Take Imperfect Action – You Never Know What Will Happen!

In my writing group, I was given the task to share a painful memory I had from middle school. If your middle school years were anything like mine, you can understand why it didn’t take long for me to come up with one.

When I was between clients, I wrote a short piece about a time when my best friend had abandoned me and proceeded to shame me. I felt devastatingly alone.

While writing, I didn’t over-think it, I didn’t re-write it, and I certainly didn’t submit it with the thought it would get published. What I did do was tell myself that I was going to write regularly, and submit regularly, and let go of things needing to be perfect.

Guess what?! The piece turned out to be the first article I’ve ever had published!

This affirmed for me that the level of time, energy, suffering, and pain that we put into something does not directly correlate with whether someone will like it or not.

Yes, I have worked very hard and achieved some great life goals as a result…and sometime things – especially when inspired – can affect people in ways you never would have imagined, even if it feels easy.

I don’t think this was the best thing I’ve ever written. I kind of wish one of the other pieces I’ve submitted was accepted instead. But I’m going to soak it up and enjoy this moment.

I want you to remember that you never know how something you say, do, write, or create will impact someone else. Something that you think is “nothing” can change someone’s life. Something you think is “not so impressive” can actually inspire others.

Try out what I did – commit to taking action every day towards your passions.

Hit the metaphorical (or actual) submit button. See what happens.

You never know!

Check out my article here. It’s over in Elephant Journal, one of the few online magazines I actually read.

***

Ready to dive deeper into this? Check out Freedom School and see what everyone’s obsessed about. It’s not just group coaching. It’s a mindset revolution that you won’t want to miss.

why we let ourselves down

If you’re anything like me (or most humans), you start off with good intentions, make a promise to yourself to do things differently, and then don’t follow through.

You may say things like, “I will only have one glass of wine tonight” and it ends up being 3 (or more).

Maybe you say, “I won’t spend anymore money on clothes,” which works fine until the next Patagonia sale.

You might even say, “ I will not go on a second date with someone that does not reach out to me first,” which you stick to like glue until you feel extra lonely on a Friday night.

WTF? Why do we do that? Why do we go against our word
especially when its our word to ourselves?

Here’s the deal. Most people (and to be honest, many coaches themselves) focus on taking action “no matter what.” That means the emphasis is on taking action even if that action goes against every thought running through your head.

So you think, “Having another glass of wine is going to feel sooooo good.” Then you fight that thought all night and you succeed and succeed
until you don’t.

You think, “Buying that will be soooooo fun!” Then you fight that thought…until you don’t.

You think, “I am so afraid of being alone the rest of my life.” And you fight that with all your might
.until you can’t anymore, and give in to the booty call.

Do you see a pattern here? No matter how many times you’ve successfully taken an action (or non-action, like refraining from going out for that booty call), if the underlying thought doesn’t change, you will eventually give in to your desires.

Resisting a powerful thought or feeling does not work in the long-run.

My colleague, Brooke Castillo, likens resisting your desires to pushing a beach ball under water and trying to hold it there. When you are resisting your desires, you can keep it up for awhile, but you can’t keep it up forever. You eventually have to let go.

A side note for those of you that cringe at the idea of resisting your desires: This isn’t about resisting healthy desires. This is about those desires we have that don’t serve our higher selves.

If you’ve been with me for awhile, you know I talk about how thoughts create our beliefs, which create our feelings, which create our actions, and ultimately create our reality/life experience.

In order to change our feelings (like a strong desire) we need to change our thoughts. Yes, we can try to change the action through resisting, but in most cases, since the thought is still there, we eventually can’t keep up with trying to change the action.

Unless we change our thoughts, the feeling that drives the actions we take does not change and ultimately, our actions don’t permanently change.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could change out behavior and have it feel…easy? To have it not be a constant battle with our feelings? And to have that change be permanent?

If we want to create a new reality – not buying something we don’t need; not having “just one more” drink or one more slice of pizza; not going out with people who don’t truly appreciate and love us, or anything else that doesn’t serve our evolution as human beings – we need to change our thoughts about the situation.

Start here:

:: What feeling do you think doing x, y, or z will make you feel? Do you think it will make you feel happy? Strong? Loved? That’s your current thought. (“Eating this will make me feel better.” “Going out with them will help me feel connected/loved.”)

:: Notice that the way you feel after thinking that thought is often a shittier feeling than you intended (weak, needy, self-pity, self-hatred, etc.), which is why you do something that makes you feel shitty in the end (crazy, right?!)

:: What different thought do you need to have in order to feel the way you want to feel, that isn’t dependent on someone else or doing something that isn’t healthy for you? (“I don’t need this glass of wine – I like to feel energized and fully present every day.” “I am more than enough as I am.” “This is exactly what I am supposed to be feeling right now.”

Make that thought your new best friend.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t come easily. This is stuff I teach my clients over and over again, and I continue to practice it myself every day.

But you must start trying.

***

Ready to dive deeper into this? Check out Freedom School and see what everyone’s obsessed about. It’s not just group coaching. It’s a mindset revolution that you won’t want to miss.

you can do hard things

Once upon a time, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. As a teen, I was resentful I had a schizophrenic, bi-polar father and a mother that was abusive despite her best intentions. I hated that I grew up in a very poor neighborhood that was so violent my mother didn’t let me get the mail since we had so many drive-by shootings, and that we never got it together enough to own a house so we had to move at the mercy of our landlords.

More recently, I was feeling sorry that I had to work so much to provide insurance for our family ($2600 a month for a family of three with a $10,000 deductible! In Oregon our plan was 1/4 that with a low deductible); I was resentful that I “had” to get a doctoral degree when I had a toddler (long story I won’t go into here); I was bitter that my husband was gone so much and that I was home alone with my kid way more that I wanted to be…and more. The self-pity party went on and on… waaahhhh.

Deep down, I knew this wasn’t serving me. But it really did feel like my life was messed up at the time, and that I had a right to be pissed about it.

I’m sure you’ve felt this way a few times, yes?

I was so blocked about this – the hard stuff seemed so hard that it really did seem factual that my life was not the way it was supposed to be.

I couldn’t self-coach around it, so I asked my coach to let me vent for 2 minutes, and at the end she says to me, “You know…that all sounds pretty badass to me.”

I was taken aback.

Right.

The other way to look at the hard things we have had to deal with in life is, “Hey – I’m a badass. That’s right. I did this. Me.”

I am providing for my family. I am Doctor Ana Verzone, thank you very much. I live in the most awe-inspiring state ever – yes, it is harder to live here, and we savor it even more as a result. I’m married to an adventurer and I can hold down the fort alone when need be. I grew up poor and now I’m not. I chose all this, and the Universe dealt me this hand, because I am a badass, and I can handle it.

All that shit you wish didn’t happen to you? It is part of your badassery training (if badassery is even a word).

Flip the self-pity into self-admiration, sister. This party is just getting started.

You survived that shit. And now you’re learning to thrive.

The broken heart?

Getting fired?

The messed-up childhood?

The abusive relationship you are ashamed about?

Your chronic illness?

All of it – all the hard stuff – has forged you into something stronger. But it’s up to you to see that.

We can do hard things.

You can do hard things. You already have.

What about you, badass? What have you survived? What have you risen above? What battle scars do you bear?

Chin up.

You’ve got this.

***

If you want to join a tribe of people that will help you navigate this wild and precious life, come check out Freedom School – for rebels like you. It’s not just personal growth for rebels. It’s Jedi training for the new world.

let people be wrong about you

Here’s a little secret: one of the most relaxing things you can do for yourself – better than a spa vacation in a remote mountain area or trolling a fishing line by your kayak in the Sea of Cortez – is to let people be wrong about you.

I know – it sounds crazy, right? But think about it. How much mental energy goes into protecting our image, defending our stance, or worrying about what other people think about us?

Answer: a shit-ton.

Here’s a quirky thing you might not know about me: I received a near-perfect score on the “logic” portion of the Graduate Record Exam (the GRE is a hideous, multi-hour test you have to take for most graduate program admissions). You might think, “Wow! That’s awesome, Ana! You’re life much be so much easier because you’re all logical and shit.”

Not.

Life is actually harder when you not only feel you are right, but know you are often right. This is because most of the time, us humans are super illogical, so no amount of logic can easily change our thoughts, behavior or how we feel. We do things not based on our rational brain, but on how we think something will make us feel. And most of us want to avoid hard feelings, so we do super illogical things like overeat when we are stressed out about trying to lose weight, or snap at our partner when we want to grow closer to them.

Silly humans!

So you see: the way people think – and the way people think about you – actually has nothing to do with logic (which is super frustrating for someone with a very logical brain;) You will likely never be able to convince them they are wrong, because they don’t actually think what they about you because they have a logical reason for why they are “right.” They think what they do about you because of how it makes them feel.

Mind-blowing, right?

So your partner, who swears you never told them about the party tonight and defends it to their core (even though you know you told him 2 weeks ago)?

It likely won’t help to repeatedly describe the exact details of when and how you told them. Why? Maybe they need to believe it wasn’t their fault that they forgot so they can feel good about themselves. Who knows! But the point is, life will get much easier if you let go of trying to convince them otherwise. Just help them get their pants on and get out the door.

Your (read: my) online hater who writes you a scathing email about how lovely your life must be since you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth/have a rich husband who supports you/(insert made-up story here)?

It won’t matter to write back and say, “Um, no. I grew up poor and in the ghetto and with a schizophrenic father and a mother that took her stress out on me. And I make more than my husband, thank you very much.” They need to think that about you for a reason. Anything you do or say likely won’t help, because they don’t want to feel differently.

This goes back to one of the main things I teach in my Ziji Up! confidence course: our thoughts create our feelings – and only YOU can change your own thoughts. When people have a thought about you in order to avoid experiencing a hard feeling, trying to change their thoughts about it with logic will be like Sisyphus rolling the proverbial boulder uphill. Don’t bother.

THEY need to go in there and change their thoughts when they are ready and willing. When someone is avoiding a hard feeling, they are NOT going to let you in their head to mess with that unless they are good and ready.

So you see, it’s easier to just let go of what other people think of you. It has nothing to do with you. It’s them. It’s about how they not just want – but need – to feel about themselves in that moment. And trust me: we all do this.

When I know I am right about something and my husband thinks otherwise, I often say to him, “But that doesn’t make any sense!!!!” (followed by a deep, guttural growl and the suppression of the GRE-style logical reasoning to accompany it). And truly, it doesn’t. But that doesn’t matter.

The reason I think it’s so important for me to be right is because I am doing the same thing! Oh, the irony…

I think correcting his thoughts about me will make me feel better. Loved, seen, heard, understood…all those “good” things that seem like important and valid reasons for arguing back. But what’s really happening is I am creating more distance between us, and more suffering as a result – in him, and in me.

Silly humans.

So next, time, I can focus on letting go of what he thinks about me, even when it’s something wrong and “bad” about me. The ironic thing is that allowing wrong thoughts about me would allow us to grow closer. I can let go, move on, and he will feel a nice “victory” and we can get on with having fun in life.

The same kind of freedom happens when we don’t react to anyone else who has negative opinions about us – and when we don’t let what others think about us affect the way we feel.

The next time you start obsessing about how someone is thinking something “wrong” about you, remind yourself that it isn’t about you. They want to feel better in that moment, and they need to think that about you to keep it going.

You know the truth of yourself.

You have the capacity of a big, open heart that can let people think wrong things about you – because you know they are hurting in a big or small way, and that they need that “win” for the moment.

So go on: let people be wrong about you. There are way better things to be thinking, feeling, and doing.

That is true freedom…

Here’s to you feeling it!

***

Ready to dive deeper into this? Check out Freedom School and see what everyone’s obsessed about. It’s not just group coaching. It’s a mindset revolution that you won’t want to miss.

How To Set Boundaries That Actually Work

Do you remember how proud you were when you set your first “healthy boundary?” I do.

I remember finally planting my metaphorical foot down after months of frustration. I told someone I was dating that I wasn’t going to tolerate anymore flaking or not showing up when he said he would. I deserved my time to be respected. I set my boundary and … he listened!

Well done! I thought to myself. Should have done that months ago!

But…he didn’t listen for long. In the end it was a battle of me re-setting boundaries, trying to control his behavior, then him complying…and eventually breaking them again. Then I’d withdraw to “enforce” the boundary…rinse, repeat.

When I was first taught about boundaries, it was in the context of women who do too much for other people, and not enough for themselves. It came across to me that I had to be firm and defend myself against others asking me to do things I didn’t want to do, or allowing them to act in ways that were not healthy for me. Sounds like a good idea right?

While that sounds like a really good idea on the surface, the way I was doing it ended up leading to not-so-good things for everyone involved. Things like Anger. Frustration. Control.

That last one is the biggest thing – it turns out unbeknownst to me, I was using boundaries to control other people’s behavior. I was giving ultimatums like “you do/don’t do this…or else!” This is not a healthy way to set boundaries – yet it is the way most of us were taught to set them.

Most of us set boundaries based on how we can change how someone else behaves, and not on our power of choice and agency to do what is best for us.

The healthy way to create boundaries necessitates remembering a very important thing: that boundaries are all about YOUR behavior.

Whaaaaat?! That’s right. The focus of a healthy boundary is actually not about the other person doing or not doing what you want at all. They are all grown up, and whether you like it or not, they “get” to do whatever they want. I know. It sounds crazy. But stick with me for a long minute;)

A healthy boundary is all about what you are going to do. It is a consequence you set that is completely based on an action you will take.

For example, if your mother is constantly belittling you when she calls, you can create a boundary. You can say, “Mom, it is not OK for you to belittle me when we talk. I love you, but if you start to do that, I will let you know I am going to hang up, and we can talk again when belittling isn’t part of the conversation.”

Then, if she does it again, you say, “OK mom, I love you, and I’m going to hang up now. When you’re ready to talk without doing that, we can chat again.”

You don’t continue to try to change her or “make her stop.” You just take care of yourself.

You may have noticed a few other things in this example:

1) The boundary isn’t about something petty. Some people want to set boundaries around things like getting people to stop giving them unsolicited advice, or doing something annoying like talking too loudly. That is actually attempting to control someone and not letting them be themselves – which is not OK.

Boundaries are set for big-deal items: emotional or physical boundaries. People do not get to hit you. People do not get to emotionally abuse you (like the belittling in the example above). People do not get to break your trust.

You may wonder – Hold on, girl! What’s the difference between setting a boundary and making a request for my preferences, then? Can’t I ask someone to stop something that annoys me?

YES! Make all the requests you want!

If someone is not crossing a physical or emotional boundary but is simply annoying you, choose to either share your time and energy with them, or not. Make a request, or not. Requests don’t have “consequences.” The person either does it or not, and you do the work to learn how to be happy either way.

If you choose to still be around them, let go of trying to change who they are.

Don’t forget to not let whether they comply or not affect your happiness or your sense of empowerment. It really isn’t appropriate to create boundary around something you’re simply being annoyed by. That’s usually solvable by you changing your thoughts about what’s going on and not taking them personally.

That can be a big-girl-panties concept, but I know you’ve got this;)

2) Boundaries (unlike simple requests) have a consequence that is about an action you will take, and you need to follow through on this. Using the example above, if your mom/partner/friend belittles you and you don’t hang up like you said you would, that removes the strength and purpose form the boundary. It also tends to eat away at your self-respect and self-esteem. You end up not trusting yourself, which is usually worse that the original breach of the boundary anyway.

3) The boundary does not come from a place of anger. Your happiness should not rely on this person’s actions. Therefore, the boundary is simply to honor yourself, and you can choose to not take it personally and step away from the unhealthy situation. No drama. Just, “No, thank you.”

Let’s see more examples of what this all looks like:

If you have a friend who is constantly late and this wears on your time and energy, you can choose to stay friends with her and say, “I get you’re often late, it’s what you do. But it’s hard for me when I waste my time when I’d rather spend time with you. So, if you are more than 15 minutes late, I’m going to leave.” Shazam! You honor who she is, and you honor your needs.

In this example, you are choosing to stay friends with this person, and creating a boundary that respects both your needs. You can also choose not to remain friends with this person if they don’t follow through. In either case, you can walk away – without drama.

In my relationship example in the beginning, choosing to leave when it was clear my emotional boundaries and trust were not being honored would have been better than trying to control someone else’s behavior. I could have said, “If x, y, z behavior continues, that doesn’t work for me.” Then I would have left – which ended up happening anyway – but it would have happened with me being in a much more empowered place – and much sooner. That would have saved both of us a lot of time and energy and suffering. And way less drama.

I know some of these concepts can be a bit WTF for you right now, but let it simmer awhile. Check it out and observe the difference between people setting healthy boundaries vs. trying to control someone else’s behavior. As one of my favorite spiritual teachers would tell me, “Check your mind. Check it for yourself.”

What are your deal-breakers that you’d like to set boundaries for? Are you able to differentiate between the need for boundaries vs making a request? If not, shoot me an email. Trust me – I’ve been there!

***

Ready to dive deeper into this? Check out Freedom School and see what everyone’s obsessed about. It’s not just group coaching. It’s a mindset revolution that you won’t want to miss.

What to Do When You’re Not Motivated

Sometimes (and on bad days it’s way more than sometimes), I know exactly what I need to do, and I. Just. Can’t. Do. It. I’m just not motivated.

I have a feeling you’re with me on this one.

There are days when I know yoga would be just the thing to lift my mood, and then I somehow take too long dealing with stuff at home and miss a class. Or when I know that I should not have the pizza, but then I decide it’s a really good pizza and go for it, even though I know the gluten is going to make me wish I didn’t give my pregnancy pants away.

Then when something like Earth Day rolls around, I really start to think about why it is so damn hard for me to do some of the simpler things that help our planet be healthier – like forget to tell people not to give me plastic utensils when I get takeout (I have a wooden bamboo set in my car!) or ride my bike more (and drive less).

Truth is, I may wonder, but I know the answer. And it’s likely the same for you.

Here’s a way to look at how things work:

– our thoughts create our beliefs
– our beliefs create our feelings
– our feelings create our actions (everything we do/don’t so is because we think it will make us feel better or avoid suffering)
– our actions create our reality/results/life experience

This is not new. This chain of events is well-known in spiritual traditions (especially those with meditation as a component), psychology, and other behavioral sciences. It actually makes the concepts in the Law of Attraction seem not so elusive.

The reason we tend to not do things when we know we should (or do things when we know we shouldn’t) is because “knowing” what we should do is clearly not enough. What we need to do when we’re not motivated is work our way backwards through the chain and ask, “I know I should ride my bike but I don’t. How am I feeling when I decide not to ride my bike?”

For me, it’s a sense of being defeated.

What’s the thought creating that feeling? “It won’t make a difference.”

Well shit. No wonder. Even if I know I “should” ride my bike, if I don’t believe it will make a difference, if my thoughts support the belief that it doesn’t matter, then of course I’m not going to get on it!

There’s a lot more I can say about this, but we should all be playing outside and not at a computer;)

Bottom line: we can try to create new thoughts around doing something differently to help contribute to the solution and not the problem. Try this out with a pressing matter you are struggling with right now.

Don’t wait for motivation. Create it.

I’m going to choose to believe that what I do matters. All our thoughts are, after all, a choice. And what we all do does matter.

***

If you want to join a tribe of people that will help you navigate this wild and precious life, come check out Freedom School – for rebels like you. It’s not just personal growth for rebels. It’s Jedi training for the new world.

Feeling crushed? Get. Up.

I used to have this nightmare several times a year. I’d be standing on the shore, and then a huge tidal wave would form, growing taller and taller, looming over me, turning the sky black and the surroundings gray. Sheer terror would fill me. I’d see it start to arc over me, and instead of waking up just before it crashed on me, it WOULD crash over me and I would be pummeled by it and suffocating. Then I’d wake up.

I kept having this dream, and analyzed over and over why I might be having it. Was it the near-drowning I experienced when I was young, when some ocean spirit eventually deposited me onto the beach without me knowing even how I made it back? Was it sexual repression? (ha! not likely with me…) Water means so many things in “dream analysis…”

Well, this is what I love about coaching. Taking a different approach than most therapy models, in the end I didn’t so much care why I had the dream. I just wanted it to stop. Or – more accurately – for the terror to stop.

When I had almost finished completing my coach training in 2009, the dream took a different turn (hang with me…this is where it gets juicy).

One night, I had the dream again. I stood at the edge of the ocean, and the wave grew taller and taller…perhaps the tallest one I’d seen yet. The same terror filled me and I tried to run away. I turned around, but then the futility of what I trying to do hit me. I could never outrun a tidal wave. So, I turned around, and surrendered.

I faced the looming wall, accepted it was going to crash over me, and hellz yes it did. I was tossed around under the water for several minutes, limbs flailing and darkness enveloping me. I found it…interesting. In my state of surrender, I was in awe of the power of this wave. I’d been tossed in the washing machine surfing before, but this was a freakin’ tidal wave.

Then, something totally different happened.

I got spit out the top of the water. The surface was calm and clear. The sky was blue. And there were colorful bathtub toys and beach toys floating all around me. It was…epic and beautiful and relaxing.

I never had the nightmare again.

In hindsight, I think I kept having this dream because I was focusing on wanting to avoid the fear, make the tidal wave stop, or escape the problem altogether. But did you ever entertain the idea that parts of life are supposed to be hard? Well, of course you know that parts of life can be hard…but do you believe it’s supposed to be hard sometimes?

I don’t buy the whole “everything can be easy and effortless all the time if you just think it will be” shizzle that some people spout out (although self-sabotage is real and a whole other blogpost). What I do believe is that we would not be able to achieve states of bliss and joy if it were not for the existence of the contrasting hard feelings. It’s emotional physics. And the irony is, once you embrace that we don’t need to run from the hard feelings, they actually pass more quickly. In the end, we suffer less than we would trying to fight them.

Life is indeed hard at times. When we try to avoid it being hard, or avoid feeling our hard feelings, the problem grows and grows. Like my tidal wave.

You also lose confidence in yourself, because you don’t trust that you can handle it and test your shit out.

A few years later, I heard one of my teachers, Pema Chodron, say that true inner confidence wasn’t about never being afraid. She said it was about knowing that when you got knocked down, you could get up, again and again. Then she gave the example of standing on the ocean’s edge (not kidding!), and then how if we fight getting knocked down by the waves, or try to escape them, we get exhausted and worn down. However, if we allow ourselves to get knocked down, and then get back up – now that is unshakeable confidence. She also said the Tibetans called this radiant inner confidence ziji…which is what I named my confidence course!

Essentially, once you’ve learned that you can get knocked down – and that you will always get back up – you can turn to the world and say, “Bring it!”

True confidence is not built from avoiding getting knocked down. True confidence is built from knowing you will always get back up.

There’s a reason you are reading this today – maybe you’re feeling crushed and you needed to hear it. Maybe a friend or a loved one or a stranger on the street needs to hear it, and you need to muster the courage to tell them.

Get. Up.

***

Ready to dive deeper into this? Check out Freedom School and see what everyone’s obsessed about. It’s not just group coaching. It’s a mindset revolution that you won’t want to miss.

the real reason why it never feels like enough​​​​​​​

I want to let you in on a really important ingredient for creating authentic happiness – the kind that stands the test of time and is more resilient to the hard stuff that comes our way.

We often feel that it’s justifiable to feel like something is missing in our lives when we have some heavy shit going on. For me right now, it’s marriage struggles (marriage is hard, yo!) and my mom’s recent death. For my friends and clients, it’s things like feeling they’ve missed out on truly being themselves for decades and grieving that loss; struggling with loneliness and wanting a life partner; miscarriages; loss of identity…it goes on and on. It’s the shit that comes with being alive and human. The “truth of the existence of suffering” that Buddha reminded us all of millennia ago. It makes total sense that we feel like something is missing during those times.

Thing is, we also tend to feel like something is missing even when life DOES seem like its going really well! For example, here are a few scenarios that coaching can help a lot with:

‱    you have a bitchy inner critic that tells you you aren’t worthy of a better life
‱    you have a tendency to make bad choices relationship after relationship
‱    you are a perpetual perfectionist and can’t seem to start, finish, or let go of anything because of your need to have it be flawless
‱    you keep searching for a life with more meaning and purpose…and still haven’t found it
‱    you struggle with creating healthy boundaries and saying “No” to people, trapped in a never-ending cycle of people-pleasing and lack of self care.
‱    you feel trapped and stuck
‱    you wallow in a scarcity mindset, blocking abundance from entering your life
‱    you feel a lack of self love and self-worth
‱    you wonder why you don’t feel confident or courageous enough to do what it takes

While coaching is great for these scenarios, what a lot of people don’t talk about is that once you achieve a lot of your goals – the freedom, the location-independent lifestyle, the abundance, the awesome relationship, the killer career, the confidence – we still tend feel that something is missing.

And let me tell you – that moment sucks. Royally.

Here you are, having done the spiritual work, the intellectual work, the creative work, the courageous work – a LOT of freakin’ work – and it all seems perfect, yet something is Still. Freakin’. Missing.

So what is this missing thing? It’s not as sexy as you might think, but it’s damn important, and I’ve seen it over and over. It helps when we are in some deep dark times of life, and it helps when we have that nagging feeling of being incomplete even when life seems amazing.

It’s not gratitude, although that is still a daily practice I do every morning.

It’s … (drum roll!) … being of service to others. Or better yet – feeling we are of service to others. Or even better yet…a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives (which tends to be connected with service to others).

Truth is, we are born to serve in a powerful way.

You can do all the gratitude journaling you want, but if you don’t feel a sense of purpose or meaning in life, if you aren’t clear about how your unique self is undeniably needed in the world and how you fit into it all, it won’t help you with this feeling that something is missing.

We are meant to use all the skills we learned up until this glorious moment and use them to (no pressure here;) change the world. From what I have seen, we humans cannot seem to be able to feel totally fulfilled in life if we are not deeply serving in some way.

In order to serve powerfully, we must muster the deepest type of courage yet. This is courage deeper than what is required to ask for a raise, or to start our own business, or to leave the toxic relationship.

Don’t get me wrong – they are related, and the first kind of courage is requisite to getting to the next level of bravery.

But what is required of you to truly feel like your life is enough is the courage to be of deep, devoted service to something greater than yourself.

 

So, in order to be able to feel maximally fulfilled, I highly recommend you set to work on making the world a better place.

When I look back on my life, it is not the peaks I have climbed, the adventures I have been on, or the financial milestones that help me feel that today would be a good day to die – although I will be the first to admit that they certainly help me feel better about that day.

Rather, it is the times that I have made other people’s lives better that help me sleep at night and live more courageously. The times I spent in Africa working with refugees on the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. The times I forgave people that deeply hurt me. The times I risked disappointing others and being criticized in order to bring a bigger message to the world through my coaching. The times I delivered babies in a public hospital for Haitian women, or sat with a mother holding her stillborn and allowed myself to cry with her in sisterhood.

I am sure that you too can recall the moments you have touched someone’s heart with your actions, and how grounded and complete you felt.

Because you have been there, you know that this goal of ultimate fulfillment is not for the faint of heart.

It takes a lot of courage to serve others fully. To allow ourselves to feel the pain and suffering of others and to take action to stop it. To be so vulnerable with strangers that it scares the shit out of you.

On top of that, you also have to know what the world truly needs in order to best bring your gifts to the world in acts of service. And learning what the world needs can be terrifying, scary, and overwhelming.
 
But you can do it. You MUST do it.

You were born to do it.

I have clients break down in tears when they realize this, and it’s understandable, because the responsibility can feel overwhelming. But trust me – you don’t need to do anything more than discover your gifts and live them fully. This is truly of service to the world.

You do not need to head into war zones or depraved conditions (unless that’s a part of your gift), but you do need to discover and be honest with yourself about what you are good at, and how it can help make the world a better place than when you arrived.

Living your true gift involves some form of deep service pr contribution to others – even if that may not be obvious to you at this moment.

It’s scary, but you can find the ziji, the courage, the confidence to do it.

How do we get this kind of courage so we can explore our true purpose? In my experience, this deeply driven courage is created by an emotion that deserves much more bandwidth than topics like the courage or the confidence to manifest your dreams (even though that’s what I totally dig writing about):

It’s Compassion – for yourself and for others.

Compassion is the most courageous emotion we can carry, and the brave acts it allows us to undertake is why it is the emotion that helps our life feel like one well-lived.

As Pema Chödrön, a Tibetan Buddhist nun, said:

“The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes. ”

There you have it.

If you want to live a truly courageous and deeply fulfilling life, open your heart.

First to yourself. This gives us the courage to go beyond our own needs.

Then open your heart to others, and look deeply into their eyes.

Feel the pain, the suffering, the injustices.

Do the work. Learn what you need to. Spend time alone. Spend time with people who really matter.

Fiercely quest for your purpose.

Let any ideas of your previous self die away, so that you may truly be open to the gift that only you are able to deliver – one you may have no freakin’ idea about yet. Or one you know about, but that really, really scares you to think about embodying.

You are enough, and the best way to see that – and indeed, the best way to feel that – is to discover that gift and how to best bring it to the world in service.

What does that look like for you? Is it volunteering with a local organization or abroad? Changing the focus of your biz? Leaving your job to raise your kiddos on a sailboat? Opening up a community gathering place? Helping people feel beautiful when they feel absolutely devastated inside? Giving people hope when they have lost their mojo?

Share with me on the blog or hit reply on this email to tell me about your gifts, or what has helped you sleep better at night, the ways you love to serve, the ways you dream to serve. I love this kind of stuff – and trust me, I’ll reply.

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If you want to join a tribe of people that will help you navigate this wild and precious life, come check out Freedom School – for rebels like you. It’s not just personal growth for rebels. It’s Jedi training for the new world.

How to Make the Hard Decisions

A funny thing happens when you do the hard and gritty personal work – the wrestling with your insecurities, taking risks, creating boundaries (that many people don’t like), being scared and doing it anyway, cultivating compassion towards the Mean People, discovering your Inner Badass; opening to the suffering in the world and thinking about how to make a difference in your own unique way, and knowing your own suffering is real and worth tending to as well…

…when you start working towards all those things: You start getting what you want.

Or at least what you think you want.

This can be a kind of test, a final exam of, “How well do you know thyself?”

I decided to write this piece because a client of mine (let’s call her Emily) recently posted in our Facebook group that she is being asked to step into an even greater role in her profession, one that she was surprised to even be considered for, one where she would stand side by side next to badasses in her field. Yet she wasn’t sure what to do. While it was an incredible opportunity, it was also going to create more work, less free time, less opportunity for self-care, and more stress. And a big part of her work in our Adventure Mastermind was putting her needs first (for once). But a part of her really wanted this, and liked being acknowledged for all her hard work thus far.

She wanted to know how to navigate making these Hard Decisions. The Big Decisions. The Unclear Decisions.

I’ve always said it’s easier to say “No” when its a “Hell No!” and is really obvious. It gets a lot trickier when it’s a “maybe,” “sort of” or “good enough.” Same could go for Yesses.

In case you, like Emily, are presented with a test from the Universe, one with a temptation that seems so good on so many levels yet feels not-so-good on many others, here are a few of the tips we reviewed:

How to Make Hard Decisions

:: Create clarity around your Ideal Life. Create detailed lists for: 1) how you want to show up in the world, how you want to feel, how you want to BE 2) What you want to be doing with your time, including work, play, spirituality…all those important arenas 3)What you want to have – in detail. Home/shelter, environment, what kinds of friends and community, family?

:: Write about your Perfect Day – how do you want to feel and what do you want to do form the moment your eyes open to when you fall asleep? Since I’m a big fan of the dreamworld, I even advocate for being clear about what you want to dream about or use your dreamtime for!

Doing the 2 above exercises can help you remember what it is your trying to create in your life – then you can step back and see which decision would best move you towards that. Sit with this question – aka The Hard Decision – you have, and ask your Wise Self (your most Magnificent Self, your Self who has already achieved everything you could ever dream of), “Does this decision move me closer to my ideal life?”

:: Get out of your head, and get in touch with what “yes” feels like in your body and what “no” feels like. Spend a couple of days feeling into what is a Yes and what is a No in your body. You’ll start to learn that your body has very specific ways to tell you something is going to be bad for you – from food to people to movies etc. And ways to tell you something is awesome and a hellz yes!

Which decision feels like a Hellz Yes! in your body?

:: You can also use tools like oracles or Angel cards etc to help tap into your intuition on the matter. When we leave some things up to Mystery, it can be interesting to observe what comes up and how it stirs our hearts and minds.

:: Remember not to get caught up what society says you “should” be doing. Don’t get caught up in the accolades, promotion status, ego-driven feel-good vibes (which are always so short-lived and precarious, because they rely on others’ perceptions of us). Ask your Wise Self about if the whole shebang (the life changes that would occur, the schedules and colleagues etc) actually feeds your needs. Your SOUL’s needs.

:: And of course, because ultimately I’m more of a Death Coach than a Life Coach 😉 … Remember – life is short. We are all going to die and we don’t know when. No time for bullshit.

People always want me to work more because I am good at what I do. I know to say, “No, but thank you for offering!” because I know the level of freedom I need in my life and what makes me happy. If I wasn’t so clear on that, I’d be saying “Yes” way more often, because on paper, only an idiot turns down the offers I get. But my heart and soul – and my body’s knowing – they watch out for me, and I can’t go wrong.

I hope you can get more clear with these exercises. Print this out and tuck it away somewhere. I know that with all the hard work you’re doing to cultivate radiant inner confidence in yourself, you will someday be given The Test to see if you really know yourself, what you crave, desire, and long for…or if you’re easily swayed by The Distractions.

For more Clarity + Courage tools like these, donate any amount you like and dive into my acclaimed Ultimate Confidence Course. I’m working on a project to help mamas and babies in Nepal, and all proceeds go to this amazing work!

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Ready to dive deeper into this? Check out Freedom School and see what everyone’s obsessed about. It’s not just group coaching. It’s a mindset revolution that you won’t want to miss.

True freedom is a feeling

Freedom – deep freedom – is a feeling.

While there are certainly many inalienable human rights that can help to define what freedom is, that’s not the freedom I’m talking about here. I am sure you can think of plenty of people that are privileged to have those rights, and yet they feel suffocated and stifled. Trapped, like a puma in a cage. Stuck. Like you will never know the true you, or live your true life.

Anything but free.

I’ve certainly been there. Have you?

Is this because we are spoiled and take for granted the freedoms we do have? That if we only realized how lucky we are to be able to write negative blog posts about the president without being blacklisted (for now, at least), or being a woman and being able to go to school without fear, or being able to stroll along the beach and not be concerned about landmines, that we’d realize how free we really are and get over it?

Personally, I don’t think so.

That’s because the deep freedom I’m referring to is a feelingit’s something that we sense deep in our soul, when we are aligned.

The surprise to many is that deep freedom is not having a location-independent lifestyle, or tons of money to do whatever we want with. It’s not being your own boss or not having to answer to someone else. It’s not saying whatever the hell we want and wearing what we want. It isn’t kissing or loving whomever we want, or living wherever we want.

Those are external freedoms. They are measured against us being able to do/be something without ramifications from others.

Deep freedom is when YOU are able to fully accept you, be you, love you…and also accept things as they are. That’s being aligned. The only ramifications of not doing these things are felt by just one person – you. The only person that makes you feel bad about these things is just … you.

So you see, if you want true freedom – deep freedom – it starts with going within. It can be easy to get distracted by the external freedoms, and trying to shape your life into the perfect little scenario where you don’t have to rely on anyone, or answer to anyone. But take it from someone with over 20 different certifications, 3+ places to live (read: run away to), and over a dozen ways I’ve learned to make money in case myriad things happen to the economy or political state so that I will always have my needs met: it doesn’t mean shit if you aren’t really free on the inside.

At this point, you may think, “Ana, I get the accepting myself part. But are you really saying I need to accept the things around me…this craziness that’s going on?” Yes.

Before you throw pastured high omega-3 eggs at me, know that by accepting things as they are does not mean you condone them or support them. It means that you stop wishing things were different, and get on with actively creating the world you want, while (and here’s the clincher) accepting and loving you and all the present moment has to offer.

Until you are able to pull that off, you won’t truly feel free, no matter how many beaches you take your laptop to for work, or how many Instagram photos you post about your travels. You’ll perhaps feel badass and very adventurous…but not deeply free.

This is why you always hear me say these three things together: freedom. adventure. purpose.

In my opinion, we need all these things to live a life full of Ziji (Tibetan for radiant inner confidence). When we feel deeply free; when we know we are squeezing every drop of juice out of this precious life with everyday adventures; when we use our mind, body and soul to fulfill our deepest purpose; we walk this earth grounded and with a powerful sense of confidence that is not shaken by external forces.

No. Instead we do the shaking up. From a place of confidence – not fear.

And sister, you know we need that more than ever these days.

How can you take steps towards this deeper freedom? Here are a few places to start:

  1. Get clear about your values. By knowing you – and what you want to say “Hellz yes!” to and what you want to say “Oh, hell no” to – you will be able to move closer to loving and accepting all of you. There’s some great activities to help you do this in my free Clarity + Courage Course
  2. Choose to focus on the things you can change, and release the things you can’t (and get reality checks from people to help you learn the difference). By refining our skills to know what we have control over (hint: usually that starts with ourselves and the way we respond to life), we can more effectively use our time, money, and energy to create positive change in the world. When you do this, you can more easily accept the present moment, and begin actively creating the world you want to live in, instead of fighting the wrong battles.
  3. Stop giving a shit about what other people think of you. “The people that mind don’t matter, and the people that matter don’t mind.” Love that quote. It is so, so true. Whenever you think about compromising your integrity or self-love out of fear of disappointing others, repeat that quote like a mantra. You need to focus on accepting your self – your full self – unapologetically, before you worry about what others think.

I know those things are easier for me to type than for you to do – but know that I have helped hundreds of women do exactly those things, so I know at my core it is possible. And if for nothing else, know that we need you, and your special gift, more than ever. This isn’t just a request in a weekend blogpost.

You achieving your deep freedom is a duty to your people. Now go get it.

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If you want to join a tribe of people that will help you navigate this wild and precious life, come check out Freedom School – for rebels like you. It’s not just personal growth for rebels. It’s Jedi training for the new world.