Do you have a lot of ideas of how the world could be a better place?
Do you often wish others would behave differently?
Do you find this is a recipe for woe and a foundation for chronic disappointment?
One way to stop doing this, without lowering your standards, is to simplify to amplify. A coach taught me this years ago. And now I’m finally embracing it at a deeper level.
My simplified message is this: We get to dwell in a playful heart.
From this place, it’s natural to
Cherish connection.
Cultivate gratitude.
Count blessings.
When we reside here, relationships flourish, heal, and resource us. They also uplift the environment. We get to remember that relationships are the playground of the heart or the battleground of the ego.
We get to tend to what matters most and weed out the things we don’t want to grow, turn them into compost, and cultivate whole-hearted living.
The heart is the home of heaven or hell here on earth. Joy or misery lands here. Peaceful expansion or painful contraction create our realities.
This past month has been an incredible opportunity for me to practice radical self-care even when I’m far from my paradise of Hawaii and the comfort of family and friends.
You see, there’s nothing quite like waiting for the last exhale of your mother.
Talk about anxiety-provoking. After bringing my mom home from the hospital with hospice care, there were times when I couldn’t sit still for more than 20 minutes.
I titrated my anxiety the best I could. I didn’t drink the bottles of wine. I didn’t binge on Netflix. I didn’t engage in the drama of old family stuff swirling around my ankles. Instead, I did laundry and ate a few bites of non-dairy ice cream and called it good. I honored my non-negotiable and took walks daily. And believe it or not, I slept. I wailed. I prayed. I created peace within my own tender heart as the only thing I felt I could do for my mom.
My point in sharing all this is that I didn’t abandon myself.
I trusted myself to take radically good care of myself while I waited for my mom to die. I leaned in to feel the feels and I backed off when it felt too much.
I cut myself some slack.
I released expectations.
I relinquished the idea that I would do it “right.”
This resulted in greater liberation.
When I taste liberation it’s often due to my daily commitment to trust myself to no longer abandon ANY aspect of myself. Including the anxiety. Including the grief.
And so my awareness of myself translates to greater curiosity of you: how is your heart? How are doing in this gig called life?
When have you abandoned aspects of your whole Self?
How do you get to show up to your life in a more generous and responsible manner?
Where can you be more free?
Where can you be more free?
Let’s connect and explore these questions, and more, in a few days.
(free) Distinctions of Extraordinary Living Masterclass Zoom Meeting
ZOOM INFORMATION
Time: Friday, November 19th, 2021
9 AM Hawaii/ 11 AM Seattle/ noon Denver/ 2 PM New York/ 8 PM Paris
My intentions are pure, or so I think. But you know what the road to hell is paved with, right?
We may have the best ideas and hold the right intentions, but what is the conduct? What are the results?
While the world judges us by our actions; we judge ourselves by our intentions.
For example, when I take an honest look at some past behaviors,
My intention wasn’t to make love to a married man, it was to feel pleasure and release. But my action? Sleeping with a married man.
My intention wasn’t to steal money from my job, it was to treat my friends to a good time at Disney and enjoy the expansive wave of generosity. But my action? Stealing from my employer.
My intention wasn’t to drive our family into bankruptcy, it was to expand my knowledge of myself and others. But my actions meant I continued to spend beyond my earnings, enrolling in more coaching and leadership programs and traveling from the middle of the Pacific Ocean weighted by major credit card balances.
It is important to note that I’ve made amends for my transgressions. And I’ve forgiven myself and refused to blame others. And I received support on this journey of transformation.
My intention is to be a good and trustworthy person, my mind craves peace, and my heart’s desire is to experience joy. Yet when actions don’t align with intentions, it is impossible to trust self or others.
There is no peace or joy when I put my head to the pillow full of guilt, regret, or shame.
Luckily, there is an alternative to this type of (self-generated) suffering.
The time is now to re-imagine our relationships with Self, Other, Spirit. Today, I act in greater alignment with my intentions. Yet I’m far from perfect. But here are 3 simple steps that help me immensely.
Pause.
Breathe.
Reset.
Pause. Breathe. Reset.
Pause and consider your intentions today.
Breathe sweetly and exhale completely.
Reset the story you tell yourself to align your actions and your intentions and live with greater integrity.
Let me know how this is for you and what support looks like.
<this post is a featured guest blog from my beloved friend, Deva, who is traveling from Georgia to Lebanon>
OPEN
Open. It’s a very physically descriptive word that has a whole lot of metaphysically descriptive meaning. The physicality of, say, a simple open door is what we’re greeted with on this plane. But when we dive deeper into all that open door can stand for and allow for, well, there’s an infinite realm of possibilities to explore.
SUMMARY
And I do want to elaborate on that open door in this moment. As human creatures we can more easily discuss things that are tethered to this tactile world. Openness as a state of being may be less relatable in moving through. Secondly, I want to discuss that door as our very own door, again, not to make it otherworldly and distant. It is our door right here in this moment. Thirdly, we can’t speak of closed doors without reflecting on states of distrust and when we speak of open doors we are also speaking into trust.
PART I
In first considering the open door in relation to ourselves, consider the world and the inflow of the world into our open door, into our lives. There is verdant growth and tragic wars and endless waves crashing, and these things carry on outside our doors, so to open our door can lead to welcomed beauty just as easily as it can to unwanted misery. Do we trust to open our door to all of this? Sometimes it’s not even about trust, the door just slams open and in comes a surprising windfall or an unwanted atrocity, or both packaged as one.
TRUST
How do we get to the place of trust where we’re ready to let the world in through our open door? Well, that’s enough for another essay. But, yes, trust in self, other and source, as dear Amy always says, is a great place to start.
As I write, I am in Lebanon and here, and all across the Arab-speaking world, you greet people coming into your home with ‘marhaban bikoum.’ ‘Marhaban’ is the ‘welcome’ part of the greeting and ‘bikoum’ is essentially ‘you’ in plural form. This plural you is used no matter whether you are welcoming one person or many.
When I first studied classical Arabic in Fez, Morocco, my teacher told us that the plural you is always used. This is because culturally they recognize that everyone on this planet is walking around with two angels. Your good graceful angel on one shoulder and your dark little sinning angel on the other shoulder. No matter which one happens to be speaking into the ear of your guest, you welcome ALL into your home. When you can say ‘marhaban bikoum’ to any guest, you’ve built the just right amount of trust and courage to go through your open door and out into the world.
But if the world is too much, stay a while longer inside. Be tender. Be patient. Brew or stew. Do what needs to be done or undone until the world is not enough. Then the hunger and confidence and trust are all overflowing to the point you’re ready to burst. Then go be out in the world.
INTERLUDE
I like how if you let your eyes go soft and blur across the word ‘OPENNESS’ it almost reads as ‘ONENESS.’
PART II
That’s the second part of what our open door allows for; it doesn’t just let the world in, it also releases us into the world. We can show ourselves – any version – and grow tall as the eucalyptus in the sunshine. Or slither under a dark casino table. Going out through that open door often requires a full belly, a loudly thumping heart and fists full of courage. But it can also be as simple as sleepwalking, youthfully tumbling out with your lover’s palm in yours. Or a daring leap over that threshold. You certainly don’t want to be dragged out that open door. It can happen but if we’re not ready, it’s too raw and intrusive. We’ll go right back in, likely slamming the door closed behind us until trust can grow back again, if ever.
PART III
As with all things, the open door offers us a metaphor. It is both two converging and two opposing forces we are constantly dancing with. You can choose to see all negativity with going out into the world, and also see all negativity with eternally staying inside your dear door. Every moment we find ourselves with one foot in or one foot out, and then pivoting endlessly. And, in the end, it’s likely that there’s door after door, after door, eternally, not just the one. Realms and multiverses of them, enough for a Harry Potter-Inception hybrid brain explosion. Phew!
But navigating the eternal state of openness, whether easy or hard, with whatever angel on your shoulder is loudest, is best done, in my opinion, with trust in one hand and courage in the other.
Marhaban bikoum!
~ M. Deva Jebb-Albaba Wednesday, June 22nd, 2021 Tripoli, Lebanon
Here are some more ways to connect with this beautiful soul, Deva:
Trust yourself to no longer abandon yourself. This is foundational. This really is an invitation to an extraordinary life.
So what exactly gets in the way of this extraordinary life? Pests. Erosion. Termites erode the foundation. Termites like mistrust, fear, and reactivity eat away at trust and erode the integrity of the foundation of our relationships.
For example, mistrust happens when social contracts are broken and neglected. You must heal your agreements with others, and start by trusting yourself first.
Lack of safety habitually haunts those of us familiar with traumatic events, thereby leading to exaggerated startle responses and over-reactive nervous systems create an uptight experience of the chapters of life.
3 things we can do
We can learn to calm ourselves down in stressful situations.
2. We can, indeed, break the spells that bind us.
3. And we can rewrite the ending to this chapter of our lives.
pause. breathe. reset.
As I’m sitting here, I’m experiencing gratitude for my practice of Pause. Breathe. Reset. I’m so relieved to relax more fully into my tender heart. Even though it can seem scary as hell to not defend against the pain and suffering of the world.
And I’m so excited to share with you what I’ve learned on this extraordinary journey of resilience, compassion and service. I’m poised to share insights from my own addiction recovery, relational healing and contemplative practice.
Here are some touchstones of what we can do to trust more fully:
touchstones to trust
Be the prayer
Allow and commit to deep listening
Find your identity inside yourself
Be very honest, open, and straight with yourself
Learn compassionate self-control
Learn to contain your own energy
Cultivate inner contentment
If there is a choice, choose the positive
Identify your destiny and serve
Cultivate character, commitment, and grace
Balance yourself, so you don’t need to be compensated from the outside
Give up manipulation and control
When you want something , get clear, ask, be calm, and let it come
Develop a meditative mind to wait and see what comes to you
Receive what comes
Let go of what goes
Don’t chase after anything
Cultivate a tender heart of forgiveness
Develop a relationship with a working God that dwells and breathes within you
Tune in to the monthly variety show: what matters most in relational health on the 2nd Saturday of the month at noon Pacific Time. Check out the emails for the most current Zoom link.
Join me in my Relational Health Masterclass Series starting next week. watch email for details and further inspiration.
let me know what landed for you…and why…email me at [email protected]
We gotta talk. We get to talk about race. We need to have the painful conversations and heed the call to action for the truth to rise to the top.
Dwelling in the spirit of solidarity, empathy and understanding, we are coming together, sharing our stories, and exploring what matter most: relational health.
In my transformational memoir, Moonshot: aim high, dive deep, live an extraordinary life, I get real with my experience of growing up American. Here I’m taking a brave leap to share a few painful blinks from my personal history. Once again, this is real, raw, vulnerable. Caveat.
I grew up in America, in the South, wallowing in the soup of an us/them mentality. I didn’t understand this mentality of inequality. And I never felt a sense of belonging.
At the age of 15, I was raped by a skinhead; a white supremacist. This event marked the loss of my virginity, my innocence. Based on the religion of my upbringing, I feared I was going to hell.
At the age of 16, while seriously drunk, I walked alone in a neighborhood, and I was assaulted by 5 black men; my head cracked open with a lead pipe or tire iron, I know not what. I fumbled, bled, escaped. Fortunately, I went to the hospital for treatment, stitches and concussion protocol.
At the age of 18, I lived in the student ghetto in Gainesville and was robbed by a black man who sold my bike for crack. I yelled to him, “Excuse me sir, that’s my bike,” I protested, futilely, all-the-while addressing the inherent worth and dignity in every human being, in this man (hence the term, “sir.”)
Here’s the most painful part: In each instance of trauma, abuse and violation, I blamed myself. Ouch. I never pressed charges. I never trusted the system. I never trusted myself.
Even when I knew the perpetrator/the rapist/the skinhead. I knew his name, where he lived; I still kept quiet. I didn’t seek support. Even with a line-up of other criminals, I couldn’t trust the system to provide justice. I didn’t seek support. Even with
The American Dominant Culture impacts lives. I suffered trauma and I thought it was karma. For years I warped spiritual principles into a savvy and sophisticated intellectualized approach toward overcoming these transgressions. That’s a fancy way of saying, I blamed myself. No more.
Have you ever felt you need to keep the silence and suffer?
Have you ever felt outrage at the lack of equality and empathy in our dominant culture?
Have you ever felt that the true essence of power (self-sovereignty) is needed now more that ever?
What can you do? Trust yourself to no longer abandon yourself. Be the silence breaker. Lean into the difficult conversations and be the change you wish to see in the world.
CALL TO ACTION: Seek support. Know belonging. Cultivate resilience.
My journey of recovery and transformation began 30 years ago, and continues to this day. I realized I no longer needed to keep the silence and suffer. I needed, and continue to need, spiritual help.
I ask you to gather with me on the second Saturday of the month, to breathe, to engage in the ritual of building an altar of awareness, to celebrate personal Moonshots and release what is no longer needed.
This month, January 9th of the new year of 2021, the theme is TRUST.
We will engage in a short ritual of connection and conscious breath-work
We will invite a few moments to celebrate being alive and become fully embodied with laughter yoga
We will explore the power of Moonshot Magic, through declaring our intentions and acknowledging a power greater than ourselves, and continue releasing the pinch of Dominant Culture
We will entertain special guests to explore what matters most in relational health with greater ease, joy and earnestness.
