wisdom or ides, start a daily affirmation practice, journal about your conversations with your partner to try to find patterns…you’ll discover that the payoff is incalculable.

Hey, I’m addicted to self-work for a reason. And if you need help finding a place to start, I’m here.

In case you missed it, here’s the archived show I did today about the emotions around comparison and competition in small business life.

Here’s a summary of what I talked about:

When you’re in business for yourself, you need to look at who’s been there before you.What’s the competition doing and what is happening in the industry?

Trouble with that is most of us can get sidelined by negatively comparing ourselves to other people’s successes. It can look like this:

• “Man, she’s doing so well and it’s only been a couple years…why is it taking me so long to get that number of clients?”
• “I can’t believe so-and-so already has a book out…he’s so much more professional than me.”
• “Look at all those calls/sales/clients that he’s getting. Why didn’t I get that call?! All my business is going to him!”"

A lot of this negative thinking comes from a basic belief that there’s a finite amount of business out there (scarcity mentality), which can make any of us feel envious or even panicky. This belief drives the competition mindset, and from there, it’s only a small step to self-doubt and other sabotaging emotions.

So what can you do?

First, realign your beliefs and realize that you can choose to believe in abundant and unlimited resources. What’s helped me most is believing that no one out there can do it quite the way I can. Sure, there’s other therapists and healers out there, and there are certainly thousands of radio shows out there, but I bring my unique self to what I do, and that special combination is just what my potential clients were waiting for.

Next, stop devaluing your own accomplishments. Most of us diminish what we’ve done because, well, that was easy. I know, cause I’ve already done it.   Recognize that some people out there are looking at what you’ve done and are just as impressed/jealous/intimidated as you are about other people’s accomplishments. Successful business always looks more professional and amazing from the outside. So try and bring your “outside observer” perspective to your own business and achievements so you can really appreciate what you’ve done so far.

If you’re in that jealous competition mindset, try these tactics:

• Remember this is simply an emotional state. Emotions are temporary influences and you’re not always gonna feel like this. Sometimes you think you’re pretty cool, remember?!
• Remember that starting a business is a journey. The average business takes 3 to 5 years to become successful. 
• Get in touch with your personal supporters and receive the positive reinforcements they provide. Not only is it ok to need people to boost your mood, it’s pretty much required!

To prevent further hijacking by business success envy, try this:

• Before you start looking around at what your competitors are doing, prepare yourself for coping with this emotional state. Set yourself up mentally to track your own emotions and thoughts so you notice when you start going down a negative path. It’s easier to stop then.
• Remind yourself to keep an open mind. The most successful people in business, and in life, are those who remember that they are always open to learning. If you look at your colleagues’ successes as an open learner, you can see things as a lesson and perhaps find similar success, rather than fall into self-deprecation.
• Find community support of other people who are starting businesses. They’ll help you by providing validation of how you feel and keeping a realistic perspective.
• Lastly, give up the pressure and illusion of control. You can be doing everything right and still not have the success you want in the current moment. I believe that Spirit knows what it’s doing and I surrender to that higher power. It’s important for me to remember that I’m not doing this by myself…something greater is watching out for me.

Thanks to all who listened in. 

My next show is on Thursday, January 15th at 3pm Pacific Time, when I will be chatting with poet and freelance copyeditor Dorine Jennette.  I hope to chat with you then!