I can dig this.

Dan Millman, author of “Everyday Enlightenment” said, “No one feels the same way all the time. Even if you are angry, depressed, crazy, afraid, or grieving, you’ll have moments when you are distracted. There are no enlightened people, no nice, bad, smart, neurotic, or stupid people, either–only people with more (or less) enlightened, nice, bad, smart, neurotic, or stupid moments.”

The more I study today’s self-development literature, and I DO read it all for my job as Life Coach  the more I realize there’s TOO MUCH. If you see someone walking around Toronto with glazed eyes and muttering, “you’ve got to be kidding?” that would be me having another talk with the Universe; the all knowing, all seeing source of our incredibly too complicated existences.

All the do’s and don’t’s; all the should’s and shouldn’t’s; all the must’s and mustn’t’s. You start to feel a little inadequate if you don’t start to see the results of your concerted efforts; if you don’t feel lighter of spirit; or if you manage to take a step forward and then get knocked 15 steps backwards by unexpected circumstances.

You can have done all the right things according to the 3, 7, 10 or 12 step plan dejour and still have little to show for your efforts.

And that’s when they come back, as Millman said, “….the angry, depressed, crazy, afraid or grieving moments…” 

And it’s ok.  So wipe the beatific smile off your face and give yourself a break.  The thoughts we all engage in while pretending we don’t are normal.  They are the expression of the frustration and inadequacy that can arise while taking the “road less traveled”. You wanna be a star in whatever you do; whether it’s as an entrepreneur, a parent or a spouse. You want to matter. You want to be valued.  You want to do whatever it takes to live an extraordinary life. But some days no matter how hard you try you devolve into those thoughts you think you shouldn’t be having. The non-productive ones….the “unenlightened” ones….the petty ones.

To help you deal with these “moments” that keep cropping up even after laying out a few thousand bucks for a weekend intensive or $29.50 for the latest self-help how to; I’m going to suggest an alternative.

Instead of trying to repress your base instincts, get to know them. In my article “Mind Tricks” I introduce a few books that teach you the “why”. Once you know why you think what you think it becomes easier to navigate those moments that can blow the lid off of our composure and confidence.  

(for more info visit lindakaban.com)

I winced as I read this.

“If you look around you at those who are most unhappy you’ll often find that they are the people who have a “starved” feeling in some way, and are therefore taking a very grasping posture towards life. They feel that life in general and other people in particular are not giving them what they need. It is as if they have a stranglehold on life, trying desperately to wring out the love and satisfaction they crave, yet actually choking off the supply. And many of us have a little of this tendency.”

YIKES!!!!

That was from Shakti Gawain’s amazing book “Creative Visualization”.

I gulped, maybe turned a little red in the face when I read that, because I know I’ve done that.

I remember 7 years ago when I was taking my second yoga certification at the Yoga Sanctuary in Toronto. Met a really cool group of people and struck up an instant friendship with one woman. We shared a kooky sense of humour, a pure love of yoga and yah, we were the only two smokers in the crowd.

After just meeting the guy who was to later become the love of my life (and still is), I was full of the womanly urge to SHARE; every single detail of what he said or did. And really, back then, I was having a hard time dealing with every thing he said or did. Middle aged romance is fraught with twists and turns of the sort that young lovers don’t experience. After a marriage or two, that’s when it all begins. When a guy or gal in their 40’s or 50’s walks up to your door  and they’re lurching a little to the left, it’s usually because of all the baggage they’ve accumulated along the way.  And I’m not talking Samsonite.

So here I was pouring out my hopes and tears to this new friend, because she was like a new sponge. It was exciting talking to someone new about old stories. She was soaking up all my trauma and drama. Until the day she had to squeeze herself out. It was too much. I was too much. And she basically walked away from me to save herself.

With the luxury of hindsight I can see what I was doing. My fella was driving me insane with his antics and I NEEDED a sounding board; I needed my new friend to tell me what I wanted to hear. I needed her sympathy. I needed her validation that I was a good woman and he was an insensitive man. I needed to get the despair out of me and onto someone else before I died from it. Or that’s what it felt like at the time.

God I feel so ashamed when I think of it now. You know how good this woman was? During the Northeast Blackout of 2003, she was the only person who was worried enough about me to do something about it. My parents and best friend were out of town; but none of my other friends, relatives or even the “guy” came to see how I was faring. She came down to Toronto to get me, so at least I could have a cool place to stay and something to eat while they worked on getting the hydro back. 

It wasn’t until a few years ago when my best friend did me the biggest favour in the world. She too had had enough of my whining and what if’s. Unlike my yoga friend, this girl had had to listen to me drone on about the guy for far longer. I rationalized it by making sure I always asked about her day first before exploding with my problems. I was always the first to call on birthdays; the first to knock at the door when she was sick so I could help; but the negative influence of my insatiable need to “share” was beginning to outweigh the positive aspects of my nature. She sat me down and forbade me to talk to her about him ever again. It was draining her.

That was the day two things happened. I learned: a) to talk to him about what was bothering me instead, and b) to accept him and love him just the way he was. What a world of difference that made; for me and for him. All that time I wasted on getting feedback from gal pals could have been spent nurturing my relationship.

I’m very lucky I have such a wise and forgiving friend. If she hadn’t had the courage to stand up for her peace of mind, if she hadn’t trusted me to learn from this experience, I might have lost her too. She taught me, as I now teach others, to “feed” myself instead of always starving for attention and sympathy.

And when you think about it, no one, absolutely no one can tell you how to live or love better than you. Friendship is not only an arrangement between two like-minded souls to spend time together having fun and supporting each other through “real” crises; but it’s also a beautiful gift that you can never afford to take for granted. Also, it is through the loving of a friend, that you learn to give back as much as you’ve been given. There will be no more “choking off the supply” of love and satisfaction as Shakti Gawain concludes, ” When we find that place within ourselves that is giving, we begin to reverse the flow.”

(for more info visit lindakaban.com)

I was at a friend’s place on the weekend for a party.

We were too busy, and really with the amount of food to look forward to later in the day, we skimped on lunch. My friend’s husband brought out some crackers and Cheese Whiz to tide us over.

Now, I have this annoying little habit; annoying to other people that is, but a life saver for me. I’m highly allergic to nuts. Cashews, almonds, pistachios, walnuts, etc….but the biggest one is coconut. So I have to read the package of every food I eat to make sure it’s safe. I either have to ask people ahead of time to read me the ingredients of what they’re making before I get to their house; or go fish around in their recycling bins to read them myself. I cannot tell you how many birthday cakes I couldn’t share in; how scary it is to eat out; how tiring it is to always be on alert.

So on Saturday I picked up the cracker box, skipped right to the end and saw the disclaimer, “Made in a Nut/Peanut Free Facility.” Before I got too excited, I went back up to the top of the list of ingredients and scoured them individually. When I got to coconut oil, I dropped the box in disappointment back on the table.

To be fair, some people/companies are not sure what constitutes a nut. Most people think peanuts are nuts. Uh uh. They’re legumes.

Just for fun I googled tree nuts. Coconut does not fall under the general definition, although US law requires disclosure of the addition of coconut in food products as it is recognized as an allergen of some sort.

Made me think of the other areas in our lives in which being on constant alert is par for the course. In love for sure. In business, certainly and always.

We have to become experts at reading the ingredients of whatever we’re cooking up in our lives.

I remember when I was interviewed last summer on Liquid Lunch, a show produced by www.thatchannel.com

It was such an easy atmosphere, and such a wonderful platform for entrepreneurs to get “introduced” to Toronto and beyond, I started thinking afterwards that I could do this. Have my own show. Put my marketing dollars to use. And so after a talk with the founder/owner of the radio station, I created, produced and hosted my own weekly show which I called Dare to Dream. Man it was a hoot and surprisingly (to me), I was good at it. I got to invite my friends, up and coming solo-preneurs, to showcase their “stuff.” And when the studio manager took over procuring my guests, I was privileged to meet some great and inspiring folks. 

But even when we switched from radio mode to TV, and I got my hopes up that the exposure would drive traffic my way, I began to realize that the show was doing more for my guests than it was for me. Instead of being Toronto’s most daring, innovative and highly exposed Life Coach, I was relegated to being simply the chick in the interviewer’s seat. Granted I did get a call from Canada’s premier TV station CBC on New Year’s Eve to be interviewed for their piece on resolutions from a Life Coach’s point of view; but that kind of recognition was rare. Not to mention the hundreds of dollars I was spending per month to the station for my show.

At the end of April I informed the owners of the station I would be taking a month long hiatus to try and secure sponsors. Since this was still the height of recession fever I had no luck in finding folks willing to take a risk of that magnitude. So with some regret I informed the owners of the station I would not be able to continue my show.

Unlike a box of crackers, the ingredients that constitute our attempts to create juicy, flavourful, rewarding ventures are not that easy to read. Even with the disclaimer “There is No Guarantee This is Going to Work”, we still plow hopefully forward, confidant of our abilities to ride the twists and turns and bumps in the road. As humans we’re just that way. It’s that tenacity that got us fire. And the wheel, and the lightbulb…..

But there’s one ingredient that most people fail to take into account; and that’s other people. In one blog, “Wait Not, Want Not” on lindakaban.com  I explained that your destiny and your expectations most often rely on the cooperation of other people. The trouble with that is, their agenda or vision may not coincide with the needs of your time line. 

Just make sure when you’re writing out your list of ingredients, you leave room for the unexpected “allergen”. Double or even triple space your list. I do not believe it is self-defeating  or even a negative to take into account all the ways you could take a wrong path, along with all of the ways you could succeed.  It will save you time and money and will help you learn to create value out of every experience and challenge you encounter.

“Do you want to be the statue or the bird?”

I read that neat little piece of sophistry the other day and my inclination is to say the statue only because I don’t like the idea of pooping my way to glory. When I land on someone I hope to leave them smelling a little sweeter for my having been there. Being a statue however keeps you steady, standing, still.

What’s to choose from?

I signed up for an ecourse entitled, “The Pathway to Prosperity”. A man named F.W Sears wrote a book in 1914 called “How to Attract Success”. Here’s a bit of his philosophy……”the true law of success is….the law of harmonious attraction. Under this law, things come to us because they want to come and not because we make them come; they remain with us because they want to do so. Instead of working to control the other fellow, we learn to control ourselves and become so strong, powerful and harmonious in our attractive power that the things we want will want us so much that they cannot stay away.”

Way to be a statue F.W.

So let’s say I’m a statue, and because this is my fantasy I can make myself breathtakingly beautiful with a sweet and compelling smile etched onto my features. My hands are carved open and in a beseeching gesture; gold leaf covers me from head to toe and buffed to a brilliant shine. I stand there in all my attractiveness, but I don’t believe it was success that plopped onto my head; I believe it was last night’s dinner deposited by that go-getter dude with wings.

So now I’m the bird. I’m a hawk. My wings cut through the air and far below I spot….dinner. For the sake of my analogy, dinner is a mouse. My eyes never leave my prey and with a powerful and single-minded thrust I slam to the earth and that hapless mouse is mine. I tear him apart with beak and talon. Satiated and full of myself, I take off for a post dinner turn in the park and crap on the shiny golden statue standing there.

I know people like the statue and people like the bird. The statues are never going to get what they want out of life. The birds might, but then there’s another law as old as the one of harmonious attraction; the law of karma.

No wonder sophistry was condemned by Plato. You can’t answer the question without going a little crazy.

(for more info visit lindakaban.com)