by Pamela Slim

A core part of Martha’s approach to life coaching is the concept of the Body Compass. Housed deep inside you, your compass is always pointed True North, towards the life that will make you happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.

The body compass speaks through your physical body. So as you think of incredibly positive experiences in your life, you pay attention to how your body feels when you are having this experience. Then, you do the same for incredibly negative experiences. (See complete Body Compass instructions at the end of this post)

Everyone is different, but many people find the following physical reactions when they are pointed in a positive direction:

• Open, full breathing
• Relaxed muscles, especially in the shoulder and neck area
• A feeling of lightness and openness in the head

When pointed in a negative direction, they find the following physical reactions:

• muscle constriction in general, in the shoulder and neck area in particular
• tightness or “pit” in stomach
• headaches, inability to concentrate

With this information, when you are faced with tough decisions, you can use your physical feelings to guide you towards a good answer.

But here is the catch: What do you do when your body compass talks trash? Here is an example:

My client was frustrated on our call. He is a talented musician who has wrestled with the idea of performing full-time professionally vs doing it for kicks on the side of a day job. He was unsure of the right answer, since in the past when he had done lots of live performances, he was plagued by insomnia the night before shows.

After doing the body compass exercise and lots of research and reflection, he came to the conclusion that he did, indeed, want to do music professionally. He scheduled a show, and shared the following experience with me:

“I don’t know about this body compass stuff. I did all this work to get clear on what I wanted to do, and it all pointed to music. I scheduled a gig that I was excited about and all seemed well. Then the night before my performance, the insomnia hit again. When I would start to drift off to sleep, it felt like a chemical would shoot through my body and my eyes would fly open.

If music is something that I am supposed to do, why am I getting such a strong negative signal from my body when I pursue it? Does this mean the body compass is bunk, I am moving in the wrong direction, or my compass is broken?”

I had an inkling that what my client was feeling was a strong case of lizard fears. To check my assumptions, I called Martha. After explaining my client’s situation, she said:

“Now that you mention it, in my books, I have never directly addressed the issue of how anxiety frequently comes up when you are on your path to your North Star. In my own life, I felt intense anxiety, sometimes paralyzing, when making positive life changes like writing a book or becoming a life coach. I am so used to it that I never thought to write about it. But it is very common, and can make it really hard to read your body compass.”

She suggested I look at the physical symptoms of anxiety disorders. This is what I discovered, via the National Institute of Mental Health:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

GAD is diagnosed when a person worries excessively about a variety of everyday problems for at least 6 months. People with GAD can’t seem to get rid of their concerns, even though they usually realize that their anxiety is more intense than the situation warrants. They can’t relax, startle easily, and have difficulty concentrating. Often they have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Physical symptoms that often accompany the anxiety include:

• fatigue
• headaches
• muscle tension
• muscle aches
• difficulty swallowing
• trembling
• twitching
• irritability
• sweating
• nausea
• lightheadedness
• having to go to the bathroom frequently
• feeling out of breath
• hot flashes

Do you notice the link with these physical symptoms and the negative body compass symptoms? Not everyone will have full-blown General Anxiety Disorder of course, but many of us experience mild versions, like my client’s insomnia.

Why do we get so anxious when we are headed in the right direction?

Steven Pressfield, in his brilliant book The War of Art describes it this way:

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign.

Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.

Have you ever watched Inside the Actors Studio? The host, James Lipton, invariably asks his guests, ‘What factors make you decide to take on a particular role?’ The actor always answers: ‘Because I’m afraid of it.’

Anxiety can hit anyone, regardless of his or her level of talent (Sir Laurence Olivier and Barbara Streisand both developed social anxiety disorder at the height of their careers). It makes sense that enormous talent would feel like an enormous responsibility, which can lead to anxiety.

So how can you distinguish between “anxiety because you are on the right path” and a “negative body compass reading,” which means you are heading away from your North Star? Here are a couple of ways:

1. In The Joy Diet, Martha outlines four questions to ask when considering a course of action that scares you:

• Is this risk really necessary to achieve my heart’s desires? Do I feel a genuine longing for whatever it is I’m seeking?
• Does the thought of taking this step create an inner sense of clarity, despite my apprehensions? (When a risk is good for you, you may feel apprehension, but little or no confusion)
• Do I feel only fear, or is there also a sense of toxicity akin to disgust? (Pay attention: a good risk feels like taking a high dive into a sparkling clean pool; a bad risk feels like taking the same leap, but into polluted swamp water)
• At the end of my life, which will I regret more: taking this risk and failing, or refusing to take it, and never knowing whether I would have succeeded or failed?

2. Do the arm test

This physical exercise is your built-in lie detector. It requires 2 people.

1. Person A asks Person B to stick out his arm in front of him
2. Person A asks Person B to repeat one phrase at a time while trying as hard as he can to keep his arm up
3. As Person B sticks out his arm and repeats each phrase, Person A pushes down on Person B’s arm
4. If Person B’s arm remains very strong as he repeats a phrase, most likely this is a true statement for him
5. If Person B’s arm is weak as he repeats a phrase, most likely this is a false statement for him
6. It is good to start with items that fall pretty clearly in each direction. Martha’s favorite “false” statement is “I love to vomit.” A good true one (for most people, not all!) is “I love my child.”
7. Once you get warmed up with some reactions, throw in the tough questions, like in my client’s case, “I want to play my music full time.”

I conned my son Jeffery into demonstrating this for you since the instructions can be confusing if you can’t see it live. Here is our home-grown instructional video:

Martha says she does the arm test with her drug-addicted clients with tremendous results. While their body is screaming “I want heroin!,” their arms are weak uttering the same phrase.

If you think you have any issues with general anxiety, get some professional help. There are great therapies available these days to quell your symptoms without resorting to medication.

If your physical symptoms are more like the butterflies that you get while falling in love, press on! The world is waiting for your gifts.

Do any of you have any “anxiety hitting just when achieving my wildest dreams” stories? Any effective ways you have learned to distinguish between “good” and “bad” body readings? Please share!

—

Addendum: Body Compass Exercise Instructions

1. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and think about an exceptionally unhappy event in your life or a very unhappy period in your life.
2. Now focus on your physical body and notice how this memory is making you feel, not emotionally, but physically. Where in your body do you feel sensation? What kind of sensation is it?
3. Some people notice a pit in their stomach, or tightness in their chest or constriction in their shoulders. It is really important to identify the particular place or places in your body where you feel the sensation.
4. Now think of a name for the sensation. It can be something like “the crushed feeling” or “acid stomach.” Use a term that will help you recall the specific physical feeling.
5. Next, assign a score from 1-10 to this negative feeling, with the worst possible manifestation ranking a 10.
6. Complete the entire process using the memory of a very positive event or period of your life.
7. The physical memories, named with a catch phrase and scored, will be indicators of your “bad” and “good” compass readings.

by Pamela Slim

I listened intently to my highly educated and successful client express his fears about quitting his job to start a business.

“What are you really afraid of?” I said.

“When it comes down to it, I am afraid of living on the street and eating garbage out of a dumpster.”

This fear is very common for people who are making significant career or life changes. It doesn’t matter how much experience they have or how much money sits in their bank account, they feel as though one wrong move will utterly destroy their lives.

This is no accident.

We all receive multiple messages a day about how there are not enough resources in the world to support us (”The economy is falling!” “There are no good men left in New York!” “I must eat the WHOLE cake, or never eat again!”) and how we should be very afraid of the future (”The ice caps are melting!” “Serial killers are on the loose!” “The terrorists are coming!”.) Martha calls this the Wizard vs. Lizard battle for your brain in her new book Steering by Starlight.

What is lizard brain?

One of the deepest layers of your brain is a neural structure evolved in early vertebrates. It is wrapped around the cortex of your brain and blasts signals on a regular basis intended to keep you fed and out of danger. Martha says in Steering by Starlight:

The entire purpose of your reptile brain is to continually broadcast survival fears- alarm reactions that keep animals alive in the wild. These fears fall into two different categories: lack, and attack. On one hand, our reptile brains are convinced that we lack everything we need: we don’t have enough time, money, everything. On the other hand, something terrible is about to happen. A predator– human or animal–is poised to snatch us! That makes sense if we’re hiding in a cave somewhere, but when we’re home in bed, our imaginations can fixate on catastrophes that are so vague and hard to ward off that they fill us with anxiety that has no clear action implication.

Animals will live longer when obsessed with getting more resources and avoiding danger.

Humans, on the other hand, especially those of us driving minivans and owning large-screen televisions, carry that same instinct, without facing the same dire situations. This leads us to act in all kinds of unpleasant ways, including paranoid, greedy, suspicious and desperate. The more we listen to our inner lizard, the more we are pulled toward a fate we most fear:

• A salesperson, certain that he won’t be able to sell a thing in a tight economy, calls the same prospect five times in one week, leading him to be permanently blacklisted from the company.
• A jealous boyfriend, convinced his girlfriend is cheating on him, secretly monitors her cellphone calls, follows her, breaks into her email and has a fit whenever she wants to go out with friends. Guess what happens? She packs her bags as fast as she can (unless her lizard fear is “I will never find another man” in which case she marries him, stays in relationship hell for a decade or two before having a heart attack from the stress)
• A young woman, so terrified that she will make a fool of herself presenting to a debate team for the first time, actually passes out when she gets to the podium. In this case, it was Martha, as described in Finding Your Own North Star (Coincidentally, as lizard wizardry works, when her worst nightmare was realized, she overcame her deathly fear of speaking and went on to be a secure and polished presenter.)

Examples of Lizard Fears:

“I’ll never find love”
“Something may have gone right, but you know that other shoe is going to drop”
“You can’t trust anyone in this rotten world.”
“I have to keep secrets; people will use information to hurt me.”
“Ultimately, everyone will betray me.”
“The minute I get anything, someone will take it from me.”
“Nice guys always end up getting screwed.”
“Successful people have all the luck - I just get bad breaks.”

Notice the lack and attack themes that permeate these thoughts? If you want to make progress towards your goals, you must learn to tame your inner lizard. Here are five ways, summarized from Steering by Starlight.

Step 1: Clarify how your inner lizard “thinks”

As you move through your life, are there any recurrent fears that keep popping up? Look at the list above for inspiration or choose your own. Examine the fear and see if it is primarily lack or attack based. When does it hit you? What is your reaction?

Step 2: Name your inner lizard’s top ten tunes:

We create justifications for our lizard fears in order to keep them in place. Complete these sentences with the first thing that pops into your mind. Afterward, scan the list for your personal “lack and attack” themes.

• Oh no! I don’t have enough__________
• If I don’t watch out, someone will__________
• People want to take my__________
• I can’t be perfectly happy until I get__________
• Everybody pressures me to__________
• You just can’t trust__________
• People will hurt me unless I__________
• If only I had__________
• Someone’s always out to__________
• I must hang onto__________

Step 3: The Name Game

Martha asks clients to name their inner lizard or even get a physical representation of them, like a pin or figurine. Her lizard is named Mo, and is fond of grapes, which she tosses to him whenever he whispers sweet lack and attack tunes in her ear.

My lizard, pictured in this post, is named Jorge and lives in the shadows of the pyramids of Chichen Itza in Mexico. Since Jorge’s home is in one of the most powerful spiritual epicenters I have ever visited, he reminds me that where a slippery lizard fear lounges, spiritual power and grace sit quietly by.

When you feel your lizard fears raise their wrinkled necks, instead of wrestling them with force, turn to them softly, call them by name and say gently “There, there Jorge, you do have a flair for the dramatic! Look — there is a ripe mango on that tree, go get it!”

Step 4: Find the Ridiculous

Nothing is funny about being deathly afraid. But once you begin to examine and debunk your lizard fears, they take on a certain hysterical quality:

• Do you really think that you will end up alone and bitter in a cold, windowless room if you leave your marriage?
• Are you really so incompetent as a mother that your new baby will end up underfed in need of therapy by the age of 4? (you may need to be a mom or married to one to truly get this one — new babies are the perfect storm of lizard fears, hormones, and sleeplessness-induced hysteria)
• Or my very favorite Saturday Night Live-inspired lizard fear of all time: Will you be 35, divorced, and live in a van down by the river?

The dear departed Chris Farley from Saturday Night Live in his role of Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker brings to life one of the best, and funniest, lizard tunes I have ever heard. Since the original video was not available (legally anyway), here is a creative interpretation using kinetic typography. If you cannot see this video window, here is the direct link on YouTube.

If you can laugh till your gut busts, like I do, every time you hear this, you will loosen the grip of lizard fears on your brain.

Step 5: The “Shackles Test”

What if you should be afraid?

The question always comes up: what if my lizard fear is right? Bad things happen every day, to good people, so are we being foolish to not be afraid?

Yes and no. There is a distinction between trusting your instinct to avoid harmful situations (like stepping into an elevator in an empty building with only you and a decidedly creepy guy) and taking a risk, (like going back to school to get your Master’s degree when you are 55 years old). Both fears can feel the same until you give them the Shackles Test.

—

Shackles on test

One person place or thing that doesn’t serve my destiny is:____

When I let this person, place or thing fill my conscious mind, my body and mood react in the following ways: __________

This physical reaction is your “Shackles ON” feeling. Remember it.

—

Shackles off test

One person, place or thing that does serve my destiny is:____

When I let this person, place or thing fill my conscious mind, my body and mood react in the following ways: ____

This physical reaction is your “Shackles OFF” feeling. Remember it.

—

Once you become familiar with these feelings, you can use them to test your thoughts. For example:

• Does the thought of leaving my job feel shackles on or shackles off?
• Does breaking off my engagement feel shackles on or shackles off?
• Does eating this entire box of Oreos feel shackles on or shackles off?
• Does buying this pair of $300 shoes feel shackles on or shackles off?
• Does working with this partner feel shackles on or shackles off?

These five steps don’t necessarily need to be done in sequence to be effective — experiment with tossing your pet lizard a grape, laughing hysterically at your worst fears, or using the shackles on/off test in a critical moment.

One thing is pretty certain: if you learn to decipher your lizard tunes, you won’t end up living in a van down by the river. Unless you want to, of course.

photo credit: Lewis Stewart (Pam’s Dad!)

by Pamela Slim

The other day, I was looking at Martha’s travel schedule and wondered what it is really like to be on the road for a book tour.

I was also curious about how people have been reacting to her new book Steering by Starlight.

The result is this 30-minute phone conversation, recorded today, about the book tour and a lot more. Martha goes into fascinating detail about the content contained in the book, as well as her own vision for where the planet is headed. In typical Martha style, it is small stuff, like an entire shift in human consciousness.

Listen in with us and leave your thoughts in the comments below!

If you like these recorded interviews in addition to blog posts, I am going to continue them with some of the Martha Beck coaches that are using her tools in powerful and interesting ways. Stay tuned!

-Pam

by Pamela Slim

My cellphone rang yesterday.

“I can’t believe I’m calling you,” a woman I will call “Beatrice” said. “I don’t know where else to turn.”

“I read Martha’s North Star book a few years ago and, while pursuing a dream job on account of a man, actually made tremendous progress in my career. I have since received national awards for my work. I never thought it would be possible to get paid for work I love, but I made it happen.”

“Now my romantic life is a disaster. Today was a breaking point. I was in the Disney store with my daughter and saw an ad for a cheesy movie about a robot who finds love on another planet. I thought “Even a freaking robot finds love. Why can’t I?” and I started sobbing. My 25-year old daughter looked at me like I had lost my mind. I have been divorced for years and have gotten to a point where I am devastatingly lonely. I don’t even know where to begin to fix it. Can you help?”

This situation, while extremely painful for Beatrice, is a very common occurrence.

How is it that you can be really together in one area of your life and a wreck in another? Why can one area of your life skyrocket (career, love life, finances) and the other tank (health, relationship with kids, level of grunge in ring on bathtub)? Is it just a big conspiracy to keep you from being happy?

I think it is actually a kind and gentle way that life lets you chip away at improving different parts of yourself at different times. In the complex web of your brain, heart and spirit, all parts of your life are not always in similar states of health and harmony. This is why you see cases of:

• The blockbuster actor going to prison for 3 years for tax evasion
• The successful governor cavorting with prostitutes
• The supportive husband and excellent father sticking with a dead-end, miserable job

We all become ready for change for different reasons. For Beatrice, her “Disney meltdown” was a cry for help. She realized that if she did not attend to this long-neglected part of her life, she was going to lose her mind. I have witnessed or experienced the following catalysts for major life change:

• A father finally making a career change after learning that while he was working 200 miles away, his 3-year old son was crying for him in the middle of the night. Realizing how much he missed growing up with his own father, who had died in the Korean War, he got chills realizing he was not present in the lives of his children. So he quit his high-paying job the next day, and started a career working from home.
• My own health crisis spurred by a toxic relationship. It took me getting severe pneumonia to finally take action to leave a poisoned relationship. Lying in bed, wheezing, with a strong fever and not even enough energy to reach the remote control that was one foot away, I realized it was time to change my life. I picked up the phone and told my best friend for the first time how bad things really were.
• A successful young career woman radically changed her work and lifestyle after the untimely death of her mother. A now thriving entrepreneur who travels the world for a living told me that what finally moved her to quit her “secure” corporate job was the death of her mother. Suddenly, it became clear how fleeting life was, and she realized she was in charge of her own destiny.

Whatever spurs you to change, once you are ready, what do you do?

Martha’s Finding Your Own North Star is the robust road map for doing this work, and clearly lays out a methodology for how and what to do. Her new book Steering by Starlight expands and deepens this work. But if you don’t have a lot of time to read, here are a few shortcuts, drawing from some previous posts on this blog:

1. Commit to working on this part of your life. Beatrice’s Disney meltdown moment was powerful enough for her to pick up the phone and reach out for help. She is interested in working with a coach to help her navigate what feels like the shark-filled waters of attracting a loving partner. Your defining moment will be different than anyone else’s, and may not even be voluntary, but it is worth it to step into the Ring of Fire.
2. Examine your thoughts and feelings on this topic. Beatrice and I spent a short time on the phone, but I could tell that she had some powerful thoughts and feelings about love and relationships that were causing her a lot of suffering. Common limiting beliefs in the area of relationships can be things like:
   -All men are dogs
   -I am not lovable
   -In order to have a strong relationship, I have to give up my own needs
   -I will find love only when I lose 50 pounds/clear up my acne/finally get a nose job
   -Love hurts
3. Once you zero in on some thoughts or beliefs that cause you suffering, apply the 4 questions from The Work:
   

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it is true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?

and

Turn it around.

Master Coach Brooke Castillo put together some more tools and information on Self Coaching here.

4. Leverage the strength you have in one area of your life for others. Beatrice told me that she totally amazed herself with the progress she made in her career. Although the process she used to get there was not ideal (In her words, “I want to make sure that I point out that I wound up with the job of my dreams because I wanted a relationship with the man I worked with. He is one annoying human being and I drove myself to reach far beyond what I ever I had before because I was trying to prove to him I could do it and I wound up proving it to myself in the process. I wasn’t exactly trying to become what I became, it just happened and then I realized 18 years ago that it was secret desire I had harbored all along. I just literally came to the point where I couldn’t keep waiting for him but by that point I was at the top of my field. I’m not sure if you’d want to recommend that method to anyone - however I think it does fall along the lines of what Martha mentions about being so attracted to someone or something that it leads you where you’re supposed to be.”)
   Regardless of how you got there, if you feel ease and strength in one part of your life, use it to remind yourself that you are capable of taking on huge challenges and succeeding.
5. Create a positive, supportive Everybody to help you along. In Is there a conspiracy by The Man to keep you down? I describe the broad, generalized, highly judgmental “Everyone” that keeps many people from making progress in their life. You know that you need to do some Everybody juggling when your soul screams out “I must make a change in my career!” but your mind says “But everyone will think I have lost my mind if I change my job! When you surround yourself with good thoughts and supportive people, the process of change is much more manageable.
6. Take turtle steps. Making major life changes (starting a business, looking for a life partner, cleaning up financial chaos) can bring up a tremendous amount of overwhelm and panic. If you try to tackle the whole thing, you will most likely end up on the floor of your bedroom in the fetal position. We are very fond of turtles around the virtual halls of Martha Beck Inc. (hence the photo!) and have seen the power of slow, steady, steps for making significant change. For a cool tool, try a 4-Day Win.

I am honored that Beatrice had enough trust to share her innermost fears with a total stranger (me). And that she agreed to let her own struggle be a point of education and support on this blog for others (you) who face similar challenges in your own life.

An encouraging sign? Beatrice and I are already laughing in our email exchange about the Disney meltdown moment. She was the one that suggested her pseudonym: “Call me Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing!” When you start to laugh at what has felt deeply painful and frightening, you know you are squarely on the path to your own North Star.

Happy travels Beatrice — we are cheering for you.

If you have any advice or encouragement, chime in with your comment!

by Pamela Slim

If you have ever watched the Discovery Channel, you have seen the fury of a mother bear defending her cubs from the video lens of an over-eager nature lover. With fangs bared and claws ready to attack, she focuses all of her power and girth at taking down the potential threat.

Such intensity almost matches a creative father who adamantly defends his miserable career as a network administrator since he “has to” pay for his children’s education.

Or a young college student who “has to” answer her overbearing mother’s calls, even in the middle of a date.

Or a mother who “has to” feed her children only organic carrots fertilized with vegetable compost blessed by Tibetan monks.

Or an executive who “has to” work weekends and vacations in order to stay competitive.

The fact is, we don’t have to do anything. We choose to do things with specific consequences. Different choices = different consequences.

This slight distinction has huge implications for your sense of personal power.

But releasing these ingrained “have tos,” also called your “personal religion,” is not easy.

To get you started, here are three short exercises:

1. Body Compass:

• Close your eyes and deeply relax. Vividly recall an exceptionally painful or unhappy experience. Notice how this memory is making you feel, not emotionally, but physically. What bodily sensations or symptoms are connected to the negative event?
• Name this sensation with a word or phrase.
• Assign a score to this negative feeling from 1-10, with the worst possible score being a 10.
• Repeat this process, thinking this time about the very best time of your life. Notice your body symptoms, name the sensation, and assign a score.

Once you have this valuable information about your “body compass,” you can use it to understand how you are really feeling about a situation. When you think a thought or ponder a decision, what do you feel in your body? Is it your “best” or “worst” feeling? What is the score?

2. Think of some things you have had to do lately that made you uncomfortable, sad or angry such as:

1. I had to lend my brother $250 (again) so he could pay his rent
2. I had to attend a boring all-day meeting
3. I had to enter my credit card items in Quickbooks to prepare for my tax filing
4. I had to attend a dinner party of a neighbor who I don’t particularly like
5. I had to do my laundry
6. I had to fire an employee
7. I had to take my son’s car away after he had an accident
8. I had to call a client and tell him we were behind on his project
9. I had to decline a weekend away with the girls since I didn’t have enough money
10. I had to walk the dog in -20 degree weather

Using your body compass, assign a number from -10 to +10 to each item, based on the way your body reacts to each item.

3. Take the item with the worst score and examine the belief.

Belief: I have to lend money to my brother.

Why?: Because if I don’t, he will get angry and call me selfish.

What will happen if he gets angry? He may stop talking to me.

How will you feel if your brother stops talking to you? Crappy. Unloved.

What do you really want? I want my brother to love me.

Since you can’t control anyone else’s thoughts and emotions, what do you want? I want to feel loved.

What is another way you can feel loved? I can love myself. I can surround myself with people whose love is not contingent on loaning money. And I can love others.

Suddenly, your steadfast belief that you have to lend your brother money loses its power. You learn that you can choose not to lend the money and still feel good. And if you choose to lend the money, you will do so freely and without the expectation of anything in return.

You can apply this framework to any one of the above scenarios and see how it changes your sense of obligation.

Original thought: I have to stay in this job to pay for my kids’ college
Underlying desire: I want my kids to get a good education.
Question: How can I help my kids get a good education?

Original thought: I have to answer all my mother’s calls, no matter my personal situation
Underlying desire: I want my mother to know I love and respect her.
Question: How can I demonstrate love and respect to my mother while still maintaining my independence and privacy?

Original thought: I have to feed my kids 100% organic food at all times
Underlying desire: I want my kids to be healthy.
Question: How can I help my kids be healthy?

Original thought: I have to do my laundry
Underlying desire: I want to have clean clothes
Question: How can I get my clothes clean?

All this boils down to realizing that you have unlimited choices about how to live your life. When you own your choices, you feel more powerful and are more able to act in your best interest.

Let’s try something: If you catch yourself saying “I have to … ” this week, stop, pinch yourself and say “I choose to …” If you don’t like your choice, make another one! You may be surprised at how free you feel.

Can you share the results of your experiment here in the comments?

by Pamela Slim

When I was younger, I went crazy for Salsa. I don’t mean the kind involving chopped tomatoes and chili peppers, I mean the sexy, sweaty Latin dance variety.

Nothing, nothing, made me feel better than being whipped around the dance floor to the intoxicating rhythms of salsa music. While dancing, I felt like a combination of a Hollywood temptress, prom queen and Jennifer Beales in the finale of Flashdance.

My passion for salsa dancing was a little problematic since as an Anglo wannabe Latina, I didn’t have too many friends who shared my enthusiasm and were willing to go out dancing with me. Showing up as a single blond was not always recommended, as it was akin to putting a “cheap floozy looking for quick fling” sign on my chest. But my love for dancing overrode any fear of embarrassment.

Salsa dancing is one example of things in my life that make my essential self scream YES.

When I do it, I lose track of time, feel absolutely present in my body and have an involuntary silly grin plastered on my face.

Finding the things that delight and enthrall you is a critical step towards finding a life that not only fits you but thrills you. It helps you make complex decisions like whom to marry, where to go to college and whether or not to quit your job to start a business. It also works for simple things like which restaurant to go for dinner on Saturday night or which color to paint your toenails.

In my last post, I led you through an exercise about identifying your inner NO from Martha’s book Finding Your Own North Star that was sure to leave you drained and unenergized. I made you imagine a scenario where you were being judged by people you didn’t respect on things that you hated to do. I swear, I was not trying to chase you into the arms of a therapist, I just really wanted you to experience what it felt like when your essential self screamed NO.

Today, thank god, we get to swing in the opposite direction, into the people, places and things that make your essential self shout YES from the rooftops.

EXERCISE

This slightly involved but very powerful exercise is lifted directly from Finding Your Own North Star, starting on page 38. There is a lot more detail in the book and some hilarious examples of each question, but this stripped down version should still give you enough information to be effective. Take out a pencil and paper, or click on this link to open a Word template: just-say-yes21 You are going to identify a number of ways in which your essential self says “yes.”

Exercise

1. Nuclear energy.

List three things that can always get you moving (Examples: “The family New Year’s party,” “Playing pickup basketball,” “Going to the mountains.”)

Energy-inducing person, place or thing #1: ________

Energy-inducer #2: ________

Energy-inducer #3: ________

Look over the list and circle the response that makes you feel most enthusiastic.

2. To Your Health.

Try to remember three times when your health seemed better than usual. What was going on in your life at that time?

Situation #1: ________

Situation #2: ________

Situation #3: ________

Circle the situation that has the most positive associations for you right now.

3. Memories, Light the Corners of My Mind ...

Where’s your supermemory? If you can’t think of anything, you’re probably overlooking the obvious. Ask some friends and loved ones what they ‘ve noticed about your ability to pick up certain categories of information. List these categories below.

Info-type #1: ________
Info-type #2: ________
Info-type #3: ________

Circle the type of information that interests you most. Be honest; nothing you enjoy is stupid or trivial.

4. Time Warp.

Write down the types of activities that make you forget what time it is.

Activity #1: _______
Activity:#2 _______
Activity #3: _______

Circle the activity you find most absorbing.

5. Emotional Intelligence.

Name three people who make you feel socially adept and confident, people who seem to understand you and enjoy spending time with you.

Person #1: _______

Person #2: _______

Person #3: _______

Please circle the name of the person who makes you feel most comfortable and relaxed.

6. Magnetic Attraction.

List times when you felt strangely drawn to a person, place or thing. You may have temporarily become unable to concentrate on anything else. What was the object of your desire?

Urge to merge item #1: _______

Item #2: _______

Item #3: _______

Circle the thing that brings up the most positive feelings.

7. A Natural High.

List the last three times you experienced a wonderful mood, particularly if our good mood came at a strange time or from an action other people may have criticized.

Good-mood setting #1: _______

Good-mood setting #2: _______

Good-mood setting #3: _______

Circle the situation that makes you feel the happiest.

Summary

Step 1:

In the spaces below, list the answers you circled on the exercises.

List your:

A. Most high-energy activity: _______

B. Person who makes you feel most relaxed: _______

C. Best-health situation: _______

D. Information you remember most easily: _______

E. Activity most likely to make you forget the time: _______

F. Item that created the strongest Urge to Merge: _______

G. Best mood setting: _______

Step 2

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate response.

Your Own Best-Case Scenario

It is an incredibly beautiful day. The air is clear, the scenery dazzling, and you’re setting out to do (A: Your most high-energy activity)

_________________________

with (B: your favorite person)

_________________________

You’ve got no other responsibilities, no immediate deadlines, and no major problems weighing you down. You feel great, even better than you did back when you were (C: your best health situation)

_________________________

In fact, you are in the best physical shape of your life: strong, lean, robust and full of energy. You’re having a great conversation about (D: the information you remember most easily)

_________________________

When a message arrives for you. It’s a letter from the president, saying that you have been chosen to receive a lifetime of financial support for doing (E: the activity that makes you forget time)

_________________________

This will require you to spend a lot of time with (F: the person or situation that creates the Urge to Merge)

_________________________

You feel just the way you did when (G: your best-mood setting)
_________________________

happened, only more so. Lie back for a minute, take in the scenery, and enjoy knowing that this is basically how you’re going to spend the rest of your life.

Step 3
As you did with the “worst-case scenario,” read over your “best-case” story carefully. Picture the images as vividly as you can, and notice how you feel. There’s considerable evidence that just visualizing this scene greatly increases the likelihood that you’ll experience something like it at some point in the future. In fact, no matter how impossibly wonderful it may appear, the scenario above is only a pale shadow of the splendid realities you’ll find on the path to your own North Star.

What does it feel like to you, this sense of your essential self saying “Yes! Due north!“? How would you describe the sensation– or is it a sensation at all? Many people experience their true path not as something that happens to them but as the simultaneous loss of self and complete connection with the universe. When the essential self is really in its element, you may be so involved with the work at hand, the people around you, and the things you’re learning that you won’t be aware of yourself as separate from them. This state is the goal of many mystical practices, both in Western religious tradition and in the East. It’s been described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “flow,” by anthropologist Joseph Campbell as “following your bliss.” What do you call it?

Identifying your inner YES, along with last post’s inner NO, are critical steps in fine tuning your internal navigation system that will lead to better decisions and a more joyful life.

I ask you, maybe even beg, to take the time to complete the exercises. Please share what you learn here, as well as the questions that pop in your mind about what’s next.

In the meantime, pardon me as I take a spin around the dance floor.

(Update 10:24am PST: comments work now, please share your thoughts!)

by Pamela Slim

As promised, we have migrated to a new blog platform (on Wordpress for those who take note) that is housed within the newly designed Martha Beck website.

We encourage you to subscribe to this blog by clicking on the gigantic orange button in the upper right-hand corner. This will give you immediate access to new posts without having to keep coming back and check for updates.

If RSS technology has not made it to your part of town yet, you can receive new blog posts via email by entering your email address in the “Enter Your Email” box and clicking on the orange “email updates” button.

While we are currently posting new articles every two weeks, as time goes on, we will increase the variety and frequency.

If this is your first time visiting, please browse the archives for some practical ways to put Martha Beck’s coaching tools to work.

by Pamela Slim

I knew my soon-to-be three-year-old son Josh had achieved a new level of negotiation finesse when his vigorous "NO" was tempered into "No Thank You."  It is hard to get angry at a little man who is exceedingly polite about totally refusing to do anything I ask him. 

"Josh, stop throwing Legos at the wall and GET YOUR SHOES ON."
"No thank you Mom!"

"Get off that little boy and stop choking him Josh — he doesn’t like to play rough!"
"No thank you Mom!"

"Josh, you have to eat your veggies if you want to be big and strong like Spiderman!"
"No thank you Mom, pass the Cheetos!"

Do you see what I mean?

Josh’s outright refusal to comply with my requests are the manifestation of a very clearly expressed essential self. Unencumbered by the need to please anyone but himself, he feels perfectly empowered to tell me and anyone else who will listen that he will NOT do anything that doesn’t feel good.

The concept of essential and social self was described in Martha’s book Finding Your Own North Star:

    "Your essential self formed before you were born, and it will remain until you’ve shuffled off your mortal coil.  It ’s the personality you got from your genes:  your characteristic desires, preferences, emotional reactions and involuntary physiological responses, bound together by an overall sense of identity.  It would be the same whether you’d been raised in France, China, or Brazil, by beggars or millionaires.  It’s the basic you, stripped of options and special features.  It is "essential" in two ways:  first, it is the essence of your personality, and second, you absolutely need it to find your North Star.

    The social self on the other hand, is the part of you that developed in response to pressures from the people around you, including everyone from your family to your first love to the pope. As the most socially dependent of mammals, human babies are born knowing that their very survival depends on the goodwill of the grown-ups around them.  Because of this, we’re all literally designed to please others.  Your essential self was the part of you that cracked your first baby smile; you social self noticed how much Mommy loved that smile, and later reproduced it at exactly the right moment to convince her to lend you the down payment on a condo.  You still have both responses.  Sometimes you smile involuntarily, out of amusement or silliness or joy, but many of your smiles are based purely on social convention."

Since writing her newest book, Steering by Starlight, this definition has been updated:

"I used to think of the human psyche as having two sides:  the
"essential" self, which determines our talents and preferences, and the
"social" self, which predisposes us to respond to other people’s influence.  Over the past few years I’ve also come to believe there is
a third self, one that goes beyond the boundaries of both the genetic
and social selves.  Buddhists call this "no-self," a confusing term
meant  to focus our attention on something the intellect can’t grasp.
Other traditions call it the great Self, an identity that is shared by
everything that exists.  I’m going to call it the Stargazer, because it
never loses sight of your own North Star, your destiny."

Pressure on the essential self

If Josh’s life progresses along the path that most of us take, as the years go by, his willful determination will be tested by nagging parents (me and Darryl), zealous teachers, managers, mentors and eventually a spouse.  His natural inclination to only do what feels good will be tempered by the need to please others.

I am going to hope that between his life coach Mom and medicine man Dad that he will still turn out a happy, confident and balanced young man (Meet you back here in 20 years to see how my predictions turn out, deal?).

But here is the interesting part:  Josh’s inner NO won’t go away, it will just go underground.

For some people, it gets buried so deep that they can’t even hear it anymore.  Some don’t believe it exists!  That is when Martha and I hear our clients say things like:

• I don’t know what I am passionate about
• I don’t even know what I feel
• I am not sure which decision to make - should I stay or should I go?

For these situations, identifying your inner NO is the first step in reconnecting your essential and social selves.

Ready to try?

Getting your essential self to Just Say NO

This slightly involved but very powerful exercise is lifted directly from Finding Your Own North Star, starting on page 17.  There is a lot more detail in the book and some hilarious examples of each question, but this stripped down version should still give you enough information to be effective. Take out a pencil and paper, or fill out this Word template Download just_say_no.doc .  You are going to identify a number of ways in which your essential self says "no."

Exercise

1.  Energy crisis.

Try to remember three different events or types of events (dental appointments, jobs, classes, social functions, etc.) where you had to show up but felt reluctant and low-energy.

Event #1:  ________

Event #2:  ________

Event #3:  ________

Now please circle the response that has the most negative associations for you.

2.  Sick, sick sick.

Try to remember three times when your health was below par.  What was going on in your life during each of these three time periods?  Please list each situation, along with the physical symptoms you suffered. Don’t worry if these situations are the same ones that came up in the last section, or if all three caused the same symptoms.  Repetition is welcome in this game.

Situation #1:  _______  Symptoms:  _______

Situation #2:  _______  Symptoms:  _______

Situation #3:  _______  Symptoms:  _______

Circle the worst symptom.

3.  Forgetting.

Write down the information that you find difficult to remember (for example, "people’s names," "my kids’ school schedules," "where I put my important papers").

Info-type #1:  ________
Info-type #2:  ________
Info-type #3:  ________

Circle the type of information you forget most often.

4.  Bundles o’ Blunders.

Write down three stupid mistakes you remember making.

Mistake #1:  _______

Mistake #2:  _______
Mistake #3:  _______

Circle the most disastrous mistake.

5.  Social Suicide.

Name three people who bring out your very worst social behavior.  It might help to review hour life’s most embarrassing moments; the two are often linked.

Person #1:  _______

Person #2:  _______

Person #3:  _______

Please circle all three of these names.

6.  Fight or Flight.

List times when you couldn’t sleep, slept very poorly, or slept so much you felt groggy and squalid.  What was the problem in your life that caused the sleep disturbance?

Problem #1:  _______

Problem #2:  _______

Problem #3:  _______

Circle the issue that most disrupted your sleep.

7.  Addiction.

Name a bad habit or obsessive thought pattern you’ve been unable to eliminate:  ________________.  Now remember what happened to trigger that bad habit the last three times you fell off the wagon. (For example, "I’d had an argument with my mom," "I’d been working day and night for a month," "I was facing a performance review."

Habit Trigger #1:  _______

Habit Trigger #2:  _______

Habit Trigger #3:  _______

Circle the "trigger" that is the most likely to make you tur to your addiction or habit.

7.  Moody Blues.

List the last three times you experienced a very bad mood or a mood that seemed inexplicable, unjustifiable, or extreme. Again, note what was happening in your life at the time this occurred.

Bad-mood setting #1:  _______

Bad-mood setting #2:  _______

Bad-mood setting #3:  _______

Circle the situation that brought out your worst mood.

Summary

Step 1:

To get your essential self to "speak" to you, we first need to assemble all the things you hate most.  In the spaces below, list the answers you circled on all the exercises in this post.

List your:

A.  Lowest energy situation:  _______

B.  Three people who bring out your worst social behavior:

1.  _______

2.  _______

3.  _______

C.  Worst medical symptom:  _______

D.  Most forgettable information type:  _______

E.  Stupidest mistake:  _______

F.  Problem that most disturbs your sleep:  _______

G.  Worst bad habit "trigger":  _______

H.  Setting for your worst mood:  _______

Step 2

Now we’re going to create a little scenario together — a scenario that should set your teeth on edge.  Using the items you’ve written on the list in Step One, fill in the blanks in the following story.  For example, if you wrote "dental appointments" next to the letter "A" in Step One, you’ll write "dental appointments in the blank labeled "A" below.

Your own worst case scenario

Imagine for a moment that you are in (A:  Your lowest energy situation)

_________________________

You are surrounded by (B:  all three names on your list)

_________________________

_________________________

_________________________

You are not feeling your best, in fact, your (C:  worst medical symptom)

_________________________

is bothering you more than ever before.

You’ve been given a lifetime assignment that involves working with (D:  most forgettable information)
_________________________

All the people in the room are authorized to watch you constantly, criticize your performance, and punish you if you make any mistakes.  Speaking of mistakes, you have just done (E:  stupidest mistake)

_________________________

a fact that is being noted by your three supervisors.  Your life in general is pretty difficult right now; that whole thing with (F:  most sleep-disturbing problem)

_________________________

is happening all over again.  You’re also trying to deal with (G:  worst bad-habit trigger)

_________________________

To top it off, (H:  your bad mood situation)

_________________________

is more intense than ever before.

Just when things are at their worst, (B-1: the person who makes you feel most uncomfortable)
_________________________

walks up.  He or she orders you to sit up politely, smile in a way that is both humble and worshipful and say to the entire assembly, "I admire you so much.  Thank you, thank you for letting me be here.  You are such a terrific person, and this is just what I deserve.  I want to live this way for the rest of my life."

Step 3
Read over this scenario, once you’ve filled in the blanks.  Really put yourself into it  Then pay attention to your own reaction.  How do you feel?  Rotten, I hope.  If you vividly imagine this horrible situation, you’ll experience your own particular blend of anger, despair, illness, and anxiety.  This should reach a peak when you imagine facing the person you hate most and turning over all your power to change anything.  Whatever you feel in this moment is the sensation of your essential self saying NO!

Don’t run away from this feeling just yet.  Focus on and wallow around in it.  Explore its particular shape, texture, and size.  Notice how it differs from other negative feelings.  Your true path will take you through frightening challenges, saddening departures, angry resistance and a number of other profoundly unpleasant experiences. But the pain you experience en route to your North Star feels clean, necessary and right to the essential self.  It is very different from the intense aversion you would feel in the scenario we’ve just created.  You’re not supposed to feel that way, ever.

That feeling of choked hostility, or numb depression or nauseated helplessness is a sure sign you’re steering away from your North Star towards a life you were not meant to live.  When you feel it, you must change course.  You must say to the people around you what your essential self is saying inside:  Nope, Not going there.  Not doing that.  Sorry, but the answer is no."

Or, as Josh might add, NO THANK YOU!

I have been told that as a toddler completes the rite of passage of "not a baby, not yet a little boy," (sorry Britney) a cheerful YES will occasionally pop out of his mouth.  I’ll believe it when I see unicorns and leprechauns doing my yard work.

For now, I am learning from Josh to embrace my inner NO.  I suggest you do the same. 

And don’t worry, there’s a positive side to all this: next blog post (April 1) we will complete the exercise for finding out how your essential self says "Yes."  Feeling that, instead of what you felt doing this exercise, will give you the gumption to say "No, thank you," to everything that doesn’t feed your soul.

I’d love to hear what insights you glean from this exercise!  Please share in the comments.

by Pamela Slim

The other day, I was talking with my client Laura (not her real name) about her big, audacious business idea.  She had shared lots of background information on the project over email, and it was clear to me she was wildly informed about the idea and extremely competent to implement it.  Then she said:

"I want to talk to some other people who are doing similar projects, but I am not prepared enough to talk to them yet."

As soon as she said this, I heard a big "SCREECH!" sound in my mind which is an indication that some belief busting is in order.

How do beliefs get in our way?

If you read magazines or watch news shows, you should have no problem knowing what to do to improve your life.  Articles and stories abound about things like:

• How to lose 10 pounds in 2 days while eating chips and salsa
• 3 steps to turn your potato chip-loving kids into tofu enthusiasts
• 7 ways to find the mate of your dreams
• 8 ways to reduce your debt and have financial freedom
• And my personal favorite that has been covered by Cosmopolitan Magazine at least 5,000 times in the last 40 years:  5 ways to make your man deliriously happy in bed!

The fact is, we know what to do and how to do it.  So why don’t we?

Because of unhealthy and unhelpful beliefs.

Using my earlier example, my client wants to get her business off the ground.  She knows that in order to do it in the most efficient way possible, she needs to learn from others who have already walked that road.  But her belief "I am not prepared enough to talk to other business owners" is getting in her way.

To help shake loose this unhelpful thought, I used the four questions from Byron Katie’s pioneering book called Loving What Is:  Four questions that can change your life

As Katie says in her book:

"The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. It’s not the problem that causes our suffering; it’s our thinking about the problem. Contrary to popular belief, trying to let go of a painful thought never works; instead, once we have done The Work the thought lets go of us.  At that point, we can truly love what is, just as it is."

The Four Questions from "The Work."

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it is true?
3. How do you react when you think that thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?

   and

           Turn it around.

Here is how my client and I used it.  I added my commentary in parentheses under each question:

Me:  You said that you were not prepared to talk to other business owners about your idea.  Is it true?

Laura: No, it is not true.
(When asked directly, she immediately realized that this belief was not true.)

Me:  So you can see specific reasons it may not be true?

Laura:  Yes.
(If someone is not as clear as Laura when asked the first question, I might clarify this second question with an  example like "Is there any possibility that this is not true?"  Usually this is enough to shake up some of the belief)

Me:  How do you feel when you think the thought "I am not prepared to talk to other business owners about my idea?"

Laura:  I feel my energy level dip.  Lack of confidence creeps in.  I get overwhelmed.

Me:  Who would you be without that thought?

Laura:  I would be strong and confident.  I would not be afraid to talk to anyone.

Me:  OK, so if we wanted to take your original statement and turn it around to its opposite, what might it be?

Laura:  I am prepared to talk to anyone about my project.

Me:  Is this belief as true or more true as your original statement?

Laura:  It is more true.

Me:  What about, "Other business leaders are prepared to talk to me?" I asked.

Laura:  "Yes!" Laura said.  "I’m asking them for guidance–I just have to learn."

"People like teaching others who seem fascinated in their stories," I put in.  "I think you’ll find they like talking to you even more than you enjoy listening to them."

(I could hear over the phone that Laura was more relaxed and upbeat about the thought of talking to new partners after walking through the 4 questions.  Most importantly, the thought "I am not prepared enough to talk to other business owners" was not holding her back from action which is the special talent of unhealthy and unhelpful beliefs.)

Is it really as simple as that?

Well, yes and no.

When you approach The Work with an open mind and really tap into your own truth, you will find that the most negative beliefs about yourself are rarely grounded in reality.  Replacing these thoughts with positive, action-oriented and empowering thoughts will at the least make you a happier person and at the most allow you to experience mind-altering progress in all aspects of your life.

The Work lives in the Ring of Fire that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  It literally burns up beliefs that hold you back and replaces them with lighter energy and forward momentum.

But it will only work if you approach it with an open mind and a clear heart.

Try it yourself with sneaky thoughts that creep in your head like:

• I will never get out of debt
• My kids will never eat healthy food and will blow up like Violet Beauregarde, the blueberry girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• My troubled past makes me unlovable
• I am not experienced enough to start my own business
• These 20 lbs of baby weight will be permanently attached to my thighs until I draw my last breath

I would love to hear how The Work works for you!  Try it and report back in the comments section.  It is best if you can do it in partnership with a trusted friend or coach. 

Happy belief busting!

by Pamela Slim

It may seem a bit strange to brag about coming from a proud lineage of divorced relatives. But proud I am:  my parents and every single aunt and uncle in my family got divorced and remarried. 

"That explains it!  I always knew something was a little ‘off’ about that Pam Slim," you say.  "Coming from a broken family like that."

Fascinating interpretation.  And dead wrong.

What I gained by watching my parents and relatives go through painful, gut-wrenching, excruciating divorces was the realization that by walking through hell with an open mind and willing heart, you come out a freer, happier and more whole person.

Martha calls this hell the "Ring of Fire" in her forthcoming book Steering by Starlight.

What is the Ring of Fire?

The Ring of Fire is part of a bigger picture shown here:

Martha describes each component:

The Shallows (Material Reality):

"The exterior shell of our life is what I call the "Shallows."  You might also call it the world of form, of physical objects and the thoughts that cluster around them.

When your consciousness is fully attached to this realm, you are a material girl or boy.  You’re mentally trapped in your concept of yourself as isolated, limited and separate from all other things.  Your socialized beliefs and your lizard-fears direct your actions, which consist of running from things you dread and grasping at things you desire.  Maddeningly, no matter what you do, danger is never fully averted and desire is never permanently fulfilled.  Life is a bitch, and then you die."

The Core of Peace (The Stargazer):

"At our very cores, unperturbed by the disturbances of the shallows, lies that Stargazer self.  No untruth can exist at this level of awareness: no apparent separation from the fabric of the universe, no pain, no fear, no death.  The real reason we feel so starved in the shallows is that we aren’t made to be satisfied with material possessions, or with concepts of ourselves as famous, noble, smart, handsome, righteous, influential, blah blah blah.  What we really want is the peace of the Stargazer.  The irony is that this is already present in every single one of us, though it’s obscured by the dense matter of our lives at the shallowest."

The Ring of Fire:

"The Ring of Fire is the emotional process we must go through to reach the Core of Peace.  There are only two ways to accomplish this.  We can disbelieve any false ideas that are causing unnecessary pain.  Any unavoidable pain — loss of health or a loved one for example — we must grieve."

My family’s Ring of Fire ignited around our
kitchen table in 1971.  I was five years old.  I can still vividly recall every detail of the moment: the red and white checkered table cloth, the feel of my Mom’s lap and the look on the faces of my siblings as my Mom and Dad told us they were getting a divorce.
Although they said a lot of things, only one phrase from that
conversation stuck with me for decades afterward:  "We love each other,
we just cannot live together," they said.

My stomach dropped and I felt a heaviness in my chest.  My safe, ideal, neat, organized world was blown apart.

My Mom describes the next 10 years as being filled with pain,
depression, anxiety and fear.  "There were many days I woke up and
didn’t know how I would get through the day," she says.  She was living in
the Ring of Fire, as were each of us in our own way, and in our own time frame.  Although it was not pain that she or my Dad wanted to experience, nor to share with their kids, it happened, and we all became stronger people as a result.

Divorce is certainly a common precursor for the  Ring of Fire, but there are many other triggers such as:

• death of a loved one
• financial hardship
• loss of a job
• illness
• victimization from a crime
• labor without an epidural (having just gone through this, I can vouch for it!)
• plain old desire to feel better

What kind of people avoid the Ring of Fire?

Sane ones of course.  But two types in particular referenced in Steering by Starlight:

• Story fondlers get so enamored with their tragic stories from the past that they are unable to give them up and move forward.  They say things like:
  • "My life was great until that bastard left me!"
  • "My Mom never loved me!  She always paid more attention to my big brother."
  • "I never would have gone bankrupt if I didn’t have to bail out my siblings all the time"

• Fire-fleers are so afraid of feeling the pain and grieving that is associated with the Ring of Fire that they keep up a frantic pace to avoid dealing with it.
  • "I know my Mother died yesterday, but really, I am ok.  I am ready to come back to work."
  • "I know I caught my husband in bed with my best friend last week, but I am past it.  I have a new boyfriend, and I am sure he will never cheat on me."
  • "No, my breast cancer diagnosis is not scary at all.  I’m tough - I can take it!"

How do you make it through the Ring of Fire?

Martha offers the following prescription for both profiles:

For story fondlers:

"If you have a tendency to story-fondle, pick up something you complain about often, stop discussing it and take action to change it. If you’re underpaid, ask for a raise, or quit.  Stating clearly to your boss "I won’t continue to work here unless I get a ten percent raise  by March" is very different from telling all your coworkers how bad the boss is, and how miserable it is for you to be paid so little.  Similarly, if a certain friend  mooches off you, stop saying yes -say no and mean it.  If a loved one is addicted and it’s ruining your life, stage an intervention, or go to a codependency group.

For fire-fleers:

"If you characteristically run from feelings, or if there are a few awful things in your life that you’ve never allowed yourself to think about, stop running.  In fact, stop doing anything, for at least a couple of hours a week.  Stop smoking, drinking, eating, working, drugging, jogging, cleaning, gossiping, reading-halt all activity that distracts you from your felt experience.  Find a compassionate witness who’s willing to listen, and then talk about the things in your history and your heart that you least want to talk about."

Regardless of which profile you lean towards, when you start following this advice, you most likely will feel yourself engulfed by fear.

This is no garden variety anxiety or worry, but the kind of all-consuming beast that opens its foaming mouth and shows you its sharpened fangs. This kind of fear is what animals can smell.  It has a form, shape and spirit, and if it scares the hell out of you, you are on the right track.

Doing the Thing You Think You Cannot Do

Martha says:  "The advice I’ve just given you is the opposite of the usual logic that people adopt when something goes wrong, and the flames start licking at their toes.  Creating change, causing a ruckus, facing up to bullies, rocking the boat, taking action, is the last thing story-fondlers want to do.  Sitting still and feeling grief or fear while not moving at all, is the last thing fear-fleers want to do.  As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."  This turns up the heat in the ring of fire so that your limiting beliefs, your outer-limit identities, your mental dungeons burn like tinder."

How do you get through it?

When you dive into this degree of fear or pain, you must live in the present.  Your gut reaction is going to be to grasp for anything — sitting on a bed of nails, gargling with Drano — that feels better than experiencing your fear.  Resist that, and just try to stay focused on what you feel.  Don’t worry about yesterday or tomorrow or even the next 10 minutes.  Whatever you are feeling, feel it fully.  You may sob, fall to your knees, throw things, vomit or curl up on the floor in a fetal position. "Say Yes to the Mess" is how Martha describes it.  Then, just keep doing the thing that scares you most. After awhile, you pick up momentum and the challenge is not as great, the dread not as thick.

Some people make it through the Ring of Fire alone, but most require some combination of great friends, therapy, coaching, spiritual support or at least a really great "I left Ike so you can make it out of here too-inspired" Tina Turner song.

How do you know you are close to coming out of the Ring of Fire and into the Circle of Peace?

My Mom described a moment when she woke up one morning, on a day just like so many others for the past ten years. But on this morning, she felt different.  There was no dread and sadness.  She was peaceful.  She saw a positive future.  She felt strong.  She had made it through the Ring of Fire.

This feeling of calm will fill up every part of your being.  And you will be fundamentally changed for the better, reflecting your secure, joyful and authentic Stargazer self.

My parents, aunts and uncles are healthy, warm, funny, optimistic and caring people.  They all have happy and supportive "Round 2" spouses.  This is not by chance:  instead of hanging on to bitterness, addiction, unfit relationships and self-defeating thinking, they chose to burn them up in the Ring of Fire.

And because I saw their courage and resilience, I am not afraid to step into the heat.  That makes me not a "child from a broken home," but a fire walker.

So if you are teetering on the edge of the flames, feel the fear and jump anyway.  You won’t regret it.