Take Back Your Life!

Do You Love Your Life?

Reawaken The Spirit Of Your Intuition

Young children follow their hearts and intuition. Mine guided me into the woods where I spent most of my days hanging with the trees, the fields and the streams. They spoke to me. They told me to be wild. They told me to question everything. They told me to find my own path.

Unfortunately, we teach children to stop listening to themselves and listen to others. If they don’t stop listening to themselves, they get a punishment of some sort. Something to keep them in line.

“Well, they have to be quiet, so they can learn,” education czars say. Is that true? Can you not learn and feel alive at the same time? Maybe we need to redefine learning.

It’s interesting but I wrote most of my college speeches in a room booming with disco and rock music. I found that the music loosened me up and allowed me to write really imaginative stuff. I aced all my speech classes and had a reputation on campus as giving the best speeches.

Some folks like to write in a quiet place. Some like to write with some background noise. And some like it really loud. No right or wrong way. Just what works for you.

At the time I wrote those speeches I didn’t even know what intuition was. No one really spoke about spirit or intuition that I recall. Looking back, I can see that my intuition guided me to write in noisy places.

Just going with your inner flow and self-knowing is what I encourage folks to do in my Wild Painting! and Wild Writing! classes. Let “it” go and see where you go. The “it” being the voices of others you hear in your head. The ones that say, “You’re doing it wrong” or “that looks terrible” or “you’re no good” or “you look foolish.”

It can be difficult to let go after a lifetime of being told what to do. It’s unlearning what you learned so you can learn from the inside out.

Pablo Picasso said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”

If someone sees your “let it go” work and says with a frown, “that’s childlike,” understand that you are on the right path to reclaiming your spirit of intuition because children are naturally in touch with it. They paint with feeling rather than thinking.

Reclaiming your own intuition will empower and allow you to take responsibility for your own decisions. The earlier you do this, the more powerful you will feel.

Here is something to try: Finger paint to music. It’s fun and liberating and messy and glorious. If you want to protect your fingers, buy some barrier cream. Don’t try to make it look like anything. Let it look like something your intuition dreamed up.

I spent my first 25 years suppressing every emotion but humor (mirth). It took quite a few years of therapy to allow me to show love, anger, compassion, happiness, courage, etc. Not giving myself permission to express the full range of emotions turned me into a zombie-like wreck. Once I set myself emotionally free, my depression or whatever you call it lifted like a cement block off my chest. Life then became wonderful, lighter and I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning.

Because it took me so long to show emotion, I go nuts when I attend business or government events and the facilitator says, “We will check our emotions at the door.”

Huh?

Why would anyone want to suggest doing that? Golly, I think the lack of showing emotion is one of the main problems with work as we know it, with society as we know it, with the world as we know it. The boys who tend to go into a school and shoot it up are always described as quiet loners who didn’t show much emotion. It makes you feel dead inside to not be able to feel or feel you can’t express what you feel or even what you don’t feel. (more…)

As a young child, I felt powerful.

I used to speak my mind, entertain adults with my provocative personality and roam the neighborhood in search of adventures. School definitely put a lid on my power. Way too many of my teachers wanted to tame me, put me in a box, turn me into some obedient little clone. I tried to fight it and ended up in corners, in hallways, in detention, etc.

They just keep working me until I retreated into myself and went along with the mind and soul numbing program.

Why do we do this to kids and young adults and think it’s a good idea? (more…)

Hello Readers,

I’ve been doing social rather than social media. Social – to me – is just hanging out with the folks that live in your immediate area. In my case, my town. Social Media means hanging out with folks who do not live in my immediate area. Both are good. Time wise it can be tricky. I felt exhausted trying to send out two newsletters and a local email. Kind of like Simon Says touch your nose, your heels, your back, and the top of your head all it once. It’s impossible.

Making myself crazy didn’t seem like a good move, mentally, physically or emotionally. So, I stepped back here and forward in other areas.

Things I’ve been doing:

Working on my book. It’s  more than halfway done. (more…)

About 3 years ago, I wrote a blog post about the masks I’d worn, taken off and still have fragments of to remove. I got nervous right before hitting the send key because I thought, it’s too rad for folks. Well, that post got more comments than just about any post. It spoke to readers.

Yesterday, while patrolling the supermarket aisle in search of organic items (or was it meaning?), the title for this month’s newsletter popped into my head. Everyone Is Beautiful When They Take Off Their Masks.

If you take off your metaphorical mask, you will expose the underneath you, the one you’ve been taught to hide or hold in check or be ashamed to reveal.

The beautiful human you. The vulnerable you.  (more…)

About two weeks ago, a few friends and I held a creative visioning session at our local library. It’s part of the creativity group I started to move my town to a new, artsy, creative, community-oriented kind of place. We sketched, shared and schemed ways to take small steps to get us there. The participants came up with some phenomenal ideas for restaurants, recycling, biking, museums, art-centers, community public spaces, etc.

How often do any of us get asked to do that? We’ve had some not-that-helpful consultant led events where you say stuff and it ends up in a giant circular file never to be seen again. Sometimes, I swear it’s just an information gathering session for developers. This was put on by the community for the community.

I’d love for some of you to share your ways to create a world driven by love and kindness rather than hate, indifference and meanness. (more…)

I’ve noticed in life that we all have different truths.

Problems develop in our psyches when we do not honor our own truths and instead subordinate them to the those masquerading as truth lords. These often appear early in life as teachers or bosses or parents and later in life as governmental leaders. We are taught to ignore our own truths, that there is only one right truth and only those anointed in truth training have the power to state them. (more…)

I love coming up with new titles for my life shops. Sometimes I teach the same one 2 or 3 times. Usually, I change the title and the content to take it and the folks who trust me enough to sign up for it in a different, more daring direction.

It’s a creative act – this need to sculpt new life shops, to push the boundaries for myself and those who come in contact with me. I do the same thing with my karaoke singing. I constantly learn new songs, psychologically harder ones that take my voice to higher and wider voice mountain ranges. Every time I encourage myself to go further into my own unchartered wilderness, I come out on a different vista, with different views and altered perceptions.

Net result: I feel lighter, more naked, more stripped of society’s weight.

We come into this world loving the lightness of being, finding it bearable. Under the guise of making us human that changes. We get to run around free for a few years, then a variety of folks strap real and metaphorical backpacks on us and start handing us the bricks of heaviness (aka fears).

No more perfect example than the children I see weighted down with backpacks going to and from school. Instead of the ball and chain tied to the foot, it’s lashed onto the back.

If you were visiting from another planet and learned that Earth people forced their children to lug these huge packs to school everyday, what would you think about those people? What adults fears get stuffed into those children’s backpacks? A fear of not learning? A fear of not being successful? A fear of not living the ‘good’ life, whatever that is? A fear of learning off-script?

Unfortunately, these heavy loads just get heavier as we get older until sometimes I, you, we can barely stand up.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but beginning in junior high, I often felt so emotionally heavy I could barely lift my legs up. I’d come out of my class and wade through a hallway of molasses. Every footstep took a Herculean effort. Often, I didn’t think I could make it to class. I wondered if others could see me struggling to move forward.

One of my favorite movies is The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The characters struggle with feelings of lightness and heaviness. When they get too light, they reseek heaviness.

Half the battle to regain lightness is to recognize the true weight of fear. How much do yours weigh?

If you want to get more comfortable with lightness and agility, consider Naked Writing: Strip Off Your Fears and Get On Your With Life. I’m also having the first Naked Writing Contest this summer. Prize $20. Participants need to be subscribers of my museletter.