Category Archives: Choices Seminars

Share a Hug | 52 Acts of Grace | Week 4

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acts of grace week 4 copy

When in an open-hearted space and place like the Choices Seminar room, it is easy to give generously. Of yourself. Your time. Your treasures and talents.

At the hotel where the Choices Seminar is held, participants are encouraged to be generous with their tipping — we are a large group and can at times overwhelm restaurant staff and other areas of the hotel. Being at Choices meant Week 3’s Act of Grace invitation to show my appreciation for people who served me was easy to fulfill on.

It also means, it takes me a few days to get out of “Choices” mode out in the ‘real world’. To not greet everyone I meet, whether in meetings or on the elevator, or in my office with a hug.

Maybe I should change that!

One of the things I say in the Choices room is that my dream is to create a world ‘out there’ like it is in here so that I can effortlessly be ‘out there’ as I am, as I feel, as I breathe in the Choices room. A place where everyone has the opportunity to feel loved, safe, supported. A place where mistakes are celebrated as opportunities to grow and learn and do better. Where people believe in themselves. Find their voices and sing out loud. Celebrate who they are. Love themselves in every condition.

And one way to create it that way, no matter where I am, is to offer hugs. To simply not listen to that voice in my head that whispers, “Don’t hug. They’ll think you’re weird. You’re invading their space. You’re being pushy. You’re over-stepping…”

Hugs are a powerful communication tool. Hugs require no special equipment. They’re easy to give and take. Hugs connect us and create a powerful bond between our humanity.

Yesterday, as I approached a table where a hotel staff was selling tickets for the Sunday Brunch, I didn’t even have a chance to say hello before she stood up, opened her arms and walked towards me. We shared a hug and then went about the business of the Sunday Brunch ticket, both of us smiling broadly.

What a wonderful gift!

To know that hugging means as much to the staff as it does to me. To know we are connected.

And let me be clear — 10 years ago, you would not have caught me hugging strangers, hotel staff, or most people for that matter.

Now, I love hugs. I love how for a moment, two people stand silently together, take a breath and simply share human touch and a moment.

Make special moments this week. Share your warmth and generosity of spirit through hugs.

If you can imagine it, you can make it so.

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If yo

If you can imagine it, you can make it so. Turn the impossible into possibility. Get Creative!  (Art Journal. Apr 3, 2016)

 

Ten years ago, when I first walked into the Choices Seminar room, I could not imagine that I would still be walking into that room almost every month, excited to be part of miracles unfolding.

Ten years ago when I walked into that room. I was okay. My life was getting back on track. I’d spent 3 years healing from a devestating relationship that almost killed me and figured I was now doing okay.

Fact is. I was. Doing okay. I just had no idea how much more was possible than just ‘doing okay’.

Some of the things holding me back at that time (which I wasn’t really conscious of) was the fact I tended to look at the world through suspicious eyes. I tended not to trust that people really did want ‘the best’ for me. I tended not to believe people when they told me they loved me, or even liked me. I tended to walk on the outside of the circle, peering in, wishing and hoping I could be ‘normal’ or part of the group, but always holding myself back, just in case… I got hurt. I got ridiculed. I got rejected.

And here I am. Tend years later, about to walk into the Choices Seminar room once again, eager to experience the next five days of hearts opening wide to the wonder and awe of the magnificence of the human condition.

What a gift.

To have a place where I know, no matter what, I am loved. I am accepted. I am part of the circle. I am wanted and valued.

Ahhhh…. how my heart beats wildly free in the knowledge of feeling the thing I have always wanted to feel inside me. Safe.

Choices is a place where miracles happen. A place where hearts heal and lives change as people learn to let go of limiting beliefs and see the beauty of who they are truly are.

 

I am off to coach at Choices. Off to be immersed in healing and breathing into this amazing thing called LIFE.

I love it! Ten years ago I could not imagine the value I would find through Choices.

Yesterday, a beautiful woman I know had her birthday. It is because of her I went through Choices. I don’t think even she could have imagined what a gift she gave me. Thank you NR.

Have a great rest of your week. See you Monday/Tuesday next week.

Namaste.

When hearts break open

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FullSizeRender (75)We all carry the scars and bruises of life.

Those little, not so little and some times huge hurts and cuts that hinder our ability to live fearlessly and freely in love with being who we are.

Sometimes those happenings stop us dead in our tracks.

Sometimes they make us cry, scream, want to pull our hear out and fall into a hole and cover ourselves up with sand.

Sometimes, we carry them for so long we don’t even notice they’re there.

And sometimes, in carrying them, we become so comfortable with their presence, we don’t want to let them go.

I am off this week to coach at Choices Seminars.

To be immersed in hearts breaking open to discover, they can let go. They can heal. They can begin again.

I won’t be posting. — you know, it’s the long days, short nights, fast sleeps thing of living completely on purpose.

See you next week.

 

Our human condition is a journey through love.

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Choices is an experiential journey. It is an exquisitely constructed series of teachings and processes that have been honed and developed over 35 years to fulfill on founder, Thelma Box’s vision of Changing the world one heart at a time. For over 35 years, Thelma Box, Mary, Joe and Greg Davis have created a safe and courageous space for people to step into the wonder and awe of discovering who we truly are when we let go of the negative self-talk and self-defeating games we all inevitably employ to protect our hearts and keep ourselves safe from being hurt by others or to prevent them from seeing we are hurting.

We humans are interesting beings. We are all born magnificent. It is our birthright.

We come into this world crying out for belonging, for love, for connection and then life happens and we quickly forget the birthright of our magnificence as we adapt our behaviours to meet life’s sometimes confusing, sometimes challenging, sometimes painful teachings. We walk through each day into unknown and known places, face strangers and people we know fearing they are judging us, measuring our journey against theirs, or examining our flaws with such intensity we feel naked or invisible. We try to hide in plain view, or stand out in anger, contempt, judgement fearing we will never find peace, love, hope, joy, contentment and in our fear, do everything we can to prevent ourselves from having what we want.

In our struggle to get what we want, we set bars so high we cannot see them or don’t set them at all because we are convinced we will never reach them. And in our fear of constantly having to measure up or our fear of continually falling short, we do not see, it is our judgements of ourselves that are hurting us most. It is our negative self-talk that is killing our dreams. It is our self-defeating games that are keeping us stuck living in the shadows of our fear; we do not matter, we are not worthy, we are unloveable.

At Choices, I am continually blessed to witness people awakening to their magnificence. I am blessed with being part of miracles unfolding as people open their eyes to the truth of who they are when they let go of fearing who they are will never be enough.

We are all enough. Exactly the way we are. Exactly as we were born to be before we forgot that our value is not found in the things we acquire or the things we do or people we know or places we’ve been. Our value is in our being present and true to our hearts. It is found in how we treat ourselves and one another. Our value is intrinsic to our nature of being human when we let go of fearing who we are and remember, we are all magnificent.

It was a beautiful and inspiring five days of connecting heart to heart to one another. Of seeing and hearing the beauty of each person’s heart beating freely and fiercely with the truth that who they are is greater than their fear that they were unworthy or undeserving of Love.

We are all deserving of Love, no matter our human condition, because our human condition is a journey through Love.

Who are you when you believe your true self will guide you?

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One of the tools trainees in Choices work on is their ‘contract statement’. A personal I am statement about who and how they need to be to live life outside the comfort of limiting thoughts and beliefs.

My contract is, I am a trusting woman.

Not always an easy thing for me, to trust.

Heck, I could rhyme off a thousand reasons why trusting is not good for my well-being and I’d do my best to convince you every one of them is valid.

Truth is, every one of them is just a limiting belief/thought I hold onto in the misguided belief I’m safer playing small, hiding out and dimming my light.

Truth is, I’m safest when I journey with trusting myself as my guide. When I trust that Love is all around and I trust in myself, in my inner guidance to lead me, and my inner voice of knowing to advise me when to walk away from danger, or walk into the fire and light up my life, my life is full of wonder and awe. Sure, there are circumstances that cause pain, sorrow, grief, trouble, confusion, but when I trust in myself to turn up for me, in all my truth without fearing the outcome, I am safe in the world, safe to be me.

When I turn up, pay attention, speak my truth and stay unattached to the outcome, I am truly me.

This morning when I read the guiding thought in the 21 day meditation challenge I’m participating in, My true self can be trusted to guide me, I smiled.

Haha. How to challenge my thinking before I even sink into the quiet. How to ruffle the waters of peace and tranquility before I even dive beneath the surface!

As I sank into the meditation, I became aware of my thoughts racing. Remember when you trusted and… Remember when you believed in another and… Remember…

Yes. I do. But what was then is not what is now. Remembering when I trusted indiscriminately, when I trusted without listening to my true self because I was so busy listening to my false self tell me all the reasons why I needed to trust the untrustworthy, trust without opening my eyes and ears and heart drowns out my voice of knowing. Remembering does not create space for the light to shine on my inner wisdom today.

I am safe when I trust my true self to guide me.

Learning to trust myself and my capacity to live true to my knowing who I am lifts me up. When I believe I can trust my true self to guide me, I am free of fearing the past. Free of fearing what was then will be again. Free of fearing I am not safe in the world.

Living with trust as my watchword, I free myself from playing small, hiding out and dimming my light.

And when I live large, shine bright, the world becomes a trusting, beautiful place to dance in the light of knowing my truth. I am a trusting woman.

 

What happens when you fear making a mistake?

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making-mistakes-is-better-than-faking-perfections-mistake-quote

On the Wednesday morning of every Choices session, the core team meets for breakfast before the session begins. The conversation centres around what to expect in the next five days, with Mary Davis, the facilitator, sharing any information she needs us to know before the coaching team and trainees enter the room.

Last session, she shared a fear she has and asked if anyone else would be willing to share theirs.

“Sure,” I replied.

I had a big one. This was the first training session where I was 100% responsible for all the work that gets done at the back table in the room. And there’s lots. I’d been helping out over the past few months but had never gone it alone. RM was always there to teach me and to catch any mistakes. This time, I was alone.

“I’m terrified I won’t do the backtable work as perfectly as RM,” I shared with the group. And I laughed. “I know it’s irrational but while my conscious mind knows that I will do my best and everyone will have my back, somewhere within me is the belief, I can’t do it as perfectly as RM. I know the fear is unreal, but it feels real to me.”

Joe Davis, Mary’s husband and co-facilitator reassured me they’d have my back. And of course, now that they knew my fear he and a couple of the other coaches would make sure to tease me about it throughout the week.

And they did. Tease me. Lots.

And every time they did, I got to laugh at myself and feel my fear diminish as I saw the path to letting go of my fear was to focus my light on doing my best. My best is good enough and when I believe everyone around me wants me to do my best, my fear fades in the light of trust.

It can be easy for me to get caught in the trap of thinking ‘it’s up to me and only me to get it right’. And if I get something wrong, it’s easy for me to believe, I will be banished, shamed, voted off the island or any other calamity that might happen when I mess up and don’t do it perfectly — or at least right.

My fear isn’t about making mistakes. It’s about trusting others to support me and give me room to grow through my mistakes. It’s about trusting others to turn up in kindness, fairness, love.

In being given the gift of being teased whenever I did make a mis-step, I was given the gift of seeing my fears as what they are — thoughts in my mind that really aren’t based in reality. They’re just based in my critter mind’s need to keep me safe from trusting in others — because the critter believes people aren’t trustworthy. They’ll only let you down. He doesn’t believe they will turn up and be true.

When I give into the critter, I give up on people. And giving up on people, not believing in their worth, value, truth, creates a world of fear in and around me.

And that is not the more of what I want in my life.

Truth is, no one else was expecting me not to make mistakes. They were willing to give me the grace of not doing it perfectly. It was me who wasn’t.

In the end, any mistakes I did make were easily fixed. The training happened. Everyone got to Sunday evening with the paperwork, directions, and tools necessary to complete the training.

And I got to the end laughing at myself and feeling like I really did have a place on the island. I really did belong.

 

 

 

 

Where is freedom?

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Freedom isn’t free
You gotta pay the price
You gotta sacrifice
For your liberty.
                                         Up With People

Our hearts cry out for freedom.

We yearn to claim the right to make our decisions, carve our own path, create our own destiny.

And then we stumble and fall. We tell ourselves its best to not ‘rock the boat’. It’s best to ‘go with the flow’ and give into the ‘system’. In our desire to conform, to fit in, we let go of our will to be the change we want to be in our lives and fall into the trap of becoming who we think others will like best.

We say we’re not — giving in, conforming, silencing ourselves, constraining our dreams. We say we’re breaking the rules so we can be free. We are cutting off from the norm to do it our way, but we forget to check if our way is actually creating the ‘more’ we say we want. Too often, it’s simply creating the ‘other’ than what we dreamt would be the freedom we seek. We’re breaking rules for the sake of breaking rules versus testing the limits of our comfort zone and carving the path that fills our heart’s desire to be free and live with passion.

I don’t like breaking rules.

Some of my desire to not break rules and fit in stems back to an incident in Grade 1 when I broke the ‘no talking rule’ (a few too many times) in class and the teacher made me go and stand in the corner. But she didn’t make me stand in the corner in our classroom. She made me stand in the corner of the front lobby of our school. (I think I talked a lot when I was supposed to be quiet.)

I was shamed.

I remember standing in the corner and my brother and sister walking past, seeing me and poking fun at me. I’m sure when we got home they told my mother and that would not have been pretty.

My mother did not like us to break the rules.

Decades later the shame of that incident can still occasionally trip me up. When I feel I have something to add to a conversation, I hesitate. When I want to speak my truth, I second guess myself.

I don’t like breaking rules and the rule I made in my head long ago is that speaking up gets me in trouble. It’s best to hold my counsel unless I’m really, really sure I won’t get in trouble or be laughed at, ridiculed and mocked for what I have to say.

Except. The truth of who I am is I like to participate. I like to share my thoughts, to test them against other’s thinking to see where the cracks and the light is in my thinking. I like to be part of the conversation.

The dichotomy of not wanting to speak up for fear of looking stupid and my desire to let my voice be part of the conversation can create some awkward, unpredictable and tension-riddled times in my life.

At times, it has kept me silent in the face of discord. It has held me still in the arms of abuse.

It has trapped me into believing if I speak louder, I will be heard. If I break the rules, I will be free.

Freedom doesn’t come from breaking rules for the sake of stating I am free to do what I want. It comes when I live my life in harmony with the world around me, honouring the path of all around me, honouring our collective need to treat eachother with dignity and respect, celebrating the magnificence inherent in all our beings.

Freedom isn’t found in being the loudest voice.

It’s found in being the voice of truth spoken without fear of being judged or devalued because of our words.

It’s found in honouring the collective rules of our societal mores that protect our equality, liberty and rights.

Freedom is found when we honour one another in Love.

Change is possible.

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The biggest obstacle to change is that we think we already know the answer.  Joe Davis

Choices Seminars is about change. It’s about changing the things in your life that aren’t working. It’s about healing the wounds that continue to seep and drain your passion and commitment to living your best life yet.

It’s about learning to let go of past sorrows and celebrate small and big moments freely. It’s about dreaming and building a path to live your dreams outside the comfort of the narrow, small box of doing what you’ve done before because that’s the way you’ve always been or done it.

It’s about being who you are when the chatter in your head doesn’t create static that blocks you from seeing how beautiful, loving, caring and magnificent you and the world around you truly is.

And it’s about learning simple tools that can help you stay on track, no matter the weather, no matter the obstacles on your path.

And still we balk. We hesitate. We resist.

We say, “I know. I know…”  I shouldn’t spend too much, drink too much, eat too much, talk too much, laugh too much, stay alone so much, give so much. I shouldn’t stay silent. I shouldn’t yell. I shouldn’t cry. I shouldn’t believe others when they tell me I am too noisy, quiet, loud, shy, and every other opinion they share that makes me want to change everything about me just so I can fit in. Feel like I belong. Feel like I am seen.

We ‘should’ all over ourselves with the things we say we know we should not do, while fearing there’s nothing else we can do, it’s just the way we are, it’s all that we deserve, what’s the point? why bother?

We all fear change. Fear is a human response to our inability to predict what is going to happen next. It is a natural response to the things we don’t understand in our lives and the world around us.

To offset our fear, we make decisions about ourselves and everyone and everything around us because we believe these are the decisions that will keep us safe. These are the beliefs that will help us make sense of what is happening.

And while the decisions we make may stop the pain in the moment, they don’t translate that well from the there and then when we made them to the here and now in which we are living. They only give us the illusion of feeling ‘safe’ because we know them, we are comfortable and familiar with our decisions. And, as long as we hold onto them, as long as we don’t challenge ourselves to let them go, we know where we stand, even on shifting sands and rocky bottoms.

Because, who would we be, where would we be, without our beliefs in how the world works and where we fit in it?

Choices gives us the opportunity to explore the questions of ‘what do I want more of in my life’ and to find our answers in a safe and courageous space.

It gives us the framework to ask ourselves… What if I’m wrong about what people see in me? What if what I believe isn’t true anymore? What if my pain is caused because I believe people can be…. mean, cold, cruel, unkind, thoughtless, stupid, rigid? What if my fear of moving forward is based on the belief… people always leave, are out to get me, don’t care, don’t see me, don’t hear me, don’t want to know me?

What if I truly do deserve to be happy, loved, content, peaceful, joyful, part of a ‘family’, belong, fit in, safe.

What if I truly do deserve a life of wonder and awe?

Having just spent five days in the Choices seminar room, I am immersed in the wonder and awe of our human condition. Of our capacity to carry pain, and our ability to let it go. To feel hurt and to heal. To break our hearts wide open and love freely.

I am in awe.

We are an amazing human race and the biggest obstacle to our accepting the beauty and magnificence of our human condition and the world around us is, Us.

Change is possible, once we get out of the way of believing the answer is, we can’t.

In the light of today, there is no past.

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At Choices, I watch people of all ages struggle to step out from beneath the shadow of their upbringings, the burdens of the past, the sadness of the lessons they’ve learned on the road of life that have broken their hearts and undermined their belief in their capacity to live freely and whole-heartedly.

Seldom are the burdens they carry intentional ‘gifts’ from the people who loved them. Most often, they are a reflection of the pain and fears of those who meant the best for them but didn’t know how to give or create ‘the better’ they dreamt of passing on.

Our parents were not handed a roadmap to raising us when we are born.

There is no surefire way to raise a child, to protect them from encounters that hurt them or cause them pain.

All we can do is provide them tools that will help them get up when they fall, move on when they falter and stand tall when the world feels like it is pushing them down.

Years ago, a child psychologist I knew told me that my job as a parent was to ensure my daughters survived their childhood. You’re going to mess up, he said. You’re going to make mistakes. We all do. As long as they can get to the age of 16, they have a chance of repairing the damage you did.

At the time, I remember thinking, What damage? I love my daughters how could he suggest I’d hurt them? Truth is, even before I disappeared into the darkness of a relationship that was killing me, there were things I’d done unintentionally to cause them pain, to wound their hearts, to limit their capacity to live whole-heartedly. I carried my own childhood wounds and lessons learned on the road of life with me. Unacknowledged, they limited my ability to be whole and present with my daughters.

Didn’t make me a bad mother. It did make me very human. And in my humanness, it made me capable of change, if I was willing.

We are all capable of change. We are all worthy of living life on the wild side, on the outside of our comfort zones, never looking back at the things that dragged us down or held us silent in our fears.

We all deserve to love and be loved.

And that’s where programs like Choices come in.

Choices is not a cure-all or magic potion to drink that will fix everything. It’s just a beautifully constructed program with some very well-defined and effective processes that gently and lovingly create space for each person to look inside and heal the broken spaces where the light has been distorted. And in the healing of those broken places, learn to live in the wonder and beauty of who they are when Love can get in to outshine their fear they’ll never be enough.

So many times we think we have all the answers to who we are.

What I’ve learned at Choices is I will never know all of who I am because all of who I am is greater than my fears and wildest dreams. When I let go of the fears that hold me back from being all of who I want to be in a world of love and joy, anything is possible. When I risk letting go of the protective walls and shields I’ve built around me and my heart, I free myself from the habitual behaviours and responses I’ve  adopted to keep my heart from getting hurt and my dreams from getting shattered. And in that freedom, life happens, miracles unfold.

Because, once I tear down the walls around my heart, the world is a wondrous place where my light shines brightly in the freedom of being all I am when I no longer walk in fear that my past is my future and all I’ll ever know.

When I let go of measuring each step by the length of the shadow of yesterday, I am free to walk in the light of today becoming all I ever dreamed my life would be.

Namaste.

I changed my glasses. I can see clearly now it was me, standing in the darkness

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I changed my glasses last night. I hadn’t realized they were foggy until Mary Davis, the facilitator from Choices Seminars, mentioned in an email, “all these things you have on your plate are really lovely items.”

I had written to apologize for having to back out of my commitment to coach at Choices next week. I hadn’t wanted to, back out. I absolutely love coaching at Choices and am privileged to be able to do it as often as I do. I won’t be there in April because of the wedding, and was telling myself I would be letting the whole team down if I didn’t turn up as I’d committed to this time.

I kept telling myself, “I can do this. All of it.”

And then, lying awake in the dark, trying to rosy up my glasses so I could peer into the darkness of my thinking that I was sinking beneath the juggling of all the things I had to do, I realized, it’s not true.

I don’t have to do it all. Sometimes I can’t.  Sometimes, I have to trust it will be okay.

So I wrote and let Mary know I couldn’t be there.

And still, I worried. What would she think of me? Maybe her disappointment in me would lead her to reject me. Maybe everyone would be mad at me and never want to work with me again.

Ahhh, that critter is such a sneaky fellow. He knows I have trust issues, heck he feeds them all the time! So imagine his glee when he realized I was tripping over myself, lost in a sea of angst? HA! Gotcha! he shouted as he catapulted into a new assault of my senseless worrying about what other people think of me. True to form, when faced with even a glint of what he perceives to be my failure to heed his advice, he morphs into a new and slimy perspective designed to keep me playing small in the eye of his hurricane-force howling telling me I am a failure. I don’t belong.

Gosh, I sure can get caught up in my own darkness, and drama, when I take my sights off the truth. I’m okay. In fact, I’m wonderfully, lovingly humanly okay.

I really did think it was my job to cram it all in, juggle it all and keep the world spinning.

Mary’s gentle and loving response to my email stopped my thinking in its tracks.

I was seeing the totality of all I had to do and losing sight of the loveliness of all I had to do.

I was trapped in the dark side of my thinking it was all up to me and not seeing the loveliness and joy of all I am excited about doing.

I have a lot of lovely things on my plate. Some of them include organizing a media training day for executives in the homeless serving sector in March and working with an amazing team on the launch of a Homeless Charter of Rights in April.

My beloved and I are also planning our wedding for April 25th and over the past few months, I have had an amazing time creating for it.

And, this project of launching Calgary’s Updated Plan to End Homelessness at the Summit on March 3rd. It is exciting, inspiring, uplifting. We are in the throes of paradigm shifts and igniting collective impact. It’s amazing!

And there I was bogged down in the minutia of the ‘I’ve got to do it all’ and losing sight of how I can trust others to be doing their best too to change the world.

My glasses were foggy. I changed them.

I can see clearly now.

It was me, myself and I getting in the way of my seeing the truth — Next week at Choices, there will be a whole team of loving, caring, committed individuals doing the wonderful work of Changing the world one heart at a time.

My difference will be felt here, at the nexus of working towards a goal I believe is important to the quality of life of every Calgarian — ending homelessness.

I am truly blessed to have so many lovely things on my plate. Things that excite me and charge me up, that remind me every day — I can be the change I want to see in the world.

We all can.