When the kids and I first met the character Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano in Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series, it was the observation of her by another character that really struck me, because it could have been someone describing me for most of my life:

“Annabeth recognised something else in her face too – in the hard set of her mouth and the deliberate way she raised her chin like she was ready to accept any challenge. Reyna was forcing a look of courage while holding back a mixture of hopefulness and worry and fear that she couldn’t show in public.”

Later, in the Trials of Apollo series, she reflects, as I have reflected in recent years:

“My whole life I’ve been living with other people’s expectations of who and what I‘m supposed to be...But you showed me how ridiculous the whole situation was. That’s what healed my heart, being able to laugh at myself again, at my stupid ideas about destiny and fate...That allowed me to break free. I don’t need to wear anybody else’s label. I need time to just be me, to find out who I am.”

As I have been on this journey to me, I have uncovered quite a few self destructive beliefs that have been lurking in the shadows of my mind, driving my thoughts and actions like a hidden force,

When I get triggered about something in my life, I take this as a signal to explore those hidden beliefs and bring them into the light of day for a good shake down.

This week I retuned to do some work using Brandon’s Bays Emotional Journey process when I could feel myself getting irritated by a sense of giving too much to others.

What I discovered in the process is that giving too much stems, for me, from this subconscious idea I’m not enough. My true state is actually receptivity, openness and warmth and the guidance (that came from a deeper part of myself) was to remember I am not the personality or the experiences, but the benefactor of the growth that arises out of those.

In fact, the wisest part of me said “You are love itself and there’s always enough love, in fact that’s all there is.”

Another aspect of my hidden belief structure that I had been experiencing lately was a sense of feeling under-valued, unseen and under-used in my gifts and capacities. What I uncovered in the process is my true nature, which is radiance, standing in my own power. I can choose to combat and play small, or compassion to play big; to see others as comrades not combatants.

In this scenario the wisest part of me said “Be expansive. There are many things that you know you know, live those.” I understood that I must have compassion for myself and others to grow beyond this unhelpful belief pattern.

I have also been reading another beautiful (fictional) book by Anthony Doerr called All the Light We Cannot See that weaves together the backdrop of the lives of a young orphaned German boy who was eventually drafted into the Hitler Youth at the age of twelve or thirteen, and a young blind girl who lives in France with her widowed father.

The story slowly wraps its way towards a point in which they briefly meet in occupied France just before liberation. It then continues to unfold into the years following the war into the present day, demonstrating how those events became so interwoven into the lives of the sister of the German soldier (who did not survive) and the French girl (who lived to a ripe old age) and her family.

It was nothing sort of tragic, as I am sure it must truly be for anyone directly touched by the ravages of war, regardless of side there appears to emerge only tortured souls. In this I felt the utmost compassion and the sense that these two enemies were kindred spirits who had found themselves wrapped up in circumstances beyond their control.

While I’m not wading in that extreme of life, I certainly find myself unconsciously creating us and them scenarios, both in my personal life and as I look out into the world.

For a completely different kind of example, I’ll use the recent Harry and Meghan interview with Oprah. This sort of hyped razzmatazz is not my usual fodder, I don’t tend to actively follow any kind of current affairs or news, but I'm like a little meerkat who pops my head above ground every now and then to get a gauge on what's going on out in the magical mist called the media.

Growing up in the UK in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Charles and Diana's wedding, the births of their sons and Diana's death, were all moments I remember well because of the vast media storm that accompanied them. Not least I recall the haunted faces of the two young boys made to walk behind their mother’s casket in the funeral procession.

All I know of Harry and Meghan is what the media lines have fed us for last few years, which my dad aptly summed up after he exclaimed “You watched the interview!” by words like self serving, egotistical and manipulative.

That's exactly why I listened to it, I like to hear and see people speak directly because it gives me a much better gauge on what is going on than a third party account.

I had also read a book by one of my favourite fictional authors, Lucinda Riley, a year or so ago that was based around the British royal family and a huge cover up that stemmed back decades to the early part of the twentieth century. It was all about the 'old firm' and the security services that surround the family.

While it was a captivating story, the most interesting aspect lay not in the fiction but the facts around the book finally reaching print.  

As a young author she had much interest in the book when it was first written. It even had a publishing deal but the deal got withdrawn and all doors were closed. It is only several decades later and after the successful publication of later books, it finally reached print.  I'm guessing the fiction was too close to the truth.

This idea of the velvet curtain has always intrigued me. So I found Harry in particular interesting in the interview, although Meghan I think was better able to explain how it works.

It gave me pause as I thought about what it must be like to be born into that machine, to not know a world any different.

Now what is their agenda? Well that's an all-sided question. Certainly I start with the media who have had some very strong opinions on Ms Markle. I don't know her from Adam, and she could be a sociopathic narcissist for all I know, but I wanted to hear her voice. And she made some very interesting points.

As for Oprah, I like her. Does she have her own agenda? Sure. Don't we all? The only thing I felt about Oprah's interviewing was that it missed something quite key. While she fully explored the racist component about why little Archie wouldn't become a Prince, it missed completely exploring the idea that it could be because she was a divorcee, something that has caused so many issues within the royals.

That said, does it serve the needs of our society to dismantle white supremacy and white privilege, absolutely.

While talking about it with family and friends afterwards reminded me of the kind of polarisation I looked at in The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma, it was, I felt, probably one of the most true-to-life looks behind the velvet curtain that I've ever had, even if (like everything in life) it was serving multiple agendas. I understand my call to watch it was an extra layer of my learning around compassion at the moment.

In every crevice I am finding compassion; from the echoes of the ravages of war, through to something as distant to me as the media swirl surrounding royals, and as personal as those deep shadows etched on my own soul. The message is clear, embrace compassion over combat and step into your true power.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be Compassionate and Curious to Live Your Best Life, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, How You Are Complicit in the Oppression of Others, Let Us Hear Your Unique Perspective – But Be Kind and Be Wise and Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary). To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

As 2020 draws to a close, I was reflecting on a piece of news an old colleague of mine had posted about a lovely surprise holiday her husband had booked to a tropical location at the end of next year. Probably like many people, I am unsure whether that kind of travel will be possible again by then, but I started to wonder whether that was even the right question to be asking myself.

In his article 15 Great Quotes on the Importance of Asking the Right Question Mitch Ditkoff states how, as a consultant, he continues to be astounded by how few organisations have any kind of process to press pause, reflect and make sure they are coming up with the right questions. 

Setting aside questions about COVID19 itself for now, I started to think back to those early lockdowns, when much of the world seemed to stand still. It was a time when we as a family got to pause, reflect and take stock.

I can understand people wanting to get back to holidays and social activities, but what did that pause shed light on? There were reports of Venice’s canals running clearer, the clearest they’ve been in sixty years. An article in Science Direct sadly concluded (after research looking at the effects on the environment during the first global lockdowns) “Coronavirus itself is Earth’s vaccine and we humans are the virus”.

Talk of holidays and “getting back to normal” evokes in me a sense of frustration. I’m going to ignore the expression “the new normal” for the moment, because that seems to be more associated with control and fear, and that is not the kind of future I’m envisaging. But this idea of life going back to the way it was before the global pandemic seems ridiculous to me.

It has amplified so many issues about our environment and our social, political, economic, technological and personal challenges that it is a time in history ripe for change.

But having witnessed the relatively quick return to a lack of human connection between commuters in London after terrorist attacks in the early part of the millennium, I know how quickly distraction sets in.

During the lockdown here back in March through May, I revelled in being able to stroll out my front door and walk peacefully through our neighbourhood. But as soon as the restrictions were lessened, road traffic increased and the peaceful walks became crowded with road noise and traffic fumes, so now I have to get in my car to drive elsewhere if I want to take a peaceful walk.

I loved that my car did not get its tank refilled for over two months, it weighs on me that I consume fossil fuels. Yet, like many people around the world, I have commitments that would be extremely difficult to meet without running a vehicle. How can I find ways to change this?

How many governments and major political parties right now are even thinking about the lessons this crisis has taught us and have evolution on their agenda?

That said, I know my most effective voting takes place through the money I spend and the things I give my attention to. So where am I placing my attention? What am I spending money on? Am I using my resources in a way that would encourage the kind of change and transformation that could be for the benefit of not just me or my family, but for all of humankind, the creatures and the living planet on which we all reside?

I learned this year that I have white privilege. What other privileges do I hold? How can I give other people the benefit of my privileges? How can I help dismantle the systems of oppression within myself and for others?

I also learned from The Social Dilemma documentary that social media is six times more effective at spreading false news. Since conspiracy theories have abounded in 2020, I’ve watched friends and family become polarized on important topics to a degree that neither side seems able to hear the other.

I’ve had to ask myself, am I using social media as a tool? Or am I letting it demand my attention and manipulate my thinking? And where is my own resistance to hearing others’ opinions?
 
I learned that, in a time when our country faced a health risk, our government cut off the supply to my chosen form of healthcare and made only pharmaceuticals available. What can I do to ensure I maintain a freedom of choice in my healthcare even in times of crisis?

I learned that I was absolutely spot-on in my self assessment that I am not cut out to home school my children. Yet being able to give them and their schoolwork such individual attention led me to asking the right questions that uncovered their neurodiversity, and still more questions to find the right support and training so they can flourish. I wonder how I can support all children in their uniqueness to flourish?

I learned the importance of self sustainability. With panic buying, a lack of groceries and no access to garden supplies, keeping emergency supplies and a variety of fresh things to eat growing in our garden became more important. It highlighted all the problems I had known about with mono-farming and the way we currently source goods and services from around the world. What more can I do with our budget to encourage local and organic businesses?

I learned that reconnecting with my partner and children was simultaneously challenging and liberating. It brought about a huge amount of personal change in terms of consciously shaking off old beliefs and behavioural patterns that weren’t serving us. Where to next on that I wondered?

And then I got one of Claire Zammit’s emails that asked seven power questions:

• Where in your life have you most felt like yourself this past year?
• What have been the greatest challenges you’ve overcome?
• What can you acknowledge about yourself and your strengths?
• What is it time to let go of in your life?
• What is it time for forgive yourself for?
• What is it time to forgive others for?
• What are the old patterns that it’s time to release?

It reminded me that, while I have learned a lot about myself this year, the road ahead lies wide open for me to keep learning.  

2020 is a year that I think of as catalysing. It has led me to ask more questions than it has produced in terms of answers. I’m always impatient for change, and I know as I look back change will probably seem quicker than it feels right now.

Am I asking the right questions I wonder? So long as I keep taking time to pause and reflect on the bigger picture of my own life, I’m confident the right questions will arise.

The question is, with holiday season almost upon us at the end of this landmark year, what are the right questions for you to ask yourself right now?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Change the World One Day at a Time, Want to Make the World a Better Place? Tune In, What Value Are You Adding to the Currencies in Your Life?, How You Are Complicit in the Oppression of Others, You See What Happens When Leaders Are Not Grown Up on the Inside and The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This is the question before me this week. As someone who desires to aid in our evolution, it has been thought provoking and uncomfortable for me to confront some of the ways in which I have unconsciously been complicit in the oppression of others.

If asked, I would have sworn I am not intolerant towards any particular group, so it’s been eye opening and refreshing to look at myself from a different angle. Certainly throughout my life I’ve observed the many ways in which people who are deemed different are treated differently and I’ve been thankful not to have faced their particular challenges.

The sorts of things that can divide us are unlimited, but the common ones are gender, race, sexual orientation, existential beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs, social class, economic status, physical abilities, mental abilities and so on.

The earliest examples that come to mind from my schooldays are the way people (whose brains don’t seem wired for typical classroom education) got dubbed as unintelligent, disruptive and/or naughty, sensitive people got picked on and those with a disability of any nature were hidden away.

The biggest intolerance I was aware of in my early West of Scotland upbringing was religious. The first question when I met someone new most often being “are you a fenian or a proddy?” (meaning of the Catholic or Protestant faith). There were kids on our street not allowed to play among those of different faiths and there were separate state schools for those of the Catholic faith.

I first noticed my own discomfort when around those with sensory disabilities. Working at the checkout of a drugstore, or on the information desk at the travel centre, I suddenly found myself wondering how to best serve those who had hearing or visual disabilities.

It wasn’t that I harboured any known prejudice towards people who faced these challenges, it was more that I had no experience or education on the best way to assist them, and it seemed rude to ask, especially since the whole transaction was quite time pressured with queues to serve.

I also remember my extreme discomfort when sitting next to people on the public bus who had mental disorders, on the long journey to university each day. I’d often see people getting on the bus and feel my stomach clench and start breaking out in a cold sweat thinking “please do not next to me, please do not sit next to me”, having never integrated with anyone facing those challenges during my school years, again, I was ill equipped.

In fact, last year when our family visited Hawaii, I was again confronted by those old fears when taking the public bus around Waikiki. For those who are unaware, there are a large number of homeless people there, who seem to be a mix of people with mental disorders, people with drug addictions and other people who have fallen on hard times but who are otherwise of sound mind.

Suddenly I wasn’t just navigating life in my own individual experience, I was doing it in the role of a parent, well aware of my desire and the weight of responsibility to be a decent human being and show my kids how to traverse the social fabric of life in a kind and safe way.

If there is one word this comes down to it is fear. I am scared to say or do the wrong thing.

Why? Because that didn’t go well as a child. As I mentioned in How to Stop Being Triggered by What Other People Think being a child of an approval/disapproval, right/wrong and punishment/reward style upbringing, in order to avoid disapproval, rejection and/or punishment, I became a people pleaser and a perfectionist.

There are probably a number of other self limiting behavioural and thought patterns that would play into the root cause of why I might be unconsciously complicit in the oppression of others, but it can definitely be summed up as fear, and mainly through a lack of understanding on my part. 

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” Martin Luther King Jr

“The lesson”, says Layla F. Saad, “is that if you believe you are the exception, you will not do the work, you will continue o do harm even thought that is not your intention.”

Do I want to be involved in any scenario in which I directly or indirectly subject a fellow human – or any creature for that matter – to hardship or abuse? Of course I don’t, but I can think of far too many ways in which it happens, especially now that I’ve started to look through the lens of others.

Perhaps this, more than any other motivation I might have for addressing my own fears and limitations, is the most compelling. If I do harm to myself, that is one thing, but to affect another in such a way is not acceptable to me. I can see that we are all interconnected, that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” as Newton put it. If I allow one part of the whole to be treated as less than, I diminish the whole.

That is exactly how wars, genocides and other atrocities happen. People allow themselves to dehumanise others in the name of a difference and everyone suffers. People allow themselves to think they are better than for any number of reasons, but I am going to say it all comes down to fear, fear of differences. 

I’ve been reading an excerpt from a paper written by Peggy McIntosh back in 1988, in which she lists fifty ways she benefits from white privilege in her daily life. She tried to choose conditions that, in her case, attach somewhat more to skin colour than to class, religion, ethnic status or geographic location (though notes that all those factors are intricately intertwined).

Some examples are:

• I can go to a book shop and count on finding the writing of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions,, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can deal with my hair
• If a traffic cop pulls me over or the tax office audits my tax return I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race
• I did not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

I have also found Layla F. Saad’s book Me and White Supremacy an excellent read so far. It presents a step by step reflection process as a 28-day challenge to become aware of where I might be consciously or unconsciously supporting systemic racism.

But each step of the way, as she addresses issues like fragility, tone policing and staying silent, I can see the parallels into every other area of human difference and where I may be unwittingly contributing to oppression of those within society.

The obvious area where I have personally felt oppressed within my own life would be related to being female. But I am sure that everybody has experiences of being different on some level and can, if only in a minor way, begin to relate to some of the challenges fellow humans face when subjected to both overt and covert prejudice.

When I read one of Layla’s prompts on “staying silent (or making excuses/changing the subject/leaving the room) when your family members or friends make racist jokes or comments” listed under how white silence shows up, I reluctantly admitted to myself that I have done this on many an occasion.

I wondered why I do that, and find it is because I am not wanting to make waves. This is likely tied into my own anxieties about what people think (as I mentioned earlier), and the associated trauma and patterns there, but there is definitely a patriarchal element too.

I actually don’t trust myself at this stage to get into a confrontation without getting angry. This is one of the key aims of me doing my personal inner work, because I do want to be able to converse on important issues, making people think about their views rather than entrenching them further in beliefs that create oppression.

But I do know how it feels to listen to jokes stereotyping people with blond hair, or Scottish people, for instance, and how those that tell them don’t bat an eyelid to their insensitivity when I’m sitting there. Little do they know the magnitude of how angry it makes me.

Then there’s the objectification of women and the pornographic ‘joke’ videos that get freely sent around on social media. I only have to think of those, and think of my daughters and then I have instantly invoked the wrath of generations of oppressed females in the collective consciousness into my psyche.

I read Thomas Hübl’s story this week and how he found his life’s work in healing collective and intergenerational trauma, I’m looking forward to reading his book on this topic in the coming months. I suspect though the answer begins within each of us and doing our personal work.

A good friend of mine’s daughter does a lot of research and advocacy around the Maori world view, and just this week I saw she has co-authored a new book Indigenous Research Ethics: Claiming Research Sovereignty Beyond Deficit and the Colonial Legacy. The thing I admire most about her, is her ability to challenge people through questions without getting riled. It’s actually a thing of great beauty to watch, and I hold that as my example.

But I also resonate with the chapter in Layla F. Saad’s book about tone policing. I can well imagine how it would feel to hear a racist joke, anything where there is intergenerational trauma and oppression invokes a much greater sense of anger than just a personal affront. She makes the point that telling someone you can’t hear what they are saying because they are saying it in an angry way, is another way to silence those being oppressed.

At first I was conflicted, because it’s true that it is hard to hear someone’s anger. Anger elicits my old self defeating thought patterns and behaviours, meaning that instead of an open-minded adult, some old inner hurt part of me is at the helm. I notice this is often the same when I speak in anger to others, they reciprocate with a hurt part of themselves.

Yet I hear Layla’s words when she says “To be human is to feel. To talk about pain without expressing pain is expecting a human to recall information like a robot. When you insist that a black, indigenous or person of colour talk about their painful experiences with racism without experiencing any pain, rage or grief, you are asking them to dehumanize themselves.”

So I have come to the conclusion that if I would like to make progress it falls upon me at this point to both be able to hear another’s anger in these matters and to learn to express my own anger in a more palatable way.

In the words of Layla F Saad “You do this work because you believe every human deserves dignity, freedom and equality. You do this because you desire wholeness for yourself and for the world, because you want to become a good ancestor.”

It’s important to continue to challenge myself in all the ways I might be unintentionally complicit in the oppression of others, because it seems fundamental to our evolution. If we can accept and embrace our own and others’ differences, this will create strength and compassion within the whole of humankind. This creates a shift from competition to cooperation, fear to love, prejudices to preferences, and can only be to the benefit of all life.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World, The Internal Shift You Need to Help Solve the Social Dilemma, You See What Happens When Leaders Are Not Grown Up on the Inside and Change the World One Day at a Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

When I watched Tristan Harris in The Social Dilemma documentary recently, recommended by my partner, it had a similar impact as watching Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth back in 2006. While I already had a little insight into the additive quality and manipulative effects of social media across the various sectors of our society, I learned a lot from listening to those who created today’s popular platforms as they voiced their grave concerns.
 
Through a series of interviews with Silicon Valley engineers and executives who designed the technologies they now fear, the documentary explores this topic in an eye opening way, taking us through exactly how these platforms make money. As the documentary makes evident, it’s confusing because it’s simultaneously utopia and dystopia, trapped by a business model and shareholder pressure that makes it difficult for these companies to do anything else. 
 
The answer therefore lies outside of these companies. While introducing better laws and regulations, adapting the technology and the economic incentives seem obvious answers, there is a long way to go to catch up and I’m not yet seeing the sense of urgency and scale of action to achieve this in the near future.
 
On a personal level though, there are some immediate actions anyone can take, the most important of which is an inner shift to help navigate these sometimes treacherous waters. Firstly though, it’s worth understanding just what the real issues are. For this I highly recommend watching the documentary and doing some research.
 
But given the little understood and perhaps unintended consequences of social media, I decided to include the key take outs I got from the documentary as I believe it’s one of the most important issues of our time. If you have watched the documentary, feel free to scroll past the sets of bullet points and article continues below them.  
 
To start, here is an outline of the social media business model and how it works

• The three main goals of a social media platform are engagement, growth and advertising; the first two powering the potential for the third, which is where the money is made. All three of these goals are powered by algorithms that are designed to keep the numbers going up.
• Algorithms are optimized to some definition of success, in a commercial enterprise that is usually profit, they are designed to learn/change/improve/adapt as they receive more data
• The images we look at, for how long, what we are doing at any particular time. Data comes from everything we do online being tracked/measured/monitored and stored.
• Lots of data is great for making predictions, which is great for feeding you more to increase engagement, which means more targeted adverts and feeds, which brings in more revenue. It’s not the data that is sold; it’s the predictions that attract the best advertising dollars.
• These systems know more about us than ever imagined. All that data gets fed into systems that have little human supervision and are getting better and better about predicting what we are going to do and who we are.
• “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”. Though Jared Lanier says it’s not as simplistic as aiming to get as to spend as much of our attention as possible on these platforms “it’s the gradual, slight imperceptible change in your behaviour and perception that is the product.”

 
This leads to a number of key points around the unintended side effects regarding our self esteem created in the bid for our attention:

• Social media taps into our biological imperative to connect with other people, giving us the dopamine hit to keep us coming back for more. In effect, they are deliberately designed to be addictive.
• Edward Tufte said “There are only two industries that call their customers users: illegal drugs and software”
• Online connection, especially for the young, has become the primary form of connection, yet it’s financed through these sneaky third parties (advertisers) and we’ve put brutal popularity and manipulation (more about this in a minute) at the heart of human connection.
• We used to protect kids’ viewing, by regulating what they watched and what could be advertised at kids’ viewing times. Those protections and regulations do not exist within social media.
• This stuff is not designed by child psychologists; it’s controlling their attention, self worth and identity. In correlation with the introduction and widespread use of social media platforms, anxiety, depression and suicide have increased significantly, particularly in pre teen and late teen girls.

 
And now that these platforms have our attention, this has lead to perhaps another unintended and insidious threat, the potential and ease for manipulation:

• YouTube Recommendations’ algorithm, for example, is extremely efficient at keeping you online. It’s designed to feed you more of what you want and take you down rabbit holes that are powerful, so it’s trying to find out which rabbit hole is closest to your interests.
• A rabbit hole means that a person is caught up in going deeper and deeper into a particular subject and, at some point, making a detour to other places that are completely unrelated to the first thing you were looking at, but look and sound cool.
• Since there are many trillions of articles, videos and data in general available, and all of them are interlinked, you can spend literally days, months and years of your life researching a topic. For more on rabbit holes read here.
• MIT did a study that determined fake news spread six times faster ion Twitter than true news.
• Systems bias towards false information because it makes more money than the truth (something we have known for years through our other forms of media). The truth is often boring.
• It’s a disinformation for profit model. The system allows unregulated messages to be read by anyone for the best price. Facebook has trillions of these newsfeed posts, they can’t know what’s true and what’s not true.
• Because the platform knows so much about you (your likes, your triggers, your interests, even whether you’re introverted or extroverted etc) newsfeeds give you this sense, over time, that everyone agrees with you because everyone in your newsfeed thinks like you. Once in that state you’re easily manipulated.
• Others then think “How can they be so stupid? How can’t they see all this information that I’m seeing?” Well, they can’t, they are seeing their own unique feed.
• When that happens at scale, we’re no longer able to consume information that contradicts with the world view we’ve created, meaning we are not being objective, constructive individuals.
• “As a tool of persuasion it may be one of the greatest things ever created.”
• Shoshana Zuboff, a professor at Harvard Business School, shared that “Facebook ran an experiment using subliminal cues to see if they could get more people to vote in the mid-term elections, they succeeded. We now know we can affect users behaviour without them knowing.”
• To manipulate an election, you could go into a conspiracy theory group on Facebook, for example, and find one hundred people whose attention is gripped by the Flat Earth topic, or discussions on why we never landed on the moon, and say “give me one thousand users like that”, or one million, and you can feed those people more conspiracy theories to undermine politicians, parties or even systems of government.
• The manipulations by third parties is not a hack, they’re using tools built for legitimate advertising for nefarious purposes.

 
What perhaps struck me the most is that the inherent design of social media makes addiction and manipulation not only likely but necessary based on today’s business models. Here’s the final wrap up and conclusions:

• There’s no regulation, no rules, no competition, and the companies are acting like de facto governments saying “we can regulate ourselves”.
• Given the topics touched upon and the real world examples highlighted in the documentary that I haven’t gone into here (but everyone will recognise when they see), the technologists who created social media are perhaps not so silly to be worried about its ability to create civil war, to send democracies into autocratic dysfunction, and the failure to meet the challenges of global climate change due to its distraction, the collapse/ruin of the global economy and perhaps even an existential threat.
• It’s not that highly motivated propaganda hasn’t existed before; it’s that the platforms make it possible to spread manipulative narrative with phenomenal ease and relatively little money.
• It’s ability to create chaos, outrage, instability, lack of trust in each other, loneliness, alienation, polarization, populism, distraction, an inability to focus on the real issues; these are all issues we contend with today. Certainly its ability to bring out the worst in society is the real threat.

 
When I thought about all this, I realised my own experiences with my children and the sheer pervasiveness of YouTube, not to mention its inappropriate content and addictive nature, were just the tip of the iceberg.  
 
My kids used to watch YouTube Kids, but it was just too easy for them to interconnect with YouTube at so many turns. For those who think there are parental controls for Youtube, there are not. YouTube has one restriction mode and that is it, and it basically is an 18 and over restriction that you can click on or off, and all videos on restricted mode cannot earn money on You Tube, so it's basically only effective for porn type stuff.
 
Other than that the options are to sit with them and watch everything with them, or continuously go through and delete history, unsubscribe etc; there is also a complaint button. To block channels you have to create your own channel, and none of it is straightforward. How did we go from a society that only allowed mature content after 9pm and all content was screened to be age appropriate to this monster of a free for all?
 
My kids started to watch YouTube for EllieV and her lego building, which had mysteriously vanished from YouTube Kids for a while, and from there they discovered YouTube family channels i.e families that post fun games online, like their family navigating obstacle courses etc.
 
However, then it took a more sinister turn. The YouTube families (there are probably hundreds of them, but my kids liked to watch three or four in particular) started doing these Dollmaker videos, where they received a doll that seemed to come from a mysterious Dollmaker and took on a life of its own. Some dolls were good, some were just weird and creepy.
 
So there were my kids, age six and eight at the time, watching good clean, healthy family fun, then suddenly these weird creepy dolls turn up and the families play along like they are trying to get rid of these dolls but can't, then a member of the family gets possessed by a doll and will become a doll, and my children are wondering "is this real?"
 
I could not believe the blatant manipulation, nor the fact that I had no reliable way of allowing my kids to watch any of the content they enjoyed without falling prey to scary nonsense like that. Since then we decided no more YouTube. But its not easy unless they have zero access to devices, which they both use for listening to audiobooks and playing games for a couple of hours on the weekend.
 
I have had to go into the administrator function on our modem and block every conceivable YouTube web address I can find on their particular devices, and the devices only connect to the wifi while I download new audio books or games for them, so I am constantly having to connect/disconnect the devices. It requires a lot of hands on management to regulate their viewing, something I could rely in being regulated through TV or movie theaters.
 
I also thought of a good friend of mine saying one day during our lockdown that she’d “swallowed the red pill”. I vividly remember that she had then spent the best part of the night way down deep in a rabbit hole, over her head in conspiracy theories about COVID19. Ever since, through her, I have become more aware than ever of the conspiracy theories that exists and the lack of trust and fear they perpetuate.
 
It is easy to see the division and polarization that is happening; vaccines are a case in point. That I might question the efficacy of a vaccine all too often results in an automatic and derisory label of being an anti-vaxxer.
 
Knowing how sublimely our immune systems work when supported by the right diet and lifestyle, the fact that my kids had twenty vaccines by the age of four as a matter-of-course should be something I’m encouraged to investigate and question; it seems like a lot of intervention for burgeoning little bodies. But instead there appears little objective welcome on either side of the debate, there is however a lot of anger and fear.
 
So what is the answer?
 
The advice of the technologists is to uninstall apps that are wasting our time, turn off all notifications on anything that is not timely/important right now, and not to accept recommendations on Google search but to scroll down and choose your own and to think twice, three times, before hitting emotion buttons, likes and shares.
 
Reflecting on these recommendations, these were actions I’d already taken some time ago.
 
I don’t generally tend to participate in media of any kind, except when using it as a tool, because I know I can lose hours of my life. I know there is as much misinformation out there as there is information (although this documentary has perhaps taught me there may well be a much greater proportion of misinformation), and I only want to be sifting my way through all that when I’m actively interested in learning about something.
 
Even knowing this I still catch myself checking for new email or messages often.
 
The key question I began to ask myself with my device is “Am I using it as a tool? Or am I letting it demand my attention and manipulate my thinking?”
 
But why is it that I had come to those conclusions already I wondered?
 
Well, in part, I had learned the lesson about not engaging in media decades ago when I was self employed. Because it’s designed to be sensational and pull me in, I decided it was a time waster. I want to stay positive and focused on my own goals in life, not pulled into dramas I have no direct control over.
 
The other thing that has really helped me navigate the fears (of 2020 in particular), which are being fed by and prayed upon by social media in my opinion, is quite simple. It is an internal shift, the practice of observing my thoughts.
 
This has allowed me to notice when I’m thinking things that are putting me in a fearful state, which then empowers me to take action to bring myself back into balance. It’s like the game of hot and cold, the more fear I feel the colder/further I’m getting from my truth. The warmer/closer I am to my truth, the more peace I feel.
 
Examples would include topics like vaccines, or government conspiracy theories. As I sit here typing this I am aware through others that tomorrow is the date banded about online by which New Zealand would come under martial law, and a separate theory that it is also the day on which we will plunge into darkness as planet Earth shifts on its axis.
 
Now, if you are reading this it means we are past the date and we will either be in apocalyptic chaos or, well, we will be trucking along in the more chronic kind of chaos already well outlined in here. I do know someone though who is stocking up their food reserves just in case, and who urged me to do so because they do genuinely care about me.
 
How do I navigate situations that? I can feel the tension and fear in my body rise when these conversations are broached. I have to take some time to myself afterwards and really sit with the feelings and sometimes do a little research to figure out whether there is something I need be concerned about or not.
 
I wish to remain objective, and I know that to do so I have to work hard at creating space between me and the hype. So when a documentary comes along like The Social Dilemma, I have the head and heart space to take it in.
                           
To achieve this I meditate daily. As I discuss in Meditation – the Cornerstone to Your Success, it’s a practice of noticing when I’m thinking and letting those thoughts go, in short I become the observer of my thoughts rather than completely swept up by them.
I also make sure I take regular walk in nature to clear my head, practice yoga for my mind and body also, go for a swim to help me defrag, and so on. Actively making regular space in my calendar for these things gives me space on the inside.
 
Making that internal shift gives me perspective, keeps me objective, able to explore alternative views, and helps me maintain focus on the bigger picture of not just my own life, but life here on Earth.
 
As Jared Lanier wisely comments in the The Social Dilemma, even if only a small percentage of people change their social media habits as a result of the documentary, it’s at least creating space to have a conversation about how we navigate our future. Will you make the internal shift and join the conversation?
 
If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Your Answers Are Within, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, Stand in Your Own Truth and How to Be True to You When Life Pulls You in Different Directions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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Whether as a politician, parent, teacher or someone’s coach, manager or advisor, if you are an adult you are a leader; our future generations are watching...

Part of me wanted to post a few pictures of many of today’s leaders to highlight my point, but it is more pervasive than that, and I wanted to look at what could be done to evolve us past this point of blatant immaturity.

I’ll tell you some examples of the kinds of things I’m seeing; examples of what I’ll call unconscious leadership.

Given my belief that I have not only the right, but the obligation to question decisions our government make, when I started to wonder about the rational for our current government’s decision to maintain an elimination strategy for COVID19 in New Zealand, I began to search for some answers.

Now, this article is not about challenging the efficacy of New Zealand’s current response to COVID19, it’s not about COVID19, the global landscape on this issue of whether and how to control the virus is complex and constantly changing.

However, in my bid to understand why we are where we are, I came across an article by Bridie Witton quoting Professor Michael Baker (one of the main advisors to the government on this matter), Dr Rod Jackson (a professor of epidemiology at the University of Auckland) and Dr Simon Thornley (a public health physician at the University of Auckland) who – like many – is questioning whether elimination is still the right strategy.   

Keen to hear responses to the valid points Dr Thornley raised I was appalled to read Jackson has little time for Thornley’s arguments and says “they should not be given any oxygen”. He says “Thornley is the only dissenter in the epidemiological community. We are all advising the Government, and we speak with one voice. And you have got a junior epidemiologist who is presenting a different case.”

Not exactly mature.

The same could be said when I watched footage of Nicola Willis (a Member of Parliament in New Zealand’s main opposition party) make a speech to Parliament in August questioning the Government on how the recent COVID19 outbreak had come about.

While she hit home on some key points, her speech ended in a way that – to me – is indicative of what undermines confidence in politicians. It was the “on this side of the house we would do it better” argument. Honestly, it is like listening to a school playground. I want to say “Grow up, make your points and work together.”

The same could be said when I noticed that another national politician - whom I knew from my time in local government, and worked with about a decade ago – had left his position as Chief Whip in the opposing party’s office and continued as an independent. He had done some whistle blowing and, of course, the political party came at him.

They deflected by focusing on his extra marital affairs. Again, this is very tit for tat playground behaviour.

I was then personally quite disappointed in the Member of Parliament’s response to his affairs in a radio interview. He said “the rules of the game have changed; we are now looking under the bed sheets”. The assertion he made is that affairs among members of Parliament are rife and part of the culture, but there has always been a tacit agreement they remain secret.

I mean, really, this level of maturity is not what I am looking for in those vested with the job of making critical decisions for our country.

All of this seems to get amplified within the realms of social media, as our viewpoints are being increasingly manipulated to a degree never seen before, as eloquently described in the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.

It’s little wonder that there is so much polarisation and confusion and, ultimately way less progress (on key issues that affect all of humankind, the creatures on this planet, and the planet itself) than is possible if we were all pulling in the same direction.

What does it mean to grow up? To me, it means self responsibility, to take deliberate action to mature on the inside as well as the outside.

I am talking about taking responsibility for that part of me that reacts when I get triggered. I do not mean that I take steps to behave in a more polished way, like media training.

In the examples I’ve given above, it is clear to me that Dr Rod Jackson may well be considered a loose cannon for making such obviously derisory statements about another colleague. I know from my own media training that there is a certain way I should respond to the press so I don’t embarrass myself or the organisation I represent.

The same could be said of the Personal Development training that many executives undergo. The best of this usually at least achieves one of the prerequisite steps in maturing on the inside, and that is self awareness. I found the better training and coaching an uncomfortable unfolding, and witnessed the same in my colleagues, to see ourselves as others perhaps might; the good, the bad and the ugly.

From there I have observed that many just get better at magnifying the good and hiding the bad and the ugly. There are few I have witnessed really doing the internal work it takes to recognise the roots of these internal triggers that set off the immature behaviours and heal them.

As I said in Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, aside of the trauma we all experience to varying degrees in our life, there are also the inherited patterns of behaviour in our parents that we react to, and unwittingly develop patterns in response to. These are essential for our survival in childhood but become unhealthy patterns later in life, and will certainly pass on unless we take action.

James Redfield describes these control strategies quite succinctly in The Celestine Prophecy. They sit on a scale of aggressive to passive and he describes four archetypes; it’s often easiest if you start by taking a look at which strategies your parents employed:

• Intimidator’s threaten verbally or physically and come on too strong, making others frightened. They are so wrapped up in their own anger they don’t care what is happening inside the other person.
• Interrogator’s constantly question, criticize, nag and find fault, making others self conscious and eroding their confidence.
• Aloof’s shut down when confrontation happens. They often withdraw physically or verbally, forcing others to struggle and dig to find out their true feelings.
• Poor Me’s tend to guilt trip, projecting themselves as the helpless victim in need or care and attention. This makes others feel guilty even if they know there is no real reason to feel this way.

Each of these are linked with the corresponding strategies that created them, and that they create.

For example, Intimidators create Poor Me’s appealing for mercy, or, the child will endure until they are old enough and big enough to fight back, creating another Intimidator, and so the cycle continues.

It is not just in politicians I see this level of immaturity, it’s everywhere I look: executives playing one-upmanship in boardrooms, teachers shaming kids in order to control the classroom, parents repeating the same cycles of shame, guilt and fear over and over. I know, I’ve been on this journey, pointing fingers at others and – most destructively – inwardly, berating myself for not being better.

To move past this, in every walk of life, starts within each individual taking self responsibility to mature on the inside; I have to take responsibility to become conscious of the damage I do, to myself and others.

Imagine a world where leaders have healed their negative patterns, where people are not denying, suppressing or disowning their authentic self, and are free to fully express the best of who they are? That is the world I came to live in, and it starts with me. What about you?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Leadership: Why Trust Leads to Better Business Outcomes, What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, Stand in Your Own Truth and How to Be True to You When Life Pulls You in Different Directions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’ve had a sense of bubbling euphoria this week as I’ve been moving through day to day life. It comes from some work I completed over the weekend that really helped me to crystallise where I am on my journey, with a definite sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The journey to me has been a deliberate and painstaking pursuit, taken in small steps over a number of years. But I get the sense that the metaphoric dark night of the soul is drawing to an end, it is the dawning of a new day.

Along the way there has been a diverse range of literature and teachers whose work has provided much needed guidance, most of whom (if not all) have been mentioned in my weekly musings. I am nothing if not resourceful, and on each part of this rushing river downstream it has seemed that the right thing has appeared just at the right time to help me navigate whatever tumultuous waters I was in.

Claire Zammit’s work on self actualisation, the latest piece I’ve been diving into, ranks among my favourites for its ability to capture and and categorize (into eight distinct areas) what aspects of life one might have deeper yearnings for, not feel fulfilled and want to evolve in. Her work in recognising why this is the case and how to break through the barriers is well thought out; and a blessing for those of us who are really serious about realising our full potential in any area of life.

Being asked to talk about self awareness last week gave me the opportunity to review the stages of the journey. First there was a desire to develop and succeed in a more unconscious state, then there was an awakening to the bigger context of life. This illuminated the burdened state in which I was attempting to move through each day, so there then came the more deliberate reclamation of my authentic self.

Don’t get me wrong, do I think this is the end of my journey? Heck no, more of a breakthrough, moving onto the next chapter. It will be interesting though, each week as I sit down to write these and reflect on what I’ve learned, to see if and how the flavour changes.

So back to the breakthrough, it came from going through a 73-page document that Claire Zammit co-authored with Katherine Woodward Thomas; it goes through the twenty one self-limiting thought patterns that create our more burdened identities, outlining the common thoughts, beliefs, gifts and so on, that comes with each.

To be clear, I’m not saying you can just read this document and – whoosh – you’ll have the same epiphany. It’s possible, but bear in mind there are many roads to the same end, and each journey is unique. This happened to be the one that, for me, was the perfect tool given the culmination of everything I had experienced, read and learned to that point.

In fact, I’d been subconsciously searching for this list. Ever since I’d heard Teal Swan talk about Fragmentation, referring to the parts of us that fragment off in relation to our essential self. An example she gives, from memory, is about being brought up in a family where it wasn’t okay to express your anger, and how that might affect who you show up as in the world over the years; perhaps even to the extent that you become a person who doesn’t recognise you ever feel anger because it has become so denied, suppressed and disowned.

Anyway, in her various talks on the subject, Teal mentions that with each fragment we each split into many parts (she has seen as many as over eighty), with a minimum of twenty two. It struck me as a very specific number. So when Claire Zammit mentioned the twenty one thought patterns she had identified, I immediately connected the dots (21 parts plus the essential self being twenty two).

I have no idea if their lists are the same, but the point for me was this represented more of a totality of what could be at play within me. For the last few years I’ve been healing patterns that reveal themselves through whatever is triggering me in the moment, and it has served me well, but I was wanting a litmus test of how far through that dark night I was.

So I went through the 73-page document highlighting every single statement that resonated and looked at where the clusters were. What became very clear was that my two main themes were in relation to my own feelings, needs and desires and my uniqueness, calling and contribution. Specifically how to name them, assert them in a way that garners support and maintain a healthy balance between giving and receiving.

Having done a lot of work this year on healing my boundaries, and recognising my people pleasing and co-dependant tendencies, it made a great deal of sense to me that being able to fulfil my potential in the area of clearly and confidently expressing my thoughts, feelings, needs, desires, ideas and visions to others, has been a key step towards fulfilling my potential in terms of being able to recognise and contribute my gifts in ways that are meaningful and have a positive impact.

Knowing that I had already begun working on these things, I realised this was my sense check that the change in light was indeed the dawn of a new day and not an oncoming truck about to hit me square in the eyes. I also checked in with another lady I know, and who knows me well, whose chosen field is in helping people work through these barriers who affirmed I am well through the continuum.

What has made the most difference, in my little bubbling, euphoric state, is recognising how l feel when someone else around me is triggered. I was at lunch with some friends, one of whom gets really triggered on certain issues, and I accidentally stumbled into one of those particular topics. Even though she knew we were each well aware of the issues on both sides of the fence and hold the same vision, it was as though all the oxygen had been sucked out the room as a tirade ensued.

It was an amazing experience of having a mirror held up. I am no stranger to these tirades; I too have been a tirade queen on many issues that are important to me (just ask the kid’s school). What I have been able to see clearly now for a while though is that my anger is only spinning my wheels in the mud on any topic. Other people can’t hear me because my anger instinctively makes it unsafe for them, triggering those around me into flight, fight, freeze or fold.

Also, what lay at the heart of my anger was something else entirely, in my case it was the childhood pain of my opinion not mattering, among other things, and I came out fighting, determined no one would put me in the corner again. It was that I had to work through so that I could begin to communicate more clearly and calmly.

Claire’s core message in unlocking our potential is:

• You absolutely cannot fulfil your potential if you have inner blocks or barriers (like my anger, for other examples look at How to Live in Conscious Self Awareness in the World)
• But you don’t need to be perfect... to create a breakthrough you only need to break the biggest pattern standing in the way of the main area you’re yearning for (for example, purpose and calling, but there is a free questionnaire in here that will help you identify yours) and this will start a chain reaction.

My bubbling euphoria isn’t because I feel entirely clear of my past, it’s because I’ve now got awareness of and am working on the biggest pattern that has been standing in my way. As I recognise and work to integrate those parts of me I’d denied, I can feel a seismic shift in my own energy as it starts to orientate itself towards the very thing I’ve been yearning for, my contribution and calling.

Do you feel a deep yearning for something more in your life, an elusive potential within? Perhaps you’d like to more clearly express your authentic self? Or contribute your gifts to others in ways that are meaningful and have a positive impact? Or feel safe, valued and supported in your romantic relationships to become the best version of yourself? Or feel you have all the resources you need to thrive? Or feel connected to your creative expression? Or to your deeper knowing? Or feel energized, well, healthy, at peace and at home in your body? Or to make a difference in the lives of others?

I want all of these things, and what I’ve discovered is – while I need to recognise there’s work to do, and do it – I don’t need to be perfect to make a breakthrough, and neither do you, you just need to begin.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy I Am Worth It – Are You?, Why Projecting is the Best Tool for Self Awareness, Honour Your Story but Free Yourself of Its Shackles and How to Heal the Past so You Can Live Your Best Present. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

As I lay in bed this morning enjoying a quiet five minutes of my mind freely wandering, I was also acutely aware that my bubble was about to burst when the kids awoke, and the duties of the day began. I knew that it would only be when I sat down to type later in the day that my mind would have free rein to wander again.

That is the biggest obstacle for most of us, I believe, the feeling of more than enough time. When I watched a video from Sustainable Human on Why Everyone Deserves a Basic Income, I think the point was well made that we are so busy labouring to live that we don’t have enough time for the things that matter to us, which are often the things that would help us live in harmony with each other and the planet.

I can see where it begins, my kids are kept so busy with schooling (which they are not all that interested in) and are often too tired to pursue things they would rather be exploring. Yet I often think, as I drop them off at that cookie-cutter machine each day, they didn’t come here to fit into this world, they came to change it. But for that matter, so did you and I.

Listening to a friend of mine talk about the less than desirable state of governments today, and how much we had lost in moving away from local communities, I agreed with much of what was being said. However, I did not want to dwell on it, nor fight against it; it just feels like too much resistance.

What came up for me instead, were questions about what could replace these outdated systems. How could we maintain global infrastructure in a more localised world? Was that even the right question?

What I know for sure is that watching more videos, reading more articles or listening to more speeches to raise my awareness about today’s problems feels heavy on my soul, I’m already aware; the issues are huge in so many facets of our lives. What I’m interested in is a vision of what it could look like and how we get there. 

When I sat down to meditate and clear my mind, I had this vision of me sitting at an architect’s desk with a huge jigsaw puzzle spread across the table and only two or three pieces in place. All around me on the walls were white boards and notice boards, with lots of notes and questions posted all over them, a little like the crime or medical investigation rooms I’ve seen on TV.

I knew this was me sitting down to start to piece together a vision for myself of what the world could look like. I started to wonder if anyone had ever written a book as good as Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations, but focused on reconstructing the way in which public services could be provided.

Then I realised much of what he had written, at its core advocating organisations that are set up with autonomous individuals who have collective responsibility for outcomes (rather than employees with delegated authorities and limited access to information), was and could be applied to public services.

I also realised the question needed to be broader, in the sense of how each person in society who had an interest in that arena (be it roads, communication, education, healthcare, economics, justice etc) could participate to the extent they desired.

My mind was on a roll with questions and people who might have answers, and the boards in my imaginary investigation room were rapidly filling up with notes and insights. It’s something that deeply interests me, this question of what society could be like if we can function together in more conscious awareness of who we truly are.

While creating a vision of a new society is certainly one way to step towards a new world, it’s no more valid than anything else that people might do that brings them joy. For my partner, his mind wanders to the forest where he can bike, or the activity in the night sky he likes to track, or the renovation work he is doing.  I really think that time to ponder what we love is key for positive progression.

When I feel unhurried, free to pursue what I’d like, my whole system is more relaxed, more in tune with the things I truly want out of life. It’s easier to eat in ways that are healthy, to think about planting my own food, to take regular exercise, and to take the time to notice how my neighbour is doing.

These are all things during our lockdown earlier in the year that became very evident. It was a time of self reflection, of seeing negative patterns and revisiting what is important in life. Sometimes it’s all too easy to get caught up in the doing, which feels like a distraction from the main event of being who we have come here to be.

Whatever you truly enjoy and feel passionate about, pursue it as much as you can, as often as you can, take one day at a time. Even if it feels trite, or that it won’t change the world, it will change your world. Then imagine a world full of people pursuing their passion, which is a world changed for the better.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Take a Broader Perspective, Profit, Purpose and Personal Fulfillment Can Thrive Together - A Remarkable New Organisational Construct, Be An Evolutionary, and The Hidden Ingredient in Really Effective Problem Solving. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I took my daughter and her friend to see a movie this week whose theme was Our Differences Make Us Stronger. I truly believe that our differences do make us stronger when they are embraced. This applies equally to my own differences as it does to that of others.

As I have listened to podcasts with people talking about diversifying our social circles in order to expand our hearts and minds it rings true. The point is well made that, if I interact with people only like me, I have a limited view of the world.

I also have come to understand that I only attract those on the same vibrational wavelength as me. And it has really opened my eyes these last few years, as I have shared my angst and insights on the journey to me, those of you who resonate with the vibe of my own life lessons come in an astonishingly wide range of forms and circumstances.

It seems to me that many of our similarities and differences are those that can only be seen and felt by the heart.

Interacting with people I don’t know is easier though, particularly if we have been drawn together through mutual trials and tribulations. Knowing more about someone seems to create more barriers, as per the old saying familiarity breeds contempt; more experience of someone (including myself) can make me so aware of my own or their faults I become scornful.

I remember hearing a story recalled from Jerry Hicks about his wife Esther, watching her having the most marvelous fun with another passenger at the airport trying to retrieve their luggage. He was chuckling to himself thinking “if only they each knew who the other was, the fun would soon turn sour.”  As I recall the man was a preacher of some sort and, when his adverts played, it would impel Esther to stand up and shout at the television set in indignation.

But until I can embrace my own differences and preferences, be relaxed enough to communicate them in a clear and calm way, I find it is hard to feel safe listening to other points of view; I often have this unspoken sense that my listening will indicate a tacit acceptance of their views as my own and am preparing for the attack on mine if I express them.

For the longest time I have had a quote from Stephen Covey displayed on my bookcase Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. Most people listen with the intent to reply. For me this is because I struggled growing up with my own differences and didn’t feel accepted.

Despite good intent to listen, I still seem to do far too much talking. With awareness, I have known it is because I don’t want anyone to attempt to steer me away from my truth, I often jump in and state my views to erect a barrier of protection; a throwback to my childhood when I was always told what I should be thinking, feeling or doing.

As I read Mona Miller’s words this week about conflict and confusion, in her book Invisible Warfare, that entanglement began to make more sense. She says “Most of our educational systems are set up to train us to provide answers, not to question. Many times these answers are created to please someone else, so we lose the capability to check-in with ourselves to see what we actually think or feel about the information we are getting.”

I’m finding it is particularly tricky at this point in my journey where I’m learning to heal my personal boundaries. With decades of defensive wiring, just getting a clear view of any particular scenario is oftentimes a challenge. However is it one steering me towards a win-win.

Certainly I have been challenged by a couple of conversations with people close to me this week. With all the awareness I could muster I traversed both conversations with trepidation and determination to honour my own boundaries while respecting theirs, for both these people are dear to me in their separate ways. 

What came up for me was the question of how I can listen, understand and respond to someone when their truth doesn’t resonate with my own and I feel, because of the way they are expressing it, I need to go into defence, attack or hiding.

This is where Mona’s writing on conflict and confusion helped clarify “whether someone is lying (it may be to you or to themselves) or telling the truth doesn’t matter. Lies can help you see the truth as you move towards understanding.” She explains “We are trained to either be know-it-alls or stupid; people who speak in statements or not at all. Yet a wise person knows there is always more to learn and this creates confusion and conflict.”

When I feel a twist in my gut as someone interacts with me, that is a signal from my body to let me know the views or desires they are expressing are not aligned with my own. This triggers the flight or fight centre (as per the childhood wiring) and my rational brain shuts down. Unless I can catch myself in a brief moment of awareness, the best I can manage is “boundaries… must defend”.

Yet whether someone is trying to persuade me to their view or not is no longer, in my adult life, an actual problem or danger to me in any way. As a good friend reminded me this week:

I am a sovereign being and an intelligent woman, no one’s words can influence me anywhere my soul doesn’t already want to go.

It feels to me that I’ve known the basics of good listening skills for a long time, certainly since the early years of personal development work over two decades ago. True listening is about asking open ended questions with only an attempt to understand another perspective rather than control the outcome. Yet in fear of another person trying to control me, I have often been unable to truly listen and shut down, making my position clear to create a defensive barrier.

While I want to feel understood and accepted, the cost of fitting someone else’s mould is too high, and the desire for authenticity from within is too strong.

What I’ve really taken to heart this week is that neither what I think, nor what another thinks of me, matters as much as the weight I give it. It might if I was in a job interview or something similar, but even then, why would I want to attract anything other than a vibrational match to my authentic self?

But in the normal course of day to day interactions with friends, family and those who are more acquaintances or part of my life in some other working relationship, there is no real reason to avoid understanding our differences.

Looking into this shadow I have seen that I had a propensity to seek sameness, for a subconscious fear that any differences would put me in danger. As a child this danger of not fitting in would have been too risky, the approval of my family and teachers as I grew was central to my survival as it is to us all. And, frankly, old habits die hard.

Seeking common ground is healthy, it helps me relate to others, but that is different from being the same. I imagine I could seek the whole world over and never find anyone the same, I could no doubt go back through the generations of the entire world’s population and never find anyone exactly the same. And I can project forward into the future and believe no one else has had or will have my unique combination of heritage, wiring and experiences.

Embracing differences, therefore, is necessary to thrive in this world. It starts with embracing my own differences without the need to defend them or even state them (unless I’m actually being asked about them and feel comfortable doing so). Getting relaxed with who I am in this way helps me open up to who others are and, of course, that is what will make us stronger.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Want to Make the World a Better Place? Tune In, Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, Be at Ease With the World Around You and  I Am a Recovering Approval Seeker and Control Freak. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Making the world a better place starts with making my personal world better.

I was listening to an interview with Dr Tiffany Jana this week, whose passion is teaching about embracing diversity, and she said “The idea that anyone has to edit themselves to conform to some kind of system or social construct is harmful. It is harmful to the collective because if you can’t be everything you were sent here to be then the entire human narrative is missing an essential piece.”

While Dr Jana was being asked about healing racism, she was recognising that any part of us that we have to shape in order to conform creates a disservice to the human race.   

And she reiterates advice I’d heard previously from Sean Korne about facing our own shadows before diving in to others’ shadows,. The best way we can help anyone is from a point of loving acceptance of who we are embodied authentically.

Herein lies the challenge, as far as I can see, most people don’t even recognise how their own hurts beget more hurt (no matter how long ago, how forgotten - or more accurately, buried - or how unintentional); I certainly didn’t.

If someone had asked me thirty years ago how tuned in I was to my own feelings, how did I value my own needs and desires, I’d have responded that I am very tuned in. Yet after decades my life did not seem to be joyful, even with traditional successes under my belt, I did not seem to feel healthy or fulfilled. So how tuned in was I really?

I was reading more this week about attunement, a developmental phase in humans that I first came across when reading Dr Gabor Mate’s work on the effects and causes of early childhood development on our lives. He says:

“Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional regulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain him/herself in a relatively non-stressed, non-anxious, non-depressed state of mind.”

If you are a parent you will likely know that this can be a huge ask. I am the first to admit that – if I was never aware of my shadows before – they certainly became rather obvious with young children to challenge me. Of all my relationships, the one with my children is the most intense, followed by the relationship with my partner.

And guess what lies at the heart of our relationships?  Attunement.

“Attunement is the process by which we form relationships” Dr Dan Siegel says. “When we attune with others we allow our own internal state to shift to come to resonate with the world of another.”

As Teal Swan points out, “We learn attunement by virtue of other people being attuned to us. Ask yourself the following questions...Do I feel like my parents understood me when I was little, or even tried to understand me? Did they see into me and feel into me and have empathy for me and adjust their behaviour accordingly or not? Did they acknowledge how I felt or did they invalidate it, telling me I shouldn’t feel that way? How did my parents treat me when I was cranky, frightened or upset?”

I would imagine as most people read this, they would recognise the lack of attunement in their own childhood, for being seen and not heard and do as I say not as I do have been predominant tenets of parenting for a long long time. Thus, as Teal also points out, dysfunctional relationships are the norm, not the exception.

She says “when our parents were not attuned to us, we went one of two ways to cope with the terror of the experience:

1. We learned that our survival depended on disconnecting from them and retreating into a narcissistic bubble where all that was real and all that mattered was our individual experience. Or
2. We learned that our survival depended on being hyper attuned to the people in our lives so that we could perceive them, anticipate their behaviour and make adjustments to our behaviour accordingly in order to avoid harm.”

I certainly feel the truth of this in my own life, in hindsight I can see I became hyper vigilant to others’ feelings and co-dependent in my relationships. It’s no surprise that each of these coping styles tend to attract its opposite and – while one is good at taking care of everyone else’s needs, neither is actually good at recognising and taking care of their own.

Again this resonates with what I see and experience in life, most people are not good at taking care of their own needs. Even, says Teal, the narcissists who are “so busy resisting everyone else’s that, instead of experiencing strong authentic emotions, they are experiencing emotions related to suppression, avoidance, denial or defensiveness.”

So the bottom line is that, unless I learn how to attune (to myself being that I am hyper vigilant to others, but to my own and to others if I had gone into a narcissistic bubble) my relationships will be riddled with conflict and painful for everyone.

This isn’t something I find easy, and particularly when it is an ingrained pattern within existing relationships which, as mentioned above, are already imbued with painful associations on many levels.  True change is intrinsic though, is has to be self driven and nothing changes by following the same old patterns.

That is why I have been doing so much work on recognising and healing my own needs and boundaries, but it still requires practice and more practice.

Wanting to feel good about myself, and wanting to present that goodness to the world is the old defence mechanism, and it’s a strong one. Like everyone else I can fall into the trap of blaming others and my circumstances when, really, I’m no longer the trapped child, I’m a grown adult who can make her own decisions.

And, being hyper attuned to others more so than myself, I also have to watch out for the guilt trap. Those who have got themselves ensconced in a narcissistic bubble know how to play the blame game just as well as I do, but being sensitive to others means I can feel guilty just because someone else is feeling bad.

When Dr Tiffany Jana talks about people editing themselves to conform, the lack of attunement and the dynamics that arise from it are, I believe, one of the most pervasive and insidious among us edited humans. The worst thing about it is the lack of conscious awareness about this root cause issue.

Because, as Teal Swan remarks, “You cannot be attuned to someone and drop a bomb on them or shoot them. You cannot be attuned to someone and say the wrong thing to them. You cannot be attuned to someone and stay in denial about his or her reality”.

This is our work, becoming attuned to our own authentic needs, and those of others. This will not only improve your own life significantly, but together we can make this world a better place.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Do You Need to Heal Your Boundaries?, What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances and Great Relationships Happen When You Put You First. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

It seems to me that more and more people are becoming less identified with their thoughts and the self, and more aware of their connection to something much greater. At first I wondered whether it was because that is what had been happening to me over a number of years, a bit like when I’d want something as a child and then I’d suddenly start seeing that thing all over the place.

However, listening to Scott Shute , the Head of LinkedIn’s Mindfulness and Compassion Programe, he was citing the growth of mindfulness practices in recent years. He was saying there was only 5% of Americans who practiced some kind of mindfulness just a few short years ago, compared to a growing 15% today, and many more who are familiar with the term and have tried mindfulness practices.

Dr Jean Houston talks about how we are at the end of one era but not quite in the new era, rather we are standing on the precipice and she invites us to leap across the chasm. In Jean’s terms we are moving out of the era of the “local human” and into the era of the “quantum human”.

I certainly feel called to help usher in this new era. A world in which people are more aware of the thoughts and feelings that define their boundaries and, simultaneously, connection to all else, is the one I came for, the one I champion.

Jean says “speak like angels and use words like wands”. In my view, C.S.Lewis was a master at this. When he writes in The Magician’s Nephew, the prequel to The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe about the birth of a new world, Narnia, it gives me goosebumps.

The children discover a place, a wood between worlds, where everything is peaceful and calm. This place is a portal to many worlds and they find themselves in a new world unborn. When they arrive there is nothing, just blackness, no stars, no sound, no sense of anything. They are naturally drawn to sing to keep themselves cheerful and sane and, after a while, they hear another sound...

“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing...it seemed to come from all directions at once...its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise ever heard.”

“Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars...single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world.”

“If you had seen and heard it, you would be quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the first voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”

“The voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter... far away, and down near the horizon the sky began to turn grey. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see the shapes of hills standing up dark against it.  All the time the voice went on singing.”

“The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had produced, the sun arose.”

This revealed the singer, the mighty Aslan, the creator of this land. He went on singing in a more gentle, rippling lilt, creating grass, plants and trees, and then the song changed once more, it became far wilder and – from this – the first creatures appeared. 

As I think about Jean’s proposition to leap across the chasm and cling to the ledge of a new era, I think of those children sitting in the darkness breathing life where once there was nothing and witnessing a whole new world appear.

I think of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to disentangle and reengineer the outdated societal systems we live with, and instead I imagine those behind me, my face to the new era, listening intently to the voices that are singing it into creation. That is where my attention must lie, and where my own voice must ring out.

In this world  between worlds, I think the heart is the quiet stillness – C.S. Lewis’s wood between the worlds – and in it we find the portal to our quantum self, and thus this new era.

Sarah Blondin describes this portal as having an umbilical chord to the divine (or greater intelligence or whatever word you feel most comfortable using for something bigger than ourselves). To cultivate this she says:

“It is practice and it is discipline. The heart knows its worth and needs to smell the sincerity on your breath and glimpse earnestness in your eyes, it needs to know you are kneeling at the doorway of your heart”.

I recognise in my own journey the many divine experiences I had by sheer grace in the year before my mum died. Since then I have been busy working to unshackle myself from my story so far, to unpeel the layers of experiences that have generated self limiting beliefs, unhealthy relationship patterns and chronic health conditions.

But, as Jean Houston says, this is the local human. There is a broader part of me – the higher self, the quantum human – that knows no such shackles. While recognising and honouring the challenges as the local human, it feels time to turn my attention more to the part of me I’ve always been aware of, but not lately been so focused upon.

As Jean describes beautifully, this is the part of me that says “I lure you with love into the universe and I pour myself into you”.

At this dawning of a new era, I feel it’s important to look into the shadows of that local human to free myself of unnecessary burden, but equally as important to practice sensing into that broader part of me that notices the serendipities of life lining up in so many subtle ways.

That broader part of me knows, expects even, to co-create this new era of human evolution with many others and the universe itself.  As Sarah Blondin asks, so I would ask you, how much time are you spending kneeling at the doorway of your heart? How much time in your day do you nurture that quiet stillness within you? Let us usher in this new era together.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How Can I Create a Better World?, Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary), Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, and What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I’ve discovered that, like everything else in my life from the way my kids behave, to the things that happen, sex is yet another thing that reflects back to me parts of myself that may be about old thought patterns and feelings.

When I was reading about Pavan Amara’s Take Back Your Body project, although I’ve never experienced sexual abuse directly, I could relate to the concept that taking back the narrative of sex is a crucial part of healing.

Amara says “After any sort of sexual violence, the way you think about sex and your body changes, so you think it’s not under your control, or you have to go with someone else’s likes and dislikes and you lose that connection to yourself. We look at ways of taking that back.”

Whether a person has been abused or not, I believe an unhealthy narrative about sex prevails among the collective conscious, and feelings of fear and shame still too often dominate the landscape in both sexes.
I recall listening to Teal Swan sharing that each time she runs a workshop and asks participants to raise their hands if they have felt fear for their life, all the women and many men raise their hands. When she starts to narrow that down to a shorter and shorter timeframe, the men are often gobsmacked that most women in the room still have their hands up when she asks who has felt that fear in the last week.

History tells us that females (and many males) have suffered at the hands of power-hungry men for centuries and, while life in the twenty-first century is changing in many places, oppression still exists both in the world around us and reverberates in the world within us. This is something I am mindful of in relation to my own experiences and those of my children.

My eldest daughter was inadvertently exposed to the topic of sex in a fictional story she had listened to recently that had been miscategorised under children’s books rather than for young adults. The main thread of the story was about time travelling back to Arthurian times to save the future. However, the plot apparently also included two teenage girls having sex and a baby being born.

This brought up questions for her about what sex is and, while I did not mind having the conversation, I hadn’t anticipated having to answer quite so many questions for another year or two. I had to explain to a somewhat bewildered young girl, who finds the whole concept rather abstract, that a whole new view of the world opens up when hormones start flooding our bodies in the teenage years; sex becomes desirable (when allowed to unfold naturally) and is just nature’s way of making sure we humans survive.

It made me reflect on my own experiences emerging into young adulthood, recalling the perplexing question of what a French kiss might be and what exactly was I to do with my tongue? And just how embarrassing everything seemed at that age, even asking that question of anyone was too much.

When I think of my first kiss in that genre, with an eleven year old boy in my class using his swanky digital watch to time it to two minutes, his tongue like a slab of meat sitting unchewed in my mouth, and his eyes focused sideward to the timer on his wrist, it was clear I wasn’t the only one clueless and uniformed. Of course, that was just the overhang of Victorian virtuosity in our upbringing.

Here, on the opposite side of the world, my partner was brought up in a different culture entirely; Kiwi male bravado reflects an archetype of patriarchal male entitlement to female flesh, like a set of untrained puppies that grow old having learned no tricks at all except the art of enthusiastic and instant gratification. 

Both those examples are clearly not everyone’s experience, especially those that have been exposed to sex or experienced sexual abuse at a young age, but it demonstrates how we all view sex through a filter of our own experiences; and there does seem a lack of examples around what healthy sexuality might look like.

Being the digital age there is no lack of material available on the topic of sex, but how much of it is actually helpful? I’ve noticed in this era of Coronavirus lockdown, on social media there seems an increase of bored blokes sharing weird videos and material designed for shock and titillation.

My youngest daughter, unbeknown to my partner, was looking over his shoulder when his phone pinged and there was one such video that popped up – sent via a social media app by an aforementioned archetype of the bored Kiwi bloke. “Mummy” she cried “someone has sent daddy a video of a man bouncing an exercise ball, like the one you used to have, on his willy.”

She thought this was hilarious, and thankfully didn’t see enough to have absorbed the sexual component of it. Needless to say, my partner has since taken a much more mindful approach to his device.

To me, of the prudish upbringing, this type of media automatically gets categorized in my psyche as smut and makes me view the man in the video (and anyone sharing it) as sad. In my partner’s psyche, it’s just funny, something to send on as a bit of bravado and one-upmanship in the shocking humour stakes.

Being a mother of daughters and someone who deeply understands how even things that are seemingly benign in intent can shape a person’s psyche, I am inclined to err on the side of caution when it comes to exposing my kids to life beyond their current point of development, a hard task in today’s world.

As I said in From Desires of the Flesh to Deep Connection our sexuality is deeply connected to all our other interactions. When I listen to the demeaning lyrics of a rap song, it creates images in my head, the same happens when watching a video, reading news, playing games… on and on. The question we each have to ask ourselves – and for our children as they emerge into young adulthood - is whether these images are pathways to love and connectedness or quite the opposite?

Science has shown us that the more exposed to something we are, the more desensitized to it we become and this is especially so when we have been indoctrinated into a way of being since early childhood, we have no conscious memory of our true feelings. I believe that many males simply don’t understand the female perspective and, what they see as harmless can often be disrespectful or even harmful.

I get that to most of the people out there sharing the videos I mentioned, it is all just a bit of fun. But there was a time – likely in childhood and before their conscious memory -  that it would have created a bad feeling within them.

Having read the work of Dr Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-born Canadian physician with a background in family practice and a special interest in childhood development and trauma, and in their potential lifelong impacts, I know the harm that comes from children being exposed too early and too insensitively to everything from noise to the thoughts and emotions of those around us.

This is where the collective consciousness on the topic of sex and sexuality gets perpetuated; where insensitivity arises.

For one friend of mine, this is a huge trigger and I understand why. Our sexuality, like everything else in our lives, develops through the filter of our experiences. Her experiences include bearing witness to a wide range of sexual abuse. As a healer, she knows the damage to our psyche when abuse occurs.

For me, as a female who has not been subject to what we would term abuse, I still bear witness to the thoughts and feelings and mistreatment of females and have my entire life. Everything from the lewd wolf whistling that accompanied any passing of a work site from a young age, to frightening moments at the hands of testosterone charged males fuelled with alcohol or even just at a football match.

There is definitely a sense in my psyche that these things are the manifestation of a collective experience that views females as objects rather than with reverence. So when it comes to the realm of my own body and my own relationships, this collective sense of my female heritage creates part of the lens through which I view sex.

I suspect the reason this plays out so emotively for me is because my soul knows reverence for both the masculine and feminine and can sense that neither is being truly honoured in much of what I’ve discussed here.

Sex is to be enjoyed, of that there is no doubt, but what are the blocks in the pathways to mutual joy that exist in your life? What are the fundamental ideas and beliefs you have that stand in the way of honouring this? What experiences do you need to heal? And what messages do we want to send to our collective sons and daughters?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be at Ease With the World Around You, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation, Do You Really Know the Different Parts of You? and Womanhood: A Story of Our Time. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

In New Zealand we have gone boots and all into lockdown this week after initially taking a getting-slowly-sucked-down-the-plughole-of-coronavirus-control-measures approach since the first case was reported here at the end of February.

I guess, having watched our fellow humans across the globe tackle it in different ways, the government here decided we were better to jump to the most stringent control measures. So one day, when our kids were at school, there was an unexpected nationwide address at 2pm announcing all this. By 3pm our kids were being picked up along with all their schoolwork, and non essential businesses closing for a minimum of four weeks.

While I know there are people who are worried about having enough income to get through, I feel gratitude for the decisive action the government here have taken, and what appears to be relatively good communication, support and quick decisions; it is quite refreshing. We have one friend who, within a day, received a decent hardship payment, but I am sure it is not all plain sailing for everyone.  
As I pondered the irony of finding myself overnight taking on the role of homeschool mum (a role I have always rejected in absolute self awareness despite my views on Evolving Education) I related strongly to a funny post someone shared “Day One of Home School: Two Students Suspended for Fighting, Teacher Fired.”

After a few days of infighting I decided that this was a golden opportunity for us as a family to get on a calmer footing and learn to communicate with each other more respectfully. In Be Accountable to Your Intentions and Find Blissful Peace I wrote about a tick sheet I created for myself, towards the end of last year, that was titled “I will speak respectfully to my children”. They get to decide each day if I get a tick or a cross.

Dr Laura Markham says “How can you expect a child to learn to control his own emotions if you don’t control yours? … If you were yelled at, it takes tremendous work not to yell…it’s not rocket science, it takes about three months.”

I followed her advice and, having seen it in action for a good few months, the kids were happy to get on board with a tick sheet of their own. For every five ticks, my youngest child gets a glass crystal, once she has collected five crystals she gets to choose what we, as a family, do for an hour. She has in mind our first activity: nail painting, including her dad.

I am also thinking about other opportunities for the kids to dictate their own learning and pace for a while, as well as looking after my partner who is currently undergoing a lengthy recovery from a rather bad riding accident.  Of course this is all while ensuring I take care of my own needs.

With the pace of life more natural than at any time since my childhood, this all feels like a golden opportunity to recalibrate. While we are not allowed to drive to the beach to take a walk, we are allowed to walk around our local neigbourhood, which has plenty of greenery.

I am also feeling blessed we have a garden that needs just a little bit of tending each day. It is enough to keep me connected to Mother Nature and not too much that I am overwhelmed, especially coming into autumn here. Our neighbours are friendly and helpful, and chats through the hedge and across the street are a welcome connection to other people outside of the electronic highway to everyone else.

My partner and I had already started an online course with Kelly McGonigal 40 Days to Positive Change, which is another blessing as it is not time heavy and supports all the changes we have had to make, as well as ones we want to make.

I’m even feeling blessed about the surge in theories and conspiracies, all of which are always interesting, I especially like this one as it made me think about what a virus (any virus) actually is. I don’t fully resonate with the conclusions, and - as always – I advocate just taking what resonates for you.

However, I’m not wading too deeply into any of that as these largely point to things outside my control at this juncture and there is a fine line between keeping myself informed and creating needless fear. It is much better that I focus the vast majority of my time on the things directly before me and on maintaining presence.

Meditation is always a non-negotiable for me, only fifteen minutes a day, but it keeps me consciously aware of my thought patterns and feelings and helps me course-correct pretty quickly. Last night when one of my kids refused to settle down to sleep, and kept bouncing out of bed well over an hour after her usual bed time, I found myself screaming “I just want to have some time to myself!” In light of that, today, Sunday, I’m taking some time out.

So is this the opportunity of a lifetime? An opportunity for us all to slow the pace, to reflect and think and make positive change? How can you turn the negatives into positives, what opportunities lie before you right now?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy in Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, What Is the Deal with Conspiracies? Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress or Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

What a crazy world I’ve lived in this week
LIfe full of that word virus yet it’s peace I seek

I don’t feel fear, not yet at least
More dismay at people preparing for famine than feast

Taking sensible steps is a chore in my head
Aspects of daily life getting harder is a thing one can dread

So each day I take the time
To seek that inner peace of mine

To gain some perspective on the conversations I hear
To choose rational thought and reclaim my inner peace over fear

It is not always easy I will admit
When I have an inbox full of things talking about it

I turn to my partner, my friends, my kids
Too much virus stuff, it gives me the skids

Yet the nuggets of gold are not hard to find
Mother Earth has taken a big out breath in areas human activity has declined

Life could actually slow down in a way
To help us contemplate the next positive play

The years after this virus hit
Will we make positive changes because of it?

​Will governments learn from this hullabaloo?
Who knows, but will you?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy in Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, What Is the Deal with Conspiracies? Want Better Health? Be Shrewd About Stress or Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

“Humans are the most violent and the most compassionate creatures on Earth, the most destructive and the most creative” the commentator said. I was watching a short video about what animals think and feel and it concluded that all animals do think and feel to an extent; it’s just that humans are more extreme.

If I dwell on the atrocities that have and still do occur among humans, it pierces my heart and makes me feel small and helpless. But if I spend time focusing on compassion and creativity; I feel that the whole world within me opens up to a brighter and better future, because it helps me be more present in the world instead of enslaved to my past.

Shauna Shapiro talked about this very issue in a podcast I was listening to this week, about having an attitude of kindness and curiosity to allow the parts of the brain, that increase our motivation to learn and create more of an open perspective, to function freely.

In contrast, she pointed out that when we get stressed we shuttle resources from learning and being open and receptive to survival pathways (the fight, flight, freeze, faint responses) and we are unable to learn. Here are the words that resonated for me:

“Really, when it comes down to this basic understanding of how we learn, I think this is why our educational systems, parenting systems and many others have failed, we learn when we feel safe and interested, and that is the kind of internal environment I want to help people create for themselves.”

This, I believe, is the very way to make a positive difference in the world today. And it is no more obvious than in our closest relationships. Shauna Shapiro mentions parenting and, as a parent of two young children, that certainly rings true. As I’ve often quoted, in the words of Dr Gabor Maté:

“It is often not our children’s behaviour, but our inability to tolerate their negative responses that creates difficulties. The only thing the parent needs to gain control over is our own anxiety and lack of self control.”

In Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul I conclude “The anxiety we feel as parents in response to our children’s negative reactions, is the same anxiety we felt as a result our own parent’s reactions.”

But the same is true in our other relationships. James Redfield’s model of the control strategies that we each develop in order to stop others draining our energy is summarised in Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation.

For example, I noticed how defensive I got this week when my partner tried to talk to me about how he was feeling. Rather than feeling safe and open to really hearing him, I automatically sprang into a mode that felt nothing short of pull up the drawbridge, secure the perimeter and ready the cannons.

I then noticed how this pattern, rather like a blame game of tennis going back and forth, was reinforcing the patterns from our respective childhoods. To use James Redfield’s Interrogator archetype, he says if a child is constantly questioned, criticized, nagged and faults found, it makes the child self conscious and erodes their confidence.

As I grew, I learned how not to let my energy be drained in this way and, instead, refuted each criticism admirably, tussling to maintain an even field or win the upper hand. However, on the inside, the criticism ate me up, which is why I became such an approval seeker (see I Am a Recovering Approval Seeker and Control Freak).

My partner has his own demons, but none of these are really the fault of our parents, these patterns have been repeating subconsciously for generations. I think it is highly unlikely there is a person alive today who is not dealing with some version of this. In fact, I would bet that beneath the mask of history’s most vile monsters and egotistical maniacs is a small boy or girl who is hurt.

What makes this time in history different, I believe, is that many people are becoming aware of the roots of our shame and insecurities. This is a time in which I am free to explore taking different roads of action in my closest relationships.

Learning to feel safe and curious is a process. Certainly my kids don’t shy away from blaming me for everything in their life they are unhappy about, and I often feel my partner is not far behind them. At what point did I become an emotional dumping ground I wonder? This too is an unhealthy pattern pointing to a need for healing within me.

While I’ve discovered The People Who Hurt Us Are Vehicles for Our Growth, I also find that most people are still quick to blame others if they are unhappy; few seem to take responsibility for their own growth. It does seem a tad unfair that I’m taking responsibility for my own thoughts and feelings, rather than blaming others, and at the same time having others blame me for their woes.

However, playing boo hoo is not going to serve me nor help me move forwards. As I wrote about in Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling I am learning to notice when I’m taking on others’ negative energy, and ways in which to deflect their own feelings back to them. My old patterns won’t die overnight, but they are getting more recognizable.

Knowing these for what they are gives me a greater sense of safety, and being interested in what others are thinking and how they are feeling, creates a sense of compassion for them as I gain more clarity on their deeper issues and realise we’re all tussling with the same things.

That does not mean I have to accept blame from others. As Buddha said, if you give me a gift and I don’t accept it, it is still yours. Therefore, if you are angry, resentful or frustrated at me, it really is up to me to decide whether or not to get insulted and angry in return.

In fact the gift I recognise is that on some level I am still blaming myself as I did when I was a child, creating this constant need to be perfect and not elicit any criticism. I am quick to defend externally and quick to accept internally.

So I have to look at each thing directed at me and be curious about whether this is something I need to take accountability for, or is this something that is about me learning to love myself more, to have self compassion.

If we can each begin to recognise our patterns of thought and behaviour and regard them with curiosity and self compassion, we will slowly start to change the patterns of behaviour we reflect into the world. Won’t it be fabulous to hear far more compelling tales of compassion from our species than violence, and see many more examples of creativity than destruction? Now that is a world we can thrive in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Do You Want The Prevailing Global Culture to Look Like?, We Can Live in Harmony. How Can I Create a Better World?and Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary). To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

A friend of mine shared a post this week from an Iran-born American human rights activist who had been asked to comment on the assassination of General Qasem Solemani. Given that I don’t watch a lot of media, the news about the assassination had reached me earlier in the week when some family members were discussing it.

It was fabulous to see the comments on the post from others who had been open to exploring an alternative view, outside of what gets reported through mainstream media (or, for that matter, just continuing with the any bias they may have grown up with).

As I said in Each to Their Own – Finding Your True North:

No one else has my DNA, my heritage, ancestry or experiences, nor the lenses through which I see the world; we are each unique. And so our truths are similarly so, speaking to us in different ways.

Thus, in my experience, there is never any one truth, only opinion and perspective, and I was thrilled to see other people willing to explore and form their own. This is something I would encourage everyone to do, and to do it from a point of discovering their own authentic self.

I thought about the lady who had made the video stating her opinion, and the oppressive culture she had described in Iran; it made me think of the stories I had been reading recently about Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy and Hilter’s Germany. It also made me ponder on worthy causes on the Earth today.

This also led me to reflect on the things we are all drawn to, or rebel against. While no one said life was meant to be fair, it seems to me the desire for freedom to make our own personal choices, and equal opportunities to pursue what is important to us, is universal. The thing I keep coming back to time and again is the sovereignty of our being.

I thought about my own part in all of this and realised I still have biases. For example, when I hear Trump described as an egotistical, chauvinistic buffoon, I admit there is some resonance. The same could be said of many political leaders, or the systems I have come to distrust, or even the many people in my life whose opinions and actions have created a sense of dissonance.

It’s not that I feel wrong in having a bias; it’s more that it seems foolish to disregard something or someone entirely because of it. It seems more sensible to look for commonalities that exist, since nothing and no one is actually separate from who I am; it is all just showing me aspects of myself.

I am no expert on the Middle East, so it was easier in many ways to be open to a fresh perspective. However, other topics that are closer to my heart - like parenting, education or healthcare for example –undoubtedly prove more contentious. It was a good reminder for me to remain open, knowing that my own opinions constantly evolve and shift.

I know why I’m generally closed on topics close to my heart. As a child (like most people brought up by even the most well meaning parents) my opinions were undoubtedly shaped and influenced by those around me. Space, time and deliberate inquiry have brought me to an understanding of my authentic self and the many ways my view of the world differs to those opinions.

I’ve gone through the years of trying to persuade others to the views I have formed, and came to the realization – as I said earlier – that everyone has their own truth and some are more open than others to exploring alternative views.

It’s a hot button, I think, for many of us whose early experiences quashed our inner views; it certainly made me less movable and more determined to retain my own. Yet it is a big world out there that can accommodate all the collective individual perspectives, it already does.

The question is what you or I want that collective, prevailing global culture, to look like? Should it remain as one which is intolerant and scared of differences, or do I start to take responsibility for the collective by taking responsibility for re-parenting myself?

As I said in We Can Live in Harmony  “in the world today you can see whatever you want to see; from what would appear to be the prevalent, more insular and selfish behaviours of many – which I like to think of as a crazy death dance of a desperate egoic state that knows its number’s up – to the more conscious behaviours of those who are aware of their connectedness to everything.”

Harmony out there begins with inner harmony in here, and the only person who can create that for me, is me. Each time I see a disharmony, I look within to see where that is reflected within me, and seek to learn from its lesson.

There is no need to feel powerless in the face of the state of the world today, there is much to be done from right where each of us stand, in our own shoes. We can end the cycles of feuds and wars when we each take responsibility for our own inner harmony; this will reflect out into the world in a way not before seen in our history.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy How Can I Create a Better World?, Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary), Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, and Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

This is a question I ask myself often, especially since drawing the conclusion that we each have our own unique answers within. Yet there seem some glaringly obvious areas in which we humans appear to have been conditioned by governments and unwitting families to the detriment of our own personal power and, therefore, universal abundance and harmony.

This point in history is still marked by a lot of fear, hate and judgment. When I left the UK fourteen years ago I was starting to see and hear a rise in racist and nationalist sentiment, then I saw a post from someone in the UK last week who’d taken multiple photos of an area on the same day that has sadly been tagged in such a way that tells me those feelings are very much alive.

I will confess I haven’t taken a huge interest in Trump’s time in power, given that I watch very little media, but I can tell from the things many others have quoted or said in passing that there does not appear to be a lot of evolved thought or action talking place.

I recently heard someone say “Hate and judgment turn human beings into idiots, but they never seem able to learn that and behave differently.” I couldn’t agree more, along with pride, greed and jealousy.

As I say in Evolve Our World:

“This is now a world where mostly everything is at our fingertips. In theory it's a world where connection, transparency and finding your passion should be easier than it has ever been. Yet in a collective we seem to act on autopilot for much of the time we are together, with old cultures, hierarchies, organisational constructs and societal systems still in play.

I advocate for people following their passion and I advocate for more evolved and enlightened businesses, governments, education, health care; all the traditional constructs in our society that shape who we become. I'm a proponent of self leadership and transparent communication.” 

But how I advocate, that’s the real conundrum for me. At first, when I began to discover just how conditioned we are, I was furious. I read and listened to a lot of alternative media and research on many of today’s constructs and drew my own conclusions, and still do; it drives me insane when I come across people who have vociferous opinions based on nothing but popular media or their parents’ opinion alone.

I have also come to recognise that the key to evolving our world is through a large enough collective of each of us questioning who we really are from the inside out and evolving ourselves first. I have written nearly three hundred articles and it is for good reason most of them are categorised under Personal Power, because that is where my real learning has been.

I was heavily criticised, controlled and judged as a youngster, there has been and still is a lot of anger and defence in me, something I’m always working on. I work so hard on it because I really want others to become aware of their true potential and the alternative ways of living that would naturally arise if more people had the wherewithal, courage and determination to step into their authentic selves.

I know if I am being angry and defensive all that is happening is a drawing of battle lines on both sides. Instead I have to learn a new way. A story I was reading recently about the civil rights movement points to this. One of the main characters is a black man who looked white men in the eye rather than averting his gaze as was customary. When asked about this he said:

“I look him straight in the eye, not to intimidate, but to say I believe you are a good man and I’m a good man too, we should respect each other. I believe each white man I encounter goes away thinking a little differently about coloured men because of the way I act. Mama says you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

Time and again I resonate with stories that demonstrate this old adage well. And I also understand the truth of another well known proverb “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”.  As Teal Swan says “showing someone their resistance is a greater gift than persuasion.”

If I were teaching someone else I’d say “don’t expect to get this down pat the first time you are at a family gathering (or even the second, third or one hundredth) and Uncle Bob starts spouting off his usual racist remarks again; or your mother looks at you in horror because you’ve decided not to vaccinate your children or everyone rolls their eyes and gets frustrated because you’ve adopted a vegan diet.”

You can be sure I don’t cut myself the same slack and beat myself up for getting defensive when I feel my parenting or life choices are being attacked. However, I do obviously recognise on some level that this is a process. Vinegar doesn’t turn into honey – ever. I have to evaporate the vinegar and go collect the pollen (to create the honey) one flower at a time.

As I quoted in an earlier article, all honourable causes eventually succeed even if at first they fail. This applies as much to my desire to show people their own resistance and paint inspiring visions of alternative paths, as it does to the evolutionary causes I support.

So how can I create a better world?

• Recognise and heal my own hurts and create new, more authentic, ways to live my life that are unique to me.
• Learn and practice (in less triggering situations) how to ask questions of others in order to reveal their resistance to something; and – most importantly – always remaining open to the idea that I could be wrong.
• The (not) small matter of learning how to paint inspiring visions, which is an entire mindset shift from defence.

All of this takes its own time, and requires patience, but I will get there. I have to because, as another character in the civil rights story said, “People are depending on us. If we give up now, the world my child will inherit will be no better and no fairer than this one.”

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary), Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, and Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master, or some of my favourite subjects for change Evolving Education, What Is the Deal with Conspiracies? and Wake Up to the Truth About Healthcare and Healing. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I was reading a novel last week by Belinda Alexandra, about the Spanish Revolution, and there were some words in there that really spoke to me:

“No one life is wasted. No matter the sacrifices, no matter the appearance of defeat, it will add to the progress of the human race. In all of history there is one thing that repeats itself again and again: all honourable causes eventually succeed even if at first they fail.

Out of darkness and suffering can come hope, joy and progress. The spirits of good people, even if they die in defeat, return through future generations to continue moving the human race forwards to higher and better things.”

In a world where I often feel like I’m talking a different language to those around me, these words gave me both hope and perspective. Thankfully I’m not suffering the dire circumstances of the people of that era, but I often feel isolated in my thoughts, feelings and ideas none the less.

There was another line in there that also spoke to me:

“Self righteousness is the greatest squanderer of time… time that you will never get back.”

These words reminded me of the futility of resting my gaze too long on what is and resenting, fighting or otherwise resisting it. Instead it is more fruitful to allow my gaze to open to alternate future possibilities and weave those into existence.

I experience deep pain and sadness when those around me can’t see the ordinary every day things that keep our true selves from fulfilling our potential. More frustrating is that so many either don’t see it or prefer to remain silent.

​This is because I am here on a mission, I feel the sovereignty of our being is the most important issue on this planet right now; I make no apology for saying this time and time again – in as many ways as I can express it.

Having kids of school age, I am constantly confronted by example after example of Western education and health systems’ dire need to evolve. But that doesn’t come close to the underlying and drastic need to change the fact that it’s big money - and not what is best overall for our people and planet (and all life that exists on it) - that drives our culture and choices today.

​Then there is the pain of watching people I know and love choosing suffering in ignorance of their real potential. I am surrounded by many who are completely identified with how they think and feel, playing out patterns that emanate from their childhood without any conscious observation of the lack of connection to a more authentic part of themselves and everything around them.

I have one editor who likes me to write only about my personal vantage point, using I/me, but we is my personal experience; I’m intrinsically connected to the whole, which is why the first person grammatically is I and we. Your pain is my pain.

Yet I know my perspective is mine alone, I understand this, it is the lens through which I experience the world. I also know my lens is most oftentimes obscured by my own early experiences in life. So I live in a committed routine of becoming aware of those and seeking to create a new, more authentic experience.

People who are educated in becoming consciously aware of their thoughts, feelings and actions, and the cause and effect between those things, will – I believe – make honourable choices about how to treat others; including our living, breathing planet and all of the life it contains.

However, I am aware that by pointing to the everyday things that are not in alignment with that, and complaining about them is only a starting point. It doesn’t create change, and may not even incite the need for it in others. How can I feel heard or respected when many around me don’t even hear or respect their own authentic selves?

The only way I know to reach that authentic part of each being is through inspiration, not exasperation. Therefore dwelling on whether I feel heard, respected, lonely or in pain is not in the least bit helpful.

Like the words that were scattered through the novel I read, or sometimes it’s just something I hear in a movie, or from the lips of someone in passing, I feel the universe is conspiring to light my fire. It lights my fire by helping me to see possibilities.

That too is my mission, to see the possibilities and to express those. I get glimpses of this, but each time I resist what is in front of me in self righteous indignation, the future alternative possibilities slip further from reach.

This is the process I am in right now, it is a quieter time of emptying out, letting go the impulses to act and react in defence, to allow the greater field of possibilities to come into view.

So if at times you do not feel heard or respected, perhaps it will help to think of Belinda Alexandra’s words “all honourable causes eventually succeed even if at first they fail”. The drum beat will become louder as more and more of us join in conscious awareness of the new world we came here to live in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Evolve Our World. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

One of the things I found myself contemplating this week was the question “what are you most embarrassed about/ashamed of in your life?” I started to recall a night almost thirty years ago, when a younger, heartbroken me cried uncontrollably in front of my ex’s mates after we had all been out for the evening.

One of his friends said something like “It’s not the end of the world Shona” and I reacted by wailing a distraught response along the lines of “You have no idea what it feels like to have your heart broken!” I was completely mortified by my lack of emotional control in that situation.

There are probably things that are much more embarrassing I could dredge up from my past which – on the face of it – would rate more highly on the scale of shame than this, but I was deeply wounded by that break up, and exposing just how wounded was something I always regretted from the moment it left my lips. It left me feeling vulnerable and weak.

I think it’s also true that many people are uncomfortable witnessing a display of raw emotion like that. I was listening to a rare disclosure from Tami Simon (Founder and CEO of Sounds True) about her personal life. Tami admitted that she finds it extremely difficult to deal with her partner when she expresses her emotions; she wants to jump in and fix things as quickly as possible to get away from the intense, uncomfortable feelings.

In Psychology Today Leon Seltzer says “There are many reasons that we may endeavour to hide or disguise the emotional pain that comes in the wake of negative beliefs about ourselves, evoked by a particular person or situation. But what they have in common is that they are all fear based.”

On the journey to uncover my authentic self these last few years, I’ve discovered that tuning into my emotions is important – critical even - for these reasons:

1. They tend to be reliable indicators of my wellbeing and can lead to sickness, injury and harm if I don’t pay attention; if I do, they can lead me to my best life
2. Healthy relationships of any kind come from expressing my authentic feelings in a healthy way
3. Most of my negative beliefs about myself stem from my pretty normal childhood, raised by well meaning parents

Knowing this, when I was contemplating this moment of shame I had experienced after that break up way back when, I wondered when it was that I had first learned expressing my true feelings was not a safe thing to do.

I decided to go back in time meditatively to see what I could uncover, and sooth the memory by bringing in my more aware adult perspective (which tends to then take the sting out of any subsequent related memories).

After immersing myself for a while in the memories and feelings of that horrible night, I then asked when the first time I’d experienced those feelings was. This wasn’t a process of trying to go back through my memories, it’s more about looking into my mind’s eye as if it’s a video screen that is about to reveal to me something that my memories can’t consciously access.

What I saw and felt took me back to a time in my first year of life when I had contracted bronchial pneumonia. Here are some of the metaphysical meanings attached to that: stirred up emotions, wanting to get rid of the thought that you are not in charge, you want to cut contact with those irritating you but you dare not branch out on your own, and, feeling suffocated by a situation.

I can well imagine that, as a helpless young baby I may have indeed felt this way. Being a parent myself, I am also acutely aware how hard it is to know the right things to do for our children, especially in the face of contradicting advice from family, friends and healthcare workers.

One of the things I remember when my own kids were born was the vehemence with which the healthcare system promoted both natural birthing and breastfeeding, and methods such as attachment parenting. This would have been in stark contrast to the healthcare system into which I was born almost four decades earlier, which advocated pretty much the opposite.

I started off in a cot in my parents’ room, only to move into my own room after a few nights since my snuffling noises kept interrupting their sleep. I was breastfed initially but soon moved onto bottle feeding. Healthcare nurses of the time were obsessed about the volumes being drunk, with advice to keep feeding despite baby’s rejection and spilling (a pretty way of saying the milk comes back up from your stomach and out of your mouth). It is no wonder I was such a huge baby.

When I used to cry, I remember my mum telling me that she often used to switch on the vacuum when she had exhausted all the obvious avenues to soothe (Too cold/warm? Needing a diaper change? Needing a sleep? Needing burped? Teething? etc). She said the vacuum seemed to “do the trick”, no doubt I was terrified knowing what I know now about the effects of noises like that on burgeoning auditory systems.

When my own babies would cry and I could find no reason, I’d assume - after reading Aware Baby by Aletha Solter - they just needed to unload some emotions. A bit like Tami Simon’s reaction to her partner’s distress, I noticed most people around me were uncomfortable with my baby crying, even in her mum’s arms in her own home; everyone was always trying to fix this rather than seeing it as a natural way for the baby to de-stress.

What I sensed more in my meditative state than anything was how I used sleep as an escape mechanism. If I just shut my eyes and fell asleep I could forget the turmoil of this new world. Of course, looking back on it all through my adult eyes, I can see we were all just trying to do our best. At the same time, I can see how easy it was for me to pick up the belief that it was better to keep any emotional distress to myself.

Understanding how these ideas have come about is helpful, just as it is to acknowledge that all emotions are valid; we feel what we feel whether we understand why or not.

Tami Simon’s disclosure about her discomfort around intense emotions’ was while interviewing Dr Christian Conte, who is an expert in meeting people where they are, even when someone is in a state of intense emotional distress. In the podcast, Dr Conte talks about how to make yourself a safe space to receive another person, the keys to deep listening and how the primary purpose of validation is connection.

Dr Conte is clearly well practiced in dealing with people when they are highly emotional and has much to teach. This seems to me the real key – practice. Becoming comfortable with my own emotions, being vulnerable and becoming a safe space for other, these are all things that require practice.
In my former years in the corporate world I learned a lot about communications through leadership training and experience. All of that, though, was from a perspective of being wrapped up in layers of beliefs that truly did not originate from my authentic self, they originated from my upbringing in keeping me safe.

Since then, having discovered a lot more about my true feelings, and coming to a clear understanding that there is no right and wrong, only what is right or wrong for any given person in any given moment, I know that this is a better perspective from which to learn.

I completely agree with Dr Conte when he says “one of the biggest obstacles to meeting someone in emotional distress is thinking they shouldn’t be feeling whatever it is they are feeling”. He calls this living in a cartoon world, a world we make up from the beliefs and expectations we have about how we think people should or shouldn’t feel.

He says that once we stop trying to mold people to fit our cartoon world, we can enter the real world and meet people where they actually are (not where we think they should be). I think this is a great place to start with ourselves.

Accepting myself for the way I acted that night, seen in the light of compassion for the baby whose tears were drowned out by a vacuum cleaner, is a step in the right direction. Rather than going over and over that night, or other interactions with my kids (or others) that I think should have gone differently – especially if I’ve gotten emotional – it’s better to talk in retrospect about what was happening for me rather than not discuss it at all.

When I talk about emotions I’m also aware that words like blame, entitlement and deserve are ones to watch for. Caroline Myss says “if you could extricate those three words from your head you would have no idea how much better you would feel.”

Everything I feel is about me and my journey; my growth towards authenticity and service from that standpoint. Blaming others or feeling that I am entitled to or deserve something other than which I’m getting will only hold me back from that growth.

In time, and with practice and focus, talking about my emotions in real time will get easier and easier. I have already experienced a huge shift over the last few years in terms of what is happening on the inside. With a regular meditation practice, I’ve become more of an observer of these moments instead of being completely identified with them.

I do believe that expressing my true feelings in any situation is a great indicator of where I’ve gotten to in the journey for authenticity, especially when I’m not blaming anyone (myself included) or feeling entitled. And those situations where I’m avoiding that have great depths for me to plunge into and examine and learn more about who I am.

It’s not about just about what I express, but the way in which I express it; I’m driven to master the art of authentic, compassionate communication.

Imagine a world where each of us was aware enough of our own psyche to more objectively examine and understand what was triggering us, and be comfortable in expressing our true feelings without blame or shame? This, I believe, would be a more harmonious world in which we could work together to create a better future; now that is a world I’d like to live in.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Get out of Your Head and into Your Heart, Change Unhealthy Reactions, Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear, Your Childhood Is Not Your Fault but It Will Be Your Limitation …Until You Take Responsibility to Heal. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

Being passive is often regarded as weak in our society. I remember teachers barking phrases like “have some gumption”, “think for yourself” or “have some backbone” to various students, which is ironic given the modus operandi of most school systems is for students to do as they are told. Most systems and authorities tend not to like being challenged, yet we respect those that do.

Early in my high school years I recall listening to a talk by someone differentiating between being passive, assertive and aggressive, and being assertive was the obvious choice of the three. I see the benefit of assertively walking down the street, keeping my head up, shoulders back, hips square and looking people directly in the eye (with a good natured smile and nod of acknowledgement).

It conveys “I have my wits about me”. And when I have my wits about me, it means I’m calm and alert; it’s the ability to think quickly, especially in times of stress. Yet, interestingly, while I grew up being someone who proved good in a crisis, I suffered from chronic anxiety the rest of the time.

Like most people, I grew up with an abundance of mixed messages, but the predominant beat of the drum was to submit. Psychology tells us that when faced with something we don’t like, it’s perceived as a threat and thus we flee, fight, freeze or fold.

In the face of being told no: “no you do not know what is good for you”, “no the way you are feeling is not acceptable/ridiculous/unwarranted”, “no you cannot express yourself that way” and so on, I – like most young children – had  harsh choices to make to survive in the family home and community.

I think I fragmented, freezing the soul-led part of me, and moved forward with a persona that was the most acceptable compromise in my world.  Much of the time I strove for perfection in order to avoid criticism or conflict, and became highly anxious in doing so.

At home I wasn’t given criticism in a constructive way, so I am relearning how to hear it as a grown woman without becoming so defensive. That said, I was far from being a quiet mouse as a child, there were many times I just couldn’t suppress that undeniably big warm heart beating in the somewhat frozen soul-led part of me.

When I felt the heart of my soul beat, I acted in response. I found the best way to get what I wanted and needed was to present a rational argument, fighting against whatever decision had been dished out. When that didn’t work, I was like a dog with a bone until I had worn out my oppressor.

In a highly controlled and disciplined environment, being passive was not useful.

Being ready to fight for myself and being persistent paid off. It paid off in the years of growing up, and it has paid off as a grown up in making the decision to find a way back to that authentic part of me. But there came a point that it no longer served me. The authentic part of me does not know how to fight, and does not want to fight, it simply wants to stand in its truth and shine.

Becoming a parent has just amplified everything that was going on inside me. When I find myself chuntering or yelling the same criticisms I heard, I cringe and I stop. That old part of me has so many years of momentum, but it’s slowly slowing down in the light of awareness and active healing; I know one day it will become so still and quiet I’ll hardly hear it at all.

The word passive has popped out at me a number of times lately. When I was asked to repeat an affirmation “you are confident, grounded, passive and comfortable”, I just couldn’t connect with passive; it did not feel affirmative.

Yet, a few days later, when I heard Matt Khan say “Passivity is how we evolve in the journey from the small I am to the big I AM. When we all evolve, we will break down the systems of society” I was in complete agreement.

When I put it in the context of living a more soul-led life, passivity really takes on new meaning. After years of setting goals and fighting for my place in the world, it takes practice to make a shift to a place of surrender and allowing. And it’s not about surrendering to the whims and desires of the world around me; it’s about allowing the world within me to see the light of day.

​Passivity is not about suppressing things that trigger me, it’s about observing what is triggering me and what it is trying to teach me. It’s about acting on inspiration from within, rather than feeling the need to take action because of a voice in my head that is fearful and deems me a failure otherwise.

​It’s about dismantling the defensive armour, the ideas and beliefs I thought were mine, to rediscover that who I am is far more connected to everything and everyone than I could ever have anticipated in my learned state. Passivity is about allowing who I truly am at my core shine out into the world.

Being passive in this sense is honestly powerful and liberating. It’s a relief to ditch the effort involved in presenting a front to the world, and all that senseless worrying about what people might think of me. To become more passive and stand in my truth in all my relationships, and in all situations, has become my goal in life.

​What about you?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Whose Energy Is This Anyway? Stop Taking on Board How Others Are Feeling and Do You Need to Cherish Yourself? To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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I was putting my youngest child to bed this week and she asked me with sincerity whether aliens were real. Her dad had been watching a 2017 documentary called Unacknowledged, an exposé on the veil of secrecy surrounding UFO’s and, although she hadn’t seen it, the thought of meeting an alien scared her.

This gave me pause for thought. From my perspective, as I look out into the night sky and see the thousands of stars that represent the millions I know are out there, it just seems logical to me to conclude that there is likely intelligent life on other planets.

It would also seem logical to me that these life forms are likely more evolved than ours if they have managed to traverse to our time and space, and most likely peaceful. I could write a whole article on how I’ve arrived at those conclusions, but the point is that you should come to your own.

I’ve listened and read enough on the subject (and related subjects that involve lots of scare mongering) to have thought the issue through for myself and arrive at thoughts that resonate for me.

What was of more concern to me was that my little one has obviously been suffused with this fear at such a young age. I’d say it’s mainly through watching children’s TV shows that depict the power struggles between various goodies and baddies, often portrayed as differing species.

That she wouldn’t welcome the chance to meet and converse with another intelligent species kind of caught me off guard. But it was also a stark reminder of the messages that get played through mainstream media if you are submersed in it.

When a friend recommended watching Unacknowledged, I commented that the biggest conspiracy is the creation of the idea that believing in conspiracies is a pathological condition. I remember being convinced myself as a teenager and young adult that anything that smelled remotely of a conspiracy was unworthy of my time and attention in case it made me look less credible or intelligent.

However in the years since, as I have withdrawn my attention from mainstream media and began to dive deeper on many different topics that interest me, there came a point when I realised what had been hiding in plain sight all along.

There is a saying that Truman used many years ago to describe the unscrupulous tactics of his opponents “if you can’t convince them, confuse them.”  The moment I heard it, it resonated it deeply.

The tools used are wide and varied, but they run off of and perpetuate one thing – fear.

I have read and watched the (often successful) attempts at debunking, discrediting and ridiculing well respected academics and scientists who get too close to the truth and can’t be bought off in many fields.

Inventions that would allow giant leaps in technology and resolve our environmental impacts are purportedly not ever allowed to see the light of day at the Patent Office because of the detrimental impact it would have to the economic dynamics where much is in the hands of the few, who want to keep it there.

High ranking politicians and leaders are potentially puppets and pawns at best, often kept in the dark.

It is conceivable that mainstream media is infiltrated and corrupted at the highest levels to ensure that confusion and fear reign among the masses on many profitable topics. And with as much valid information on the internet as there is contrived, people generally are maintained in a state of confusion, tending to believe what credible sources tell them.

Credible being defined as media sources and professions we have been brought up to trust through the debunking and ridiculing of others that may have valid viewpoints and skills to offer.

It is my belief that there are many good leaders, politicians, academics, scientists and journalists out there, but I have no doubt that for most of my life what I’ve been fed through mainstream media, education and culture is utter garbage.

Put another way, it is pure spin that is designed to keep me feeling small, scared and enslaved to the economic machine that feeds a small group of greedy people who think power is amassed by taking it from others.

This is the stuff of science fiction, or so I would have been led to believe, which is why there are more programs and movies that are designed to perpetuate the confusion and fear than there are those which open our minds and hearts to other possibilities.

What if most things ridiculed have some basis in truth? What if we already have the technology to solve world hunger, poverty and environmental impacts? What if we have the technology to deliver free energy at our fingertips? What if it’s being suppressed so that the rich are getting richer and – they think – more powerful?

What if your body has the power to heal itself? What if pharmaceuticals and conventional medicine are making us sicker? This is a topic particularly close to my heart and one I’ll be diving into in more detail in a 3-part series in the next few months.

What if you already have the whole of human knowledge contained within you at birth? As my eldest daughter says, it makes no sense to her she has to be rote taught number and letter systems, when humans have been calculating and communicating for a long time and she has the power to do and fathom everything else for herself when exposed to the right conditions.

This tussle to control others had been going for millennia among humans, played out for a long time through churches, but in our most recent period of history is far more heavily influenced by big money players.

My lesson in all of this is that there is only one credible source, and it lies within. I can observe, I can listen, I can be curious and investigate. I can be sure that anything portrayed as fearful requires a much closer look. But through all of it, it’s my inner guidance that reveals what I believe as my truth.

When I watch something like Unacknowledged, which I felt was well laid out and presented, it reminds me of all the garbage that gets fed to unsuspecting humans. I get a familiar feeling inside, like a tight band around my gut, and it reminds me of feelings I’ve had like that in the past. There have been many times in my life when I’ve felt I’m supposed to look intelligent and agree yet knowing something was amiss.

But decide for yourself, wherever you land on these issues will be your truth and your truth will either keep you chained up in fear, or it will set you free.

Some of those talking in Unacknowledged conclude this dynamic will require a revolution. But I believe pushing against something we don’t want gives it more power, I say instead Be an Evolutionary (Rather Than a Revolutionary).

Learn to read your inner signs, trust your natural (not learned) instincts, and learn to think things through for yourself. What have you bought into that might not be as it seems? Once you can tap into your own power of discernment, no one else can impose their power upon you, because you will know the only true power lies within.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul and Base Your Actions on Love Not Fear. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

Over the last few weeks I’ve been contending with facial neuralgia. Often described as one of the most painful human conditions, I can attest that it is up there on the scale with childbirth and kidney stones, as it comes in waves of debilitating and excruciating pain.

This is the story of how it led me to an inner truth I’d not seen clearly at all until now: that I was still seeking respect for my decisions from other people.

So, starting with the pain, once I was confident my life wasn’t in any immediate danger, I moved pretty quickly into detective mode on what was causing it. Physically it seems likely it’s caused by a post virus that got activated when my immune system was low, a bit like shingles without the rash.

I’m skipping past a whole bunch of stuff here about the process of healing and healthcare that I will dive into in some later blogs, for now I’ll just share what was relevant to this particular nougat of authenticity revealing itself.

Whenever something physical arises I know it’s my inner being communicating that it’s been trying to get my attention and I’ve missed all the clues, so I was interested in what was going on beneath the surface.

My chiropractor said the feeling of being stuck is often associated with a post-virus. I also had a good look through my go-to books on what the body is telling me when illness arises and pinned this down to the emotion of anger.

No surprises there you might think, since it’s an area that I’ve been feeling called to look at lately (you may have read Let Anger Be Your Teacher While Learning to Become Its Master). That is what surprised me though; I’d done a lot of work on it and thought I’d released anything stuck.

My body, obviously fed up with me having missed subtle and not so subtle communication, was being quite painful in its insistence. So off I went to the local pool to contemplate just what I might be feeling stuck on. As I was swimming up and down the thing that kept coming back to mind was how stuck I was on the issue of the lack of respect I feel from my kids’ school.

Having switched tack on my communications with the school earlier in the year, there was this old thought pattern (sitting like a devil on my shoulder) just relishing the possibility of being able to unleash itself in an intelligently worded tirade. Yet I knew that doesn’t work for me, but without having expressed my anger to the people at the school who had so offended me, I was at a loss about what to do.

I feel such gratitude to have some good and insightful friends and a safe place to throw all this stuff in the arena to tussle with it. A lot of conversation flowed, but here are the pieces that hit the nail on the head, as we flushed it out:

Friend: “Do not waste your grace and self respect on opening your wounds to people who are unsafe to open them up to. The school clearly doesn’t care, so don’t ask them to give something they never will. Dare I ask, in ten words or less, what is the hot button here with the school?”

Me: “It's about honoring our innate intelligence”

Friend: “I feel for you, I see the stickiness and the loop. I also see that it’s so strong that it can’t just be about the school, this has to be something more that is here to propel you into a higher perspective. It’s literally playing small on purpose so you don’t have to face something much bigger..?

It’s at this point a whole history of writing long, articulate letters to those who have offended my innate intelligence flashed before my eyes. In fact, earlier this week I came across the very first of those, a letter I wrote over twenty five years ago to a doctor. The story of how it came about can be paraphrased simply as a response to being passed around multiple practitioners, given repeated unsatisfactory diagnoses and a series of unhelpful treatments, along with a huge dose of condescension.

My friend said “While I totally get where you were coming from, I’m really interested that you felt so under attack by the world (or a psychiatrist) at such a young age, that you felt the need to pen a 5-page letter to correct his incorrect assumptions. That’s pretty intense and a lot of active indignation.”

Then the grand slam of observations “Is this about self validation, internal acceptance and a deep knowing of your worth and value, without seeking approval from anyone or anywhere else?”

At that point a light went on, something I heard often when growing up “for someone so intelligent, I’m amazed at how much rubbish you believe.” Bingo!

I’d hear this and associate it with a lack of respect, and I’d work harder to connect the conventional wisdom into how I’d arrived at my decision.

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge, whereas innate intelligence is, by definition, inborn. Aside of the obvious intellect that is at play in every aspect of the natural world, I’ve always felt that I did not arrive here like an empty vessel waiting to be filled up; nor did you.

Right from the first moments, babies show both an inherent awareness and an ability to apply and acquire knowledge. Yet the world into which I grew commonly considered that I had nothing of value to offer unless I got it from a conventionally recognized expert or had become one myself.

In short, I knew my own mind, I did and do know what is best for me (as I believe we all do), and balked every time I heard “Shona knows best” delivered in sarcastic tones and with rolling eyes.

As an adult this has led to a world of frustration and a pattern of writing long, intelligently worded letters or emails in defence of something or other – usually the right to have my own opinion about my own life.

Most aspects of our society – the health, education, finance and legal systems and professions - have rattled my chain at one time or another. It may just be the very reason I have gone wide and deep in my learning, in order to defend my own decisions. I now recognise that my knowledge and my ability to articulate it can be quite intimidating to people, especially when directed at them as a personal complaint.

Rather than intending to intimidate, really I’ve just been seeking validation and respect for the choices I’ve made. Yet none of that will happen unless it happens within me first. Certainly, with every letter, every line of every email I’ve constructed, it’s brought me back to knowing what I already knew, I do know what is best for me.

You may not be surprised to know that this revelation has brought about a relief of the painful symptoms on many levels. And I continue to be fascinated be just how much of who I am and what drives my everyday actions and outcomes is so often unseen and misunderstood, yet standing in plain sight.

So what is standing in your plain sight just waiting for you to notice it? Learn to value your unique traits and insights and know that you did not come to help this world stagnate and crumble, you came to evolve.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Build a Healthy Self Concept. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.
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In Abby Wombach’s Wolfpack she talks about her memory of a new coach getting out a guitar and singing Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a Changin’ at their first meeting. The players thought this was weird at first, then uncomfortable, then finally they felt moved. The new coach didn’t want them to just win games, she wanted them to win beautifully, to move people. Rather than just saying the words, she expressed this through her actions.

This prompted me to listen to Bob Dylan, it’s been a while since I have heard The Times They Are a Changin’ which then led to me listening to many other of those old folk rock songs of the era that ushered in a period of radical social change.

As I thought about some of those revolutionaries, I realised that I feel more called be an evolutionary.
A revolutionary is someone who creates radical political or social change in a relatively short time, through a process of resistance to the status quo, and it creates a lot of unrest that often doesn’t end well for many. Whereas an evolutionary, I think, is someone who expresses the change they want to see through the way they are living their life, they more quietly stand in their own truth in the way Abby Wombach’s coach did.

It’s perhaps the story of the tortoise and the hare because being an evolutionary is likely to create a gradual change that takes place from within. Don’t get me wrong, I want change now, but the change I want to see needs focus, patience, resilience and love and that starts inside me. 

When I was born, only seven years after Bob Dylan’s song of social and political change, The New Seekers were at number one in the UK music charts with I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing. It was a time of hope and feels completely in tune with my own mission to be who I am and help others be who they are:

I’d like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land

While many things have changed tremendously in the last half century, I believe what hasn’t changed dramatically is the root of our discord. It’s my belief that the discord between humans comes from the discord within humans.

Let me share my reasoning. Right from the early months of our lives it seems that the vast majority of us are taught right and wrong, good and bad, by our family, community and society. This results in feelings of anxiety or shame about our own desires if they are not aligned with those to whom we have been born. In short, we become encultured into a world that tends not to allow us the freedom to be who we are.

And by the time we are independent enough to think these things through for ourselves, we are already so shrouded in others’ beliefs that most of us buy into that neural and emotional wiring (that took place within us in those early stages) as our guide to what is good and bad in life.

We think if we feel anxiety or shame we must be doing something wrong, yet in reality all we are experiencing is the anxiety or shame of not living up to our early caregivers’ beliefs and expectations of us, regardless of whether they are truly aligned with our own.

To sum up, we lose sight of who we are and what we truly feel about anything.

Christian Morgenstern said "Don't let the mouth say what the heart doesn't feel." I realised some years ago that I was no longer sure of who I was and what I actually felt. There was a dull pain that I felt in my own discord, a tugging, nagging, persistent pain. To speak my truth I knew I’d have to undertake a journey of discovery to figure out who I am.

Even though I’m now much clearer about who that authentic me is, I still feel that pain sometimes, a teacher returning to its student. It is like a hopelessness that descends every now and again, an amplification of all that discord that existed and those parts that still persist; I call this my black mood.

When this pain descends, I know it is waiting to be felt, to be acknowledged, to be experienced without being pushed away. I did spend many years pushing it away, pushing it down; being too busy to contemplate any of it. Then I became a parent.

What I deeply desired for my children is the freedom to be who they are. I failed in this spectacularly, and continue to at times, not for a lack of love for them but a lack of love for myself. It is not my intention, but there was a lack of knowing myself and being able to stand in my own truth. So what to do?

I took the journey to me. I got still, I listened to the thoughts and feelings within me and I keep listening, over and over. Through it come insights, clues to my true nature. I started to respond to things differently, more authentically, did I want to participate in this/that/the next thing?

​Slowly I became more aware of my truth, and that it is only my truth. I am realizing we each have our own truth; because we are each such a unique cocktail that what is right for one is not necessarily right for another. Slowly I am becoming a better parent, allowing my kids to be who they are and blossom in their truth.

So you see, allowed to be who we are, standing hand in hand with those across the world that – in our judgments of old we might have despised and hated – is not an overnight thing, it’s a journey that begins with the self. To figure out what stems from beliefs placed in our heads rather than felt in our hearts.

Because in our hearts we would know that the person who seems like a wimp is actually just strong in other ways that we can’t yet appreciate. We would know that the person who seems overbearing is actually just scared. We would know that the colour of a person’s skin, their socio economic status, their circumstances are not right or wrong, good or bad, they are just different experiences. We would hold their hand and see that hand as an extension of our own.

The communities, societies and structures would begin to honour and reflect the individual. This evolution starts with evolutionaries, like you and me, standing in our own truth and becoming who we truly are.

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Become You, What You Give Your Attention to Is Your Greatest Contribution and Stand in Your Own Truth. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

I can remember early on in my corporate career, amid a restructure that happened swiftly with a new guy suddenly at the helm one morning and several new faces around the Director’s table, I read a quote about speaking truth to power. I can’t remember the quote exactly, but it gave me courage to speak out in an attempt to influence the inevitable management restructure that was about to follow, and the allocation of resources.

In my corporate guise, I was a staunch advocate for the customers’ experience. However, generally speaking this was usually outweighed as a topic of discussion around the top table in favour of whatever the latest and greatest upgrades were in that company or organisation’s offer (with little regard to how it mapped to the overall customer journey and experience) and the vast and pervasive arena of financial tracking and cost cutting.

However, I felt compelled to speak my truth and quickly put together a paper for consideration; drawing the links between the service, the customer experience and the balance sheet, and carefully placed it on each director’s desk before anyone else arrived that next morning.

I’ll admit I was nervous. It felt like I was being naughty because I hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to do it, my boss wasn’t aware of it, though I did give him an apologetic smile and a heads’ up on his way through to his office where he found the same paper on his own desk.

The fact is, had I of sought permission, it’s highly likely it would have been denied since everyone was wary of the new head honcho and, even then, I knew the glaringly obvious fact that people don’t generally like to stick their neck out and speak their truth.

Given that the paper was bereft of any blame, it simply focused on the facts and objectives, there was no big backlash for or from my boss. There were some minor gains as a result. However, what I was naïve about at the time, was that I wasn’t speaking my truth to the real power. The new guy at the helm wasn’t really the head honcho, these guys were just players in the game, as vulnerable to losing their job as I was.

Yet here I found myself, many years later, no longer in a corporate structure and just as nervous about speaking my truth. Let me tell you about it and then I will share how life conspired to give me clarity and courage.

Over the last four years our family have started their journey through education. Entrusting our kids to anyone else is a big leap of faith as parents, the teacher-child relationship is among the most influential in our lives, and so we had chosen a system of education that we felt was closer to our own values than the default state system.

What I was completely unprepared for was the relentless ambush the parents and children face on their time and attention both within and beyond the curriculum, which is quite contrary to the founding pedagogy. While these are usually in support of activities and events that children enjoy, the harm comes from the fact that it is often requires time most parents these days do not have and most harmfully of all, it is all stemming from the school community, leaving little for anything outside of that.

Yet, in today’s world, where most of us are no longer living in the communities where we were born and raised, there is a bigger world outside school that we have to connect with and is healthy for us to do so. This is the world in which one’s family lives in other parts of the country or other parts of the world; and it’s important that there is freedom to connect with places, people, and other rich and rewarding activities and events that are not generated by the school community.

There is, of course, most significantly, the world within that we all need time to connect to. With so much of their time prescribed already within the school day, I feel children must be given time and space in which they can feel into themselves again, and to begin to become aware of who they are and what their true preferences are in life.

So with these gallant observations made, you may imagine some of the colourful conversations I have had with the school over these last years. I’ve often talked about my own anguish and self growth that has resulted through these articles, most usefully teaching me the value of saying yes to the things I can freely and joyfully, and no to anything else (making me a rather low contributor).

Then as I was watching the series finale of Grey’s Anatomy, I was struck by something the character Meredith Grey said “Let me clean up my own mess, stand in my own truth. What I did was wrong, but what I was trying to remedy was so much more wrong, and I stand by that”

It started me thinking about standing in one’s own truth. Unlike the character in Grey’s Anatomy I haven’t done anything wrong, yet I was feeling like I had. I was feeling like a victim and et, at the same time, I was feeling like the naughty kid again.

Yes, it is true that there was little – if anything – in the way of information about all the contribution and activity required that would have helped inform our decision before embarking on this educational journey. I have encouraged the school to look at this more, even created information documents for parents that I would have found useful, which were welcomed in words but not used in practice.

Having had a look at articles and forums across the globe where parents voice their insights, I believe this to be something of an inherent issue with this type of education rather than a localized one. It is also true that, for the moment, this is still the best schooling available for our kids within our locality. So, knowing I need to get in a better place on my feelings in this matter, I thought about what I can do positively rather than negatively.

​Rather serendipitously a podcast interviewing Fleet Maull popped up in my inbox. Fleet was talking about his book Radical Responsibility. While serving a 14-year prison sentence for drug trafficking in a maximum security facility, Fleet had come to understand there was no power in blame, and so had begun the process of self empowerment by asking “what can I do?”

It wasn’t hard to see the alignment, nor the theme of disempowerment to empowerment that I was attracting, I’m also reading Gregory David Roberts novel Shantaram at the moment. Roberts, like his lead character, is a former heroin addict and convicted bank robber who escaped from an Australian prison and found himself in India; in every way.

Both Fleet Maul and Gregory David Roberts’ circumstances were far more extreme and disempowering than my own, but it is often in these extremes answers can be found. Both men realised that that they could blame any number of factors for where they had ended up in life but, instead, both decided to get off the blame train and start to see their own part in what had happened and how they could more forwards more positively.

I was also listening to an interview with Mind Coach Vex King, who talked about his own process when he is triggered by something. Rather than respond from a point of anger, he instead focuses on his breathing and goes for a walk to lower his heart rate and distract himself out of the flight or fight response, allowing for more clarity in his thinking. It was also a good reminder that it is not helpful to vent as that further entrenches the victim thinking,

So with all of this in mind I decided it was time to speak my truth and to advocate to power. First I had to identify who that power is. The intended audience is the thought leaders and policy makers that globally shape that system of education today, but with the system having grown organically over decades and each school operating independently across the world, it took a while to assemble a reasonable list.

It also took me a while to devise a suitable advocacy piece with the main thrust being “less is more”.  I feel the saving grace of this system of education is that most state school systems in the Western world have not evolved either, so many parents are looking at alternatives. But I want them to be an alternative that lives up to the central theme, which is to enable students as fully as possible to choose and, in freedom, to realize their individual path through life as adults.

In short, in a world that desperately needs less vying for our attention, I want the schools to do less in order to be more in support of the awakening of human consciousness.

I was clear in my mind, with thanks to reminders from Fleet Maul and Gregory David Roberts, that appropriating blame is entirely unhelpful. I can see most people within the system are doing the best they can in oftentimes trying circumstances so, in order to evolve education, I had to step outside of that mentality.

A friend asked what I was expecting as a result. The answer that came to me was truly inspired by wisdom beyond that in my head. Am I expecting anyone – especially one vested in a particular system of education- to think "wow, we've been doing it wrong all this time!" ... no... but little drops do make an ocean, and it is on these seas we sail that slowly carve our landscapes.

So the real answer is I’m not expecting anything immediate, change out there is likely to be slow. My family will likely continue to experience the onslaught of requests for our attention, and I will continue to stand in my truth, making the best decisions I can in the moment in support of that.

But something else has changed immediately. I feel elated to have spoken my truth, free of the burden of blame on someone else. I no longer feel like a victim and I will do what I can each step of the way to honour that place within me that knows the most important thing I can all do is to stand in my own love and truth.

​As I believe German author and poet Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914) said Es gibt in Wahrheit kein letztes Verständnis ohne Liebe which, translated, means There is, in truth, no last understanding without love. When we step outside of the victim- perpetrator-rescuer scenario and stand instead in a place of self love and empowerment, then we are truly standing in our truth.

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Reclaim the Sovereignty of Your Soul. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.

I was sitting in a waiting room yesterday morning next to a baby girl who I’d guess to be around three months old. She was curious about the world from the security of her mum’s arms. Each time I looked around and smiled at her, she would take great delight in this and reward me with a beautiful smile right back.

​To get my attention, she would make an “ouh” sound with her mouth and I’d look around again and we would exchange smiles and she would get all giddy and cuddle into her mum’s shoulder. Then another middle aged man came into the waiting room and sat opposite, he too was soon engaged in this happy little game.

It’s a scene I am sure will be familiar to you, happy babies tend to have this kind of effect. At the same time I was aware of my own beautiful daughter sitting on the other side of me but, in that sharp contrast, I can see just how encumbered by life she has become in her short years.

She was anxiously awaiting her natural therapy appointment, which deals with ailments seen and unseen – physical and emotional. Although we had been there before, I could see she was worried there might be some judgment involved because she has a lot of big feelings to process at the moment and has already learned from the world about what is deemed good and bad behaviour. So she feels ashamed of her emotional outbursts and is understandably reluctant to talk about them.

In contrast, while babies may feel anxious when they are apart from their mum (or haven’t been fed, or have a wet nappy or desperately want to shut out stimulation so they can sleep) those feelings of judgment and shame are just not part of a new baby’s world.

But there comes a point, I think it happens not long after an infant becomes mobile, when society appears to expect a child to be trained. The prevalent form of training in our society is punishment and reward. Punishment may be in the form of something taken away (including the withdrawal of the parent’s positive attention) and in the form of something dished out (like a chore of some sort, a physical rebuke or a verbal attack).

As a parent I could always feel judging eyes upon me in scenarios just like that, in waiting rooms, where my then infant daughter would be climbing on things she ought not to, and exploring places she shouldn’t. The reason I could feel those judging eyes is because I too had been trained as a child, indoctrinated in the ways of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and I too had become a judge.

Based on all I have experienced, observed and read about, it seems to me that there are very few of us experience unconditional love for anything more than that first few months of our lives, if that. Yet I have arrived at the conclusion that in order to thrive in this world, feeling unconditional love is essential to our wellbeing and so we must learn to give that to ourselves.

The work of Lise Bourbeau, who compiled 20 years of research in the field of metaphysics and it’s physical manifestations in the body into her book Your Body is Telling You “Love Yourself”, repeats this advice over and over. Forgiving the origins of our shame that has no conscious memory attached to it even, and other emotions like fear, anger and insecurity that get triggered within us, are all easy to understand in the context of the waiting room example.

As some of you may know, I’ve also been fascinated with the work of Dr Gabor Maté lately. As a revered physician and author who has Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) himself, Dr Maté explores the myth of ADD as a genetically-based illness in his book Scattered Minds and demonstrates it is a reversible impairment and developmental delay.

Being a physician his book is full of academic references and dives into the world of neuroscience, epigenetics and psychology, but in the final sentence in his book he concludes “If we can actively love, there will be no attention deficit and no disorder”.

In fact, as I read his book, I could see that the very journey I’ve been on personally, the journey to authenticity, is a journey to love. Figuring out who we are beneath the layers and layers of beliefs that began to shroud us in those early years of our lives as we met those first expectations put upon us, is a journey that every single person on this planet would benefit from.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s a journey that each of us would not only benefit from, but that it would also benefit us hugely in terms of evolving our society and its archaic systems and it would lead to a healing of the planet itself.

As grandiose as that all sounds, I for one know this is not an easy journey.

When this beautiful child of mine was born, I was working in a corporate environment where I was experiencing a lot of resistance to the role I was put in. This was being played out predominantly by a colleague who kept trying to discredit and undermine my work. Much of my time there was overshadowed by this dynamic. I was constantly infuriated and distracted in trying to remain professional. 

You can imagine that as a mother with a young toddler and new baby, a household to run and senior work role to carry out, there was very little in my life that got positive attention never mind unconditional love, certainly not me.

It was the turning point, with two children physically acting out the meltdowns I was having inside, I felt no choice other than to turn towards myself. I knew I had no more to give unless I could figure out who I truly was underneath all the layers of expectations that had become mixed up in my psyche over my lifetime as beliefs.

As patient as I was with my children much of the time, there were inevitably moments that I erupted in sheer frustration. And, as beautiful as my children are, I was simply unable to give them the adoring and unadulterated attention they needed to build a healthy self concept.  

A few years on, with much of my journey recorded through these articles, I have found my way back to love and understand much more about my authentic self. There is still some work to do, I imagine that to be a lifetime, but I am at a stage now when I am able to be the parent that I feel my children deserve; one who is able to more consistently give them unconditional love.

There is little joy for me in knowing my children are able to honour others if they don’t know how to honour themselves. Here too, there is work to do in unraveling some of the inadvertent damage caused along the way. But here I am, able and thrilled to be able to turn more wholeheartedly to the task.

Earlier in life I thought unconditional love was something I would find in other people, but I can’t see something in others that I haven’t got in myself. That love had been obscured under layers and layers of expectations and beliefs, and I’ve now gone a good way towards seeing and feeling what lies beneath.

A tip I heard a long time ago is to ask “what would someone who loves themselves do right now?” when I am faced with options, expectations and demands; it has served me well. It firstly means seeing that I have choices and then it means responding to things in new – often uncomfortable – ways.

But as I have become more practiced at putting myself in the line of love, I feel more loving towards others and I’m able to help people in ways that work for both parties rather than only one. Rather than seeing myself as separate, I now see everything as separate expressions of the one. So if I take from one, I take from all, but if I give to one, I give to all.

Far from being selfless, loving ourselves unconditionally is a reclaiming of our authentic perspective. It is this perspective through which we can best serve ourselves and the world around us.

If you enjoyed this you might enjoy Do You Need to Cherish Yourself? Contact me with an outline of your circumstances or click here for further information if you would like a fresh perspective on a situation in your own life, I love to help. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog

“The choice point is to step back and swallow your anger while getting busy in the doing of proving your point to people who will inevitably only just smile and nod and have rolling eye sessions behind your back for as long as you continue to attempt to engage with them on a level they are utterly closed off to now and forever, amen.

Or…

Become aware that your inner guidance has stepped you up to the platform again because you are a vibrational match for something far far greater than what’s being sought within, which is permission and validation.

You are so much bigger than this.

If it’s not now, life will continue to put things like this in your path until the day comes where you have no other choice but to claim the space you take up in the world and let that be a problem for others if they so chose.

The higher path…

Your higher purpose is not, nor will it ever be, in alignment with what you are receiving at this moment.
Your higher purpose is a calling forward of your own sovereignty, your own truth, your own adult ability to make decisions that you trust. That’s your higher ground. Higher ground is never about not offending someone else.

How how how are you going to be in service to a new paradigm if you cannot even put your toe over the lines let alone challenge and erase them all together?

Too many lines in your sand.

Here is an opportunity, to stand in your space and claim your light, or allow others to reinforce that you aren’t ready for the reigns to your own life.....

In here, are the shining beacons of light that fill you with your truth. You mustn’t and simply cannot any longer continue to give your power away. In doing so, you will not attain the level of enlightenment you seek.

I encourage you to put your energy and attention to the you who will show up when the old paradigm shows up in attempt to clip those beautiful new wings of yours.

It’s not your fault that their own light isn’t a match for yours.

I wait and watch with all the love in my heart.”

Ever wish someone who cared enough to tell you this? While these were the words given to me by a dear friend, for which I’m deeply grateful, I am sharing them here with her permission because it’s time for us all to step up.

You know how I know?

You read this.

​With eternal thanks to Rachelle Mann of Echo Valley Retreats (Family Constellations and Trauma Therapy), the kind of friend I wish for everyone.
 
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