On some level we can all get a sense of the soul or spirit of a couple or family or team. We know when people come together in relationship, the space they create together is different from, and more than, each separate individual.  We get this – kind of. It’s hard to really grasp and easily articulate because what we’re talking about is something that is not a part of the nuts and bolts of daily life. It is intangible, unseen, and nearly impossible to measure. That’s because it’s not part of what we call our Consensus Reality.

In relationship coaching we use an image of three levels of reality to talk about the various influences on our relationships. Consensus Reality is the level we are most familiar with – that of facts and figures, that of the concrete and measurable, that which we can experience with our five senses. It includes the measurable, objective, and agreed upon (why it’s called consensus) aspects of our lives. This is what we call the “real” world. We sure do know the real world impacts us and our relationships all the time.

The Dreaming level of reality is the level of dreams, visions, values, and emotions. Our beliefs and our worldview are articulated in the Dreaming level of reality.  This level of reality is subjective because we each have our own beliefs, dreams, and feelings. As coaches we know this is a juicy level, full of the energy that enlivens our relationships. We cannot see our dreams or our values, but we certainly know they impact everything about us.

Many of us have trouble getting a grasp of the third level of reality, that of Sentient Essence. Our language doesn’t work so well here because this is the level before words, the preverbal sensing of something that is beginning to happen or the awareness of something that is immensely powerful yet inexplicable. We know this level is acting on us, we can feel it and express it with our bodies, or we use metaphor to attempt to capture it. Quantum field, the void, the whole of which we are all a part, may be just some ways of describing the Sentient Essence level. This deep unseen level of reality provides the “umph” or urge before ideas or words that underlies all of life.

We have so much trouble talking about these unseen levels of reality because Consensus Reality in this culture at this time has what relationship coaches call privilege. By privilege we mean the advantage, or special right, or permission to be the dominant worldview. The measureable, objective outer world of what we have all agreed upon is “real” is so dominant, we have very few agreed upon words for expressing anything that is outside of the sphere of the linear, factual, and measurable. Given our culture’s nearly complete reliance on the scientific model, this is such a natural state for us that we could almost say, “duh!” to the concept of the dominance or privilege of Consensus Reality.

We are the product of a worldview that gives dominance or privilege to the linear, rational, measurable, scientific, repeatable, and provable. This favoritism is so complete that we aren’t even aware of how it lives in us and how it shapes our thinking.

Personal life coaches and relationship coaches are pretty good at some aspects of the Dreaming level. After all, we do a lot of work with our clients’ values, dreams, and belief systems. But that Essence level is a stumper for many of us. The Sentient Essence level of reality is particularly problematic for us because everything about it has been marginalized. How do we use our Consensus Reality dominant brains to grasp the preverbal, the more than verbal, the oneness of possibilities that can be felt in an instant yet never fully articulated?

Ordinary or Consensus Reality has tremendous privilege over non-ordinary reality or the unseen levels of Dreaming and Sentient Essence. And where non-ordinary reality does hold privilege – in religions and spiritual traditions – dogma limits, alienates, and creates conflict. Spiritual traditions are all about giving words and meaning to that which is more than our five senses can perceive. And usually religions or spiritual traditions require faith, not tangible proof. When we start talking about the unseen, all of what we have learned or felt about spiritual traditions – our own and others’ – gets stirred within us. We are easily triggered by uncomfortable language, and most of the conversation is uncomfortable just by the nature of its unfamiliarity.

In the subjective Dreaming level of our unique beliefs and worldviews, we do not have a shared language. The Sentient Essence level is beyond language. When we attempt to talk about our experiences with these unseen levels, we get tripped up by the language and images of others that appear to be at odds with our own beliefs.

This is the one-two conversation knock-out punch: If I can’t measure it in the factual world it has no meaning or value, and if we do attempt to explore it, you will step on my beliefs.

My colleagues and I are up to the very edgy work of teaching coaches how to engage with the unseen levels of reality in ways that aren’t awash in dogma, that don’t require faith.

We believe that working with relationships and individuals, that all of life, involves interacting with what is not tangible, concrete, or part of what we could call ordinary or Consensus Reality. We believe that it is imperative for us to reclaim our innate ability to recognize, engage, and influence that vast universe that is so much more than what our standard five senses can perceive. And we know that this conversation is so outside of our reality box that it can stir tremendous fear and avoidance.

We know that denying the conversations about the intangibles that are such a large part of our selves and our experience is no longer a viable option. Too much information and opportunities are missed. Too small of a story is being told. Too few options are left open to us at a time when we desperately need more of them. And as relationship coaches we know that all three levels of reality need to be tended for our relationships to thrive.

In Standing in Both Worlds, The Third Entity™, the Unseen, and the Technology of Magic, we have created a step-by-step, dogma-free process for exploring the unseen that anyone of any spiritual tradition can use. Using the tools from ORSC and from various wisdom traditions we have identified key components necessary for shaking free from the dominance of Consensus Reality just long enough to sense even more of what’s trying to happen in our relationships. We say ORSC opens the doorway to other levels of reality and NORSC – Non-Ordinary Reality Systems Coaching – gives you the tools to walk back and forth between the worlds.

Yes, it is likely that this work will always be edgy, at least until as a culture we are able to have open conversations about the unseen. And no, we can’t avoid this work just because it’s so challenging. We have to use all of our tools, all of our inner wisdom, and all of our daring to get past the privilege of Consensus Reality. Beyond the boundaries of privilege lie immeasurable possibilities. Won’t you join us there?

Getting a handle on the inner critic, the judge, the predator that devours our dreams, is part of the territory of coaching whether personal life coaching, relationship coaching, or team building. This inner critic is the voice that keeps us small, that holds us back, that convinces us how incapable, unworthy, and just plain no good we are.

I’ve gone to the mat so many times with these demons – mine and my clients’ – that I’m finally starting to get just some of their shenanigans figured out. My current theory is that they are part of a devious extraterrestrial plot to keep humans way behind in the galactic race to glory (you can read more about this here http://www.hawkview.net/resources/the-inner-critic-in-a-devious-extraterrestrial-plot/).

No matter the origin or purpose of the ubiquitous beast of shame and judgment, we still have to wrestle with it. Our loved ones are counting on us to do so.

Here’s an embarrassing scene from my life as an example: My honey did the dishes and (like he’s done many times before) he missed big hunks of goo on the pots. (In reality what look like big hunks to me are likely minor bits of residue.) I have this insidious way of making him feel like a complete failure because he still hasn’t learned how to thoroughly and completely and perfectly wash the dishes.

My judge is talking directly to his judge with the dishes merely being a minor prop in our tragic play.

Sure, there is a reality-based aspect of food safety here, but, I’m telling you, this is only a tiny part of what’s going on.

My critic rides me about thoroughness and perfection. (And I know for a fact I am not alone here.) My judge is reminding me so-and-so’s home is always spotless, if you’re going to do a job you better do it well, only slackers miss details, people will think you are lazy if you don’t keep your home neat and clean, neatness is an indication of character…. You get it, right? (which could also be read: “You get it right, damn it!”)

With the ease of the most graceful of dancers I sling this out onto my honey. Even if my sweet (maybe too sweet) words merely are: “Ooops, another reject. You missed some goo here,” due to the explosive power of our inner judges my honey could easily hear, “You’ve failed, yet again, you slug.”

Ok, Ok, I can hear all kinds of  “Yea, but, that’s his problem,” or “How else do you get things done well?” or  “Get some thicker skin, both of you!” I get it.

And I’m sticking with my point: we have to get clear about our inner judges and how much we sling our not-good-enough-ness out into the world, especially on to the ones we love.

Over time I’ll talk more about the critic because I feel passionately that this is one nasty, powerful thought form that we simply have to see through. For now, my basic one-two punch for the inner predator: awareness followed by love. (Yes, love. Sappy alert for what follows.)

The first step to getting out from under the tyranny of the inner critic is awareness. We have to recognize this voice. We have to know when it’s working on us. We have to really get the feel, strength, and subtleness of this nearly universal message of wrongness, lack, and failure.

Awareness of the critic is harder than it would seem. The critic is the water we swim in, the air we breathe, the lens through which we see everything. The judgment messages of the critic – ours and the world’s – are so much a part of our thinking that it can seem nearly impossible to recognize ourselves and others without the critic’s influence.

And that dastardly demon hides right up next to our cherished values, slipping into our thoughts attached to what we hold most dear. Beauty, simplicity, and ease are values of mine. So is contributing to the whole by doing my part. And yes, doing a job well is important to me, too. Perfection is not a value of mine. Perfection is the critic’s illusory twist that would hold me to my values in ways that I can never measure up to.

When I quiet my mind a bit and go inward I can tell the critic from my values by how I feel. Critic messages make me feel ugly, bad, not worthy, not good enough, all round sucky. And when I’m coming from my critic I have these same feelings about YOU. That’s what I project onto you. That’s how I judge you and find you not good enough, wrong, bad, and in need of some big changes, by golly, and I’m just the one to tell you how to change.

When I’m living from values and my desires fed by my values, I feel right on, I feel like a vibratory match to my actions. Yes, I can be stretching and changing, and I can be wanting you to stretch and change with me. This change, though, comes from love.

Step two is to get back to love. Remembering what we love, who we love, the love that we are that is so much more than the critic can ever be is one hugely powerful way to see through the critic’s illusions.

Returning to my goo on the dishes example: If I can be aware of the critic message (goo = failure = bad = need to blame and correct) and see it for what it is, then I can be in choice. Do I really want to sling my critic out there? Or do I want to remember what’s really important to me (what and who I love)? If I can take one nanosecond to remember love, I can make a different choice. What do I love? Beauty, ease, contributing the whole, doing my job well. Who do I love? My honey for one and in this moment, he’s the one.

A smile comes over me. Sure, I’m frustrated that goo bothers me more than it bothers him, and I know other things bother him more. Can I step out of my need to express my frustration in a way that judges and diminishes my honey? Can we laugh about this? Can we find another way to be with goo and dishes and what bothers us? Without the shaming blaming judge I know we can. It will likely be messy and it could take a bit longer, but I know it will be worth it in the long run.

What is power, that illusive thing we yearn for or push against?  Power – as in the personal kind – is one of those terms, that for most of us, we have some vague sense of but would be hard pressed to actually define.

The definitions I find most helpful come from ecofeminist author, Starhawk, in Truth or Dare, Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery. In this book she describes three kinds of power we humans have: power-over, power-from-within and power-with.

Power-over is the one my generation loves to push against (that is we did until we got to the top – since then we’ve seemed to grow quite fond of it).  Power-over is the power that comes from position within the hierarchy.  That can be a position within an organization like the power that comes with the role of supervisor or CEO or owner.  It can be the power that comes from the culture, for example, like the power of the police over the speeding driver or the power of money to influence and acquire.  The physical force of violence and war are examples of power-over in its most raw form.

Elected officials have a tremendous amount of power-over.  They get to make decisions that will impact millions of us (and some times the whole planet) for years to come.  They have many opportunities to express their opinions and have people listen to them.  They get to be in charge, to take charge, to execute their will to be or to do or to have.  (And I hear they have a good health care package.)  All of this power, though, is easily lost in the next election.

Power-from-within, on the other hand, is not up for vote.  This is the power of self that each one of us has.  It is the combined force of our self esteem, our emotional intelligence, our sense of our own moral compass, our connection to our core values, our spiritual awareness (if that supports our belief system), and our knowledge of ourselves. It is our ability to navigate the river of life in reference to what has meaning for us.  When wielding our power-from-within we have an inner locus of control, meaning our reference point is within us.  While we love and care for others and want the respect our our tribe, we are not tossed about by the need to please or to control others.

Dr. Geo Trevarthen, celtic scholar and author, talks about the grail-like container of self that is both the vessel and the ambrosial fluid within the vessel.  If our container of self has holes in it, our fluid life force can leak right out.  Or if we constantly over-extend ourselves we are likely to “burn out” our inner juice, our energy.

As adults it’s up to us to stoke our power-from-within by taking good care of our container of self and keeping our inner juice replenished.  That’s what personal life coaching is often about – how to build individual power-from-within.  When we have solid containers of self and we’ve found ways to keep them full of our life force, then we are much more likely to thrive right through the many challenges of our lives.  If, though, our power only comes from what position or money or fame gives us, then losing any of these can be devastating. (And as a fallen politician things could be quite bleak until we get our really high paying lobbying job.)

Power-with is the power of partnership.  It’s the power of the political party, the labor union, the family (when functional), the carpool, the co-op.  When we combine our power-from-within with others’, we create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  We create a new system with a shared purpose.  And systems, like people, are adaptable, generative, and capable.  Relationship coaching is all about helping partnerships – whether those of two individuals or large organizations – develop their power-with each other.

The vast majority of the issues we are addressing today are way more than any one even extremely powerful person can completely solve on their own.  Despite our many stories of awesomely capable superheroes, the age of the power of the individual is over.  (Yikes, did I just say that?  Yes, I did.  More posts to follow this, I know.)   Yes, we can and do, each of us, make a difference.  And, when we work well together we make more of a difference, we have even more power.  Power-with is the answer to all of the really tough questions.

So, for this now infamous politician facing his tough questions, I’m wondering about the strength of his power-with — his wife, his party and his constituents.  I’m imagining his power-from-within is being sorely tested.  Since power-over is the hardest of the three to hold on to, especially without the power of self and partnership, time will tell us more of this story, won’t it?  Forget the photos and internet sex, the really hot part of this one is the flow of power.

A hidden cavern deep within me has been echoing with the hollowness of broken promises.  Not just an occasional relapse from a well-established practice, absolute abandonment is the cause for this stubborn ache.  I have deserted myself.

The hardest promises to keep are the ones we make to ourselves.  And when we keep making them and breaking them we gouge a rut of untrustworthiness into our spirits.  What perfect ammunition for our inner critic to use against us at every turn.  “Why even bother with that big idea?  You know you’ll develop these elaborate plans and get nowhere – because you lie.  You don’t have what it takes to do what you say you’re gonna do.  Crawl back into your hidey hole, you lying coward.”

OK, so maybe your inner critic isn’t as nasty as mine.  Lucky you.

Yes, there have been very good reasons that I haven’t been keeping my secret promise to myself – work and health and family needs are just some of them.  And I have had many other outlets for my creativity that I have enjoyed.  Most people would consider me highly reliable and trustworthy.  Timing is everything, too.  I know you don’t plant tomatoes in Colorado in the winter.  Compassionate understanding for the challenges of heroic proportions that we all face runs deep in me, and I do usually extend this compassion to myself.  Along with all this justification, understanding and compassion, hollow regret still echoes in me.

That’s how I know it isn’t an illusion or my critic’s distortion or yet another “should”.  It is a persistent desire I have, this secret promise to myself that I must fulfill. It is one of those promises that I am compelled keep for the pure joy of it for me. It is a promise I will long regret breaking if I do.

As a life coach I know we all make promises to ourselves.  Some we keep secret for fear of ridicule or objection.  Some we blab to all who would listen.  Whether it’s learning a new language, building a straw bale house, writing a book, running a marathon or reaching out to an old friend, at some point in time we have to follow the restless and undeniable yearnings from deep within.  There are some promises we simply must keep – including those wild and formidable ones we make to ourselves.  The cost for not doing so is simply too great.

In the midst of the bright lights, music, laughter, shopping frenzy, and food of the season it can seem way out of place to be talking about darkness.  Yet in the northern hemisphere this is a time of long dark and often cold nights.  For some of us it is a time of inner reflection and stillness.  And for many of us facing financial, family, or personal turmoil the harshness and danger are not very far beneath the bright lights.

If you are facing a long dark night or feeling a bit lost even in the light of day, here are a few things I’ve learned about making it through the night:

Throw out the map. You can’t see it in the dark anyway.  Get dreamy and creative and feel your way.  First remember who you really are and where you are standing now and what you are standing for.  From there you’ll know the next best step.

Lead from your heart. It’s in our animal nature to be afraid of the dark and the unknown.  Love brings light wherever it goes.  Do what you love, be your love, act out of love, share with those you love.  At one of the darkest nights in my life, when I was doubting everything and everyone, when my body and mind were betraying me, I remembered that I loved my child.  If I, broken and crazy, could feel love, then I knew love existed. I clung to that knowing and found my way back to my true self.

Trust yourself. You are creative, capable, and resourceful.  You have made it through darker nights before and will again.  No matter what inner or outer critics might say – trust yourself.  Think of it – you might believe in Divinely given free will: such ultimate trust of you!  Or if you don’t, then consider this exquisite evolving universe.  Evolution is fundamental to this system.  A system in which evolution is fundamental is one in which trust is fundamental.  The universe trusts you. You can trust yourself to be able to handle whatever the unknown presents you.

Undress for success. No, not as in stripping for cash.  As in take off the costumes and masks we all wear because we think we need to hide our true selves from the world.  In the chatty and festive light of day we may feel that hiding our unique brilliance will make us more likely to succeed.  Even if that were true in the daylight, it is not at all true in the darkness.  We need sure and fluid movement, comfort in our own skin, freedom to explore possibilities, confidence to express ourselves.  We absolutely have to stop worrying about what others think of us if we want to find our way.

Dream as much as you can - and then dream some more. Dreams hold our hope, our songs, our creativity, our solutions, our best selves.  Sure, we need to put legs under our dreams and the darker the night, the more dreaming we need.  The doing will come soon enough with the dawn.

Get a regular dose of belly laughs. One winter when there was a collective frenzy of worry about a pending flu epidemic, I decided to follow Norman Cousins’ way of healing through laughter.  For 6 weeks we watched nothing but comedies on TV.  No dramas, no dead body parts, no mysteries or reality shows.  We rented all the comedies we could find. We laughed our heads off.  And it shifted everything about us.  We were happier, more optimistic, more gregarious and not one of us got the flu or even a sniffle.

Be a really good friend – to everyone you meet. The way we have survived as a species through ice ages and very long dark nights has always been as a community.  We need our strong and healthy relationships, we need to gather around the fire together and take turns being on the look-out.  Changing our focus from what others can give to us to how we can help and befriend those in even more need is pure magic.  Try it and see.

I know there are others of you, my readers, who are really good at navigating in the night.  I’d love for you to tell me your stories, to share your hard-earned wisdom.  That’s one thing we can all do to support each other – share our stories and be generous with our encouragement.   Holding hands is always good, too.

One starting place is the flip side of speaking: listening.  Deeply listening with our focus on what is alive in the speaker can be one of the greatest gifts we can give someone.

“When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”    Karl Menninger

To really listen we have to momentarily suspend our need to be heard, our urge to respond and move the conversation along in the direction we desire.  Instead we have to slow down, be present and be open to receiving the thoughts and feelings of another person.

“To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.”   Mark Nepo

As a personal life coach I have been shaped and changed by the stories of my brilliant clients.  Part of the success of life coaching is that someone with no agenda other than ours is deeply listening to us and prompting us to our own inspiration and power.

What does it take for us to really listen to someone else?  For me to be open and willing to be changed by what I hear I have to stop and focus.  I have to completely forget my agenda, my time schedule and my to-do list.  Multi-tasking is a no-no (you know what it’s like to be on the phone with someone that is reading their email or texting – no deep listening is happening there).  It might be the best evidence of respect for someone when I set aside my opinions and desires long enough to hear theirs.  My whole being needs to be like an open hand rather than one closed to hold on to myself alone.

This can be monumentally challenging when I have strong opinions and know I’m right!  Ask my husband or my son or those with opposing political views and they’ll tell you.  I imagine if we really could listen to our political opponents and have them deeply listen to us, both of us with the willingness to be changed by what we hear, the problems we face together would be minor in comparison.

It definitely requires our superhero powers to keep our mouths shut and our ears open!

Of course I can’t be willing to be open and changed if you aren’t because then it would be a win/lose proposition with me the loser, right?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

There’s nothing to lose by listening with our hearts.  Even if we can’t hear the words enough to be changed by them, we can hear the feelings behind the words.  And we can acknowledge the feelings.  I can get that you are excited, angry, sad, exuberant, frustrated, or scared.  I know what it’s like to feel these feelings.  When I can’t hear the words I can hear and be moved by your feelings – if I so choose.  Marshall Rosenberg says we have to meet at the level of feelings before we can really hear or be heard, especially if we are experiencing deep feelings.

So what if we leaned in, softly, and really listened to someone we usually only half-way hear?  What if we gave our beloveds the gift of our full attention, listening with our ears and our hearts and our open selves?  What might be possible in our relationships when we really hear each other?  I’m thinking this gift-giving, open-hearted, sappy holiday season could be a good time to find out.

Swainson’s hawks arrive in Colorado in the spring – after spending our winters in Argentina.  Read that again, please.  These hawks fly (by flapping their wings – not in coach class) from Argentina in very South America all the way to mid North America.  And they do that in a few months.  It boggles my mind to think of traveling such a distance by your own power in such a short time.  I’m in awe of these birds just knowing this.

Once they get to my part of the world they hastily build or squat on existing nests and get serious about the business of reproducing.  My bird watching partner (my honey) and I frequently laugh at Swainson’s hawk nests.  You can tell there is no time to paint and decorate before the babies arrive.  They set up house in whatever jumble of sticks and leaves they can find, in nests frequently way too close to roads or looking like a good wind will blow them over, which unfortunately sometimes does happen.  One year a nest we were watching blew down yet the determined parents hastily built another one and had time to successfully raise one baby.

These new young birds have to hatch, survive summer storms (with no basement to run to when the wild weather of the plains is in full splendor), and then make it through the fledgling stage of learning how to leave the nest and fly.  And they have to do all of this in about 4 months.  That’s because at the end of the summer the whole family is flying back to Argentina. Think about that – as a young Swainson’s hawk you’ve just learned to fly and catch your own food (grasshoppers being one of your favorite dishes) and now you’re off on an unimaginable marathon.  At least you’ll be traveling with thousands of your peeps.

That’s because these hawks get really friendly and gather in huge groups, called kettles, to make the long trek together.  Bird brains, I mean wildlife specialists who know these things, say that the young aren’t born knowing their way to Argentina so they have to be taught by the adults.  I’m thinking that as a human I would have to be taught the way to Argentina a bunch of times before I could remember the whole route (that means remembering it all with no MapQuest).  More mind boggling happening here.

Maybe that’s another reason why they travel in large groups: it’s their version of “it takes a village”.  Maybe it takes a kettle to remember the way up and back.  Or maybe they cheer each other on when they are exhausted and still have thousands of miles to go.  Or maybe it’s to ensure some of the young make it even if their parents don’t.

Whatever the reason for kettles they are pure magic to behold.  And a bit tricky to find because the hawks generally don’t send word to humans as to where the secret gathering place is each year.  My honey and I have spent the last 8 years scouring the plains in late summer to find them.  Some years we have seen hundreds.  Most years we get excited if we see 30 to 40 in one field together.  Every year we enjoy the quiet vastness, the excitement of the hunt and the possibility of crashing the pre-game party.

What makes it even more thrilling is that when we find the kettles we call the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program (www.rmrp.org) so that the injured or sick orphans the RMRP staff and volunteers have cared for can now be returned to the wild.  When the kettles are being formed is perfect timing for the release of the immature birds.  They are welcomed into the village, reunited with their peeps and ready for the journey south.

These magnificent birds have taught me tons:  Things don’t always have to be perfect (especially in the house keeping department), because often good enough for now will do just fine.  The impossible to imagine really can be accomplished, every year, over and over again.  It’s always more fun to do really hard things in the company of your peeps.  If a good storm trashes your plans, try again, quickly.  When you feel the inner timing is ripe, listen to it and go.  Whenever you can on a long journey, ride the thermals and conserve your energy.  (I’m still hoping that some day they’ll teach me how to fly.)

Hunting hawks, taking care of wounded birds of prey and then releasing them back into the wild are priority passions of mine.  Exquisite joy and bone deep satisfaction come from living one’s passion and from being connected with the natural world!  I highly recommend both.

How about you?  What do you do just for the sheer joy of it?  What “hawks” are you hunting?

(For you delightful Gen Ys and Millennials when I was growing up the word “woman” was  considered a pejorative term for females that just wasn’t used in polite society.  Women were called ladies and were expected to behave as such.  Period.)

This lady lion tamer was a living, breathing actual wonder woman for me.  She shattered my young notions of possibilities for women.  More than a decade before the modern feminist movement roared into our shared consciousness this one woman I experienced for very brief time nudged me along a life time path.

No, I’m not a circus performer nor am I all that into whips.  I do love to hang out with wild animals, though.  And I’m devoted to being in the company of wild women.  Actually I’m devoted to bringing out the sparkly, bold, courageous, wild power of women.

Wild as in connected with instinctive and intuitive knowing, breathing freely, able to roam with awareness through inner and outer territories, capable of using innate talents. Wild as is not overly domesticated, not focused on outer approval at the expense of personal truth.  Wild as in authentic, sure of self, daring and not so eager to trade comfort for freedom.  Wild as in aware of our power-from-within.

We absolutely need access to our wild and wise power-from-within right now because we are all facing snarling and snapping dangers in our lives.  Weird as it may sound, I don’t think the danger is in what we’re facing.  It’s not the lion or the job or the relationship or the checkbook.  It’s in how we want to face what’s before us.  Because it is really, really dangerous to be in this world without a great deal of inner power.

Today I’m standing in front of a beastie of a to-do list and a full spectrum of delicious distractions.  It will definitely take my power-from-within to keep my focus, to stay clear and aware and moving in the direction I know is best for me, to not be defined or confined by limiting thinking.  Good thing I’ve got my whip, high boots and sparkly regalia.

How about you?  What wild women in your lives have inspired you to step into your inner power?

Maybe being mortal humans in a dangerous world means there will always be some form of background drumming or strumming that keeps us on our toes, ready to fight or flee.  And maybe how noticeable that scary music is depends on our own inner rhythm.  It still seems to me that the background music to much of our shared experience resembles the suspense building, adrenaline pumping, terror inducing soundtrack of horror movie.  We all are on our toes, really quick to take a swing or run away or go completely, frozenly numb.

(Or maybe this is just me, because, as my friend Lynne says, for each of us “it’s always all about me”.)

Whether about the little me or the bigger me that includes many more of us, I’ve decided that I want to become more aware of when I am acting from fear and how I can do that more consciously.  I want to become aware of the background music and decide for myself how I want to dance to it.  I want to get past numb and knee jerk fear so that I can clearly tune into my inner knowing, my inner rhythm, my inner awareness of the best steps for me to take no matter what tune others are dancing to.  I want to know what I really need to be afraid of and how to best respond to that fear.

I was inspired by something I read in Robert Moss’s book, The Three “Only” Things, tapping the power of dreams, coincidence & imagination (highly recommended!). At one point he writes about the indigenous people of the Andaman Islands off of the coast of India. They somehow knew about the December 2004 tsunami and fled to the highlands before it wiped out their coastal village.  I write this again – a group of what we might describe as primitive people knew ahead of time that there was a real danger they needed to act upon and they did so.  They survived because they listen to the messages in their dreams.  According to Moss, “By tradition, the fierce Andaman islanders are group dreamers who gather at night in their community ‘big houses’ to dream the means of survival and progress for the whole community.”  And they listen to the wind and the animals, letting their deep connection with nature inform them.  They trust their inner knowing and are not afraid to act on it.  They trust their dreams for their survival – and it works!

That’s what I want – the ability to get the messages from my dreams and on the wind and through the songs of the birds and the courage to act on this knowing.  When I think of the Andaman Islanders I am in awe of their ability to simply walk away. It seems to me that this is the hardest part about trusting our intuition – we have to be willing to walk away from, to completely drop, anything else we are attached to.  How many of us could simply walk away from our homes and possessions? How many of us can just drop a closely held set of expectations?  How many of us might respond to an urgent intuitive message with something like “I can’t do that now because I have to meet this deadline”, or “I have to quickly answer this email”, or “I have to stay on the course already set for myself right now”?

I want to feel the fear that comes from my inner knowing and pushes me to act in possibly outrageous ways, if necessary, for the sake of my long term survival and thrival (my invented word for thriving).  I don’t want the fear that is the distracting background music, part of the group mind that keeps me agitated but unaware of actions to take that are right for me. That background music of fear is keeping me from hearing the wind, noticing my dreams, trusting my own choices.

Hmmmm…. How do I get what I want?  (Because it’s all about me getting what I want.)

I’m thinking a first step is to stay aware of the background music, really aware, so that I am able to sort out what’s out there and what’s within me. A next step is to pay attention to my dreams and the messages on the wind which means taking time for the subtle, for the ephemeral, for being in nature.  After that maybe it’s to look at what I’m holding onto so tightly it might be holding me back from acting on my inner knowing (I’m guessing that’s a big hunk of stuff to sort through.) And I’m pretty sure I need to be ready to trust myself even if it seems foolish or out of step with the popular beat.  I sure do wish I had a community to dream with each night.

At first this cracked me up.  The term buffet anxiety stuck with me, though, and now I’ve come to see that we all – or at least all of the people I know – have some form of this  tragically funny dis-ease.  Most of us are at the feast of life.  An entire banquet of intriguing and potentially delicious delights are laid out in front of us.  We have so very many choices of people to be with, ways to connect with them, recreational activities to divert us (even if there are 57 channels and nothing on), books to read, classes to take, food to eat, amounts of food to eat, information to collect, blogs to read and even jobs to explore.  Yep, we are at a feast alright, a buffet teaming with possibilities.  Even if it feels like we have few choices for the vast majority of us in the industrialized world we have a very, very full buffet before us.

We are ill-equipped to handle this vast and virtually unimaginable feast of choices.  Think of it.  Think about how many fewer choices our grandparents had.  Our grandparents and ancestors before them had way fewer personal choices to make (due to cultural limits) and many fewer consumer choices to make (due to products available) and way less people to connect with (due to communication and transportation technologies and a smaller population).  Yes, they may still have been at the feast of life, but our feast is over the top compared to theirs.  So, no, we aren’t all weak or crazy.  This is a very big adaptation for us to make as a species.  It’s perfectly understandable that as individuals we haven’t figured it out yet – or grown another stomach so we can digest it all.

With this unprecedented array of possibilities before us we are all like my colleague’s husband – we are suffering from varying amounts of buffet anxiety.  We can agonize over our choices, we can gobble everything in sight so as not to miss anything good, we can completely forget what we were hungry for, we can make ourselves sick eating it all, we can starve ourselves out of fear of making a wrong choice, we can become intoxicated with the joy of all the experiences.  We can completely lose our sense of direction and attention to what we really want when plates of dark chocolate covered strawberries catch our eye.  Seriously, mountains of dark chocolate!  Who could pass that by?

Those of us who have a hard time saying “no” to anything know what I’m talking about here.  We are so far beyond some idea of boundaries.  We are in way over our heads, drowning at the feast.  I see the impact of buffet anxiety on my clients all the time. Many people come to life coaching because they want some balance in their lives.  Or they want to finally reach that one elusive goal. Or they don’t even know what they really want because they’ve been overwhelmed for so long.  All of these are feast related. The depth and breath of the choices before us and the resulting challenges so many choices present are way more than “just say no” or “make a list and do it” strategies can address.  How we want to be while enjoying the feast of life is one of the big classes that each of us will take (and probably retake multiple times) at our individual Mystery School of Life (You know – that esoteric school we’re all attending as we figure out who we are, why we’re here, and what we need to learn in order to thrive and give our gifts).

There are many ways to approach buffet anxiety from a life coaching perspective.  You’ll read more about my strategies over time here because I am intimately experienced with the challenges of abundance (for which I am very, very thankful).  In fact, that’s one of my first steps – gratitude.  When overwhelmed with choices, when plates of dark chocolate (in any number of forms) are waved before me, if I can pause long enough to simply be profoundly grateful for all the possibilities, something in me shifts.  Gratitude some how brings me, even briefly, back to myself. It creates a momentary gap in the anxiety and frenzy of the experience.  In this gap I can breathe and remember.  I can regroup and reconnect with what has meaning for me.  And out of that meaning I have a little more of a solid place to stand while I gaze at the feast.  Being thankful doesn’t guarantee I’ll pass up that dark chocolate.  It does give me some awareness and that’s one of the best starting place I know.

What do you notice about how you approach the feast of life?  How are you with making choices, keeping your balance, knowing what satisfies you, saying yes and no to requests and possibilities?  Passing up plates of dark chocolate?  Or not?