self-awareness

We're Wired To Connect And Protect

We're Wired To Connect And Protect

Did you know that your brain and nervous system are constantly looking for protection and connection? We long for relationship, bonding, and intimacy, yet our limbic and reptilian brains scan for threat and safety 24/7. They track for perceived threats for our physical safety, but also for threats to our sense of belonging, self-image, or emotional integrity

Anger: Suppress or Express?

Anger: Suppress or Express?

Anger is something that everyone experiences, at one level or another, and it needs to be expressed to maintain emotional health and intimacy. Most people have a murky relationship with anger and how to express it in a way that isn’t hurtful to oneself or others.

Facing Fear: The Courage to Swim Upstream

Facing Fear: The Courage to Swim Upstream

The journey of the salmon is one of the most amazing phenomena in nature.  How is it that after years in the sea, they can locate the exact stream in which they were born and pursue their upstream return home?

Trapped in the System?

Trapped in the System?

People are experiencing burn-out and feelings of uncertainty about how to break out of systems that don’t support their individuality, personal rhythm and unique genius. Burn-out occurs across the board from personal, work, family, community and global systems. Changing a system can feel like pouring honey on a winter camping trip – in its frozen form you don’t access the sweetness.

Permission to Be ‘Messy’

Permission to Be ‘Messy’

Have you noticed that the experience of suffering is provoked when we don’t give ourselves, and others, permission to simply be where we are in any given moment before we swiftly demand clarity, decision-making, certainty or assert ourselves into fix-it and change-it mode?

Essential Happiness and Freedom

Essential Happiness and Freedom

Have you longed for a particular relationship, job, creating a family or a spiritual realization only to discover that after achieving these things you’re still struggling; still not happy? You discover that these accomplishment themselves are not inherently the key to your deeper sense of happiness?

Human Heartbreak and Longing

Human Heartbreak and Longing

Yesterday I was caught feeling the familiarity and stuckness of a well-worn cycle of longing.  This longing has yet to take shape in the practical world.  I see glimpses but I don’t abide in this place yet. How often do we sense a longing from deep within and find ourselves gently holding it like an exquisite hummingbird that startles us with her beauty as swiftly as she disappears?

Alone and Together: Ushering in a New World

Alone and Together: Ushering in a New World

I’m part of a team that has created a 501c3 nonprofit organization, to offer a community service called “Wisdom Labs“. What is a Wisdom Lab? In a Wisdom Lab we invite a ‘stakeholder’ to explore a personal or organizational vision or edge related to their expression in the world.

Falling In Love with ‘Potential’

Falling In Love with ‘Potential’

Last night I was nourished by a home-cooked meal and the wisdom of a dear friend as he shared about his last relationship and the vision he set forth when it ended. Part of his vision was, ‘I want to be attracted to reality not the ‘potential’ of something or someone.’ This resonated deeply for me.

Our Daily Life is Our ‘Modern Day Monastery’

Our Daily Life is Our ‘Modern Day Monastery’

We are all leaders.  From executives, parents and teachers to the school bully, leaders of gangs and drug lords. How is that possible? Because every action we take, conscious or unconscious, influences those around us and elicits responses such as love, connectedness, creativity, entitlement, fear and rage.

Transitions: The Seeds of Grasping and Trusting

Transitions: The Seeds of Grasping and Trusting

How do we respond to the uncertainties of life?  What happens when we find ourselves in the middle of a transition and we simply haven’t a clue what lies ahead? How do we respond to the parts of us that fear this great unknown and the parts of us that feel enlivened by the untapped possibilities?

Meeting Our Aloneness

Meeting Our Aloneness

Have you noticed that loss, change and transitions invite the opportunity to drop the veils and get down and dirty with what is really important? Simultaneously, what do you notice about all the ways you try not to be where you are, embrace what you’re feeling or face what is in front of you?

Restoring Justice From The Inside-Out

Restoring Justice From The Inside-Out

I am a volunteer facilitator for a process called, Restorative Justice.

The roots of this process come from the lineage of tribal cultures and the practice of ‘council meetings’.  On the surface, the intent is to provide an alternative to the criminal justice system, however, it’s laced with the profound impact of personal transformation, community building and healing.

Building Trust and Confidence

Building Trust and Confidence

“A leader is a decision maker”, rolls off the Colorado cowboy’s tongue as he began our puppy training class. During two hours of lectures and exercises I was continually struck by the parallel between his philosophy of building a relationship with animals through love, trust and respect and my view of the human’s journey to cultivate these same elements through building a nonjudgmental relationship with the mind.

Prior to Judgment And Self-Doubt

Prior to Judgment And Self-Doubt

Have you ever found yourself sensing that something or someone simply didn’t resonate with you but you bypass this information and listen to what you ‘should do or feel’ instead? This happens everyday. Our mind can be as fast as a hummingbird.

Navigating the Threshold of “Becoming”

Navigating the Threshold of “Becoming”

What does it mean when life, as you’ve known it, suddenly changes in a blink of an eye and you find yourself dropped into the desert and the unknown? Or maybe it happens so slowly that you wake up to realize everything in your life has been dying for months or maybe even years. However you find yourself here, you are now standing at the threshold of realizing that what was previously so important to you no longer holds its place on the trophy shelves.

Discerning Wisdom From Insanity

Discerning Wisdom From Insanity

I recently participated in a Hakomi weekend; a somatic based mindfulness-training. The message I received in the stillness and quieting of my mind was, “Just rest.  You will know when you need to know”. As my mind spun through the various scenarios in my life that ‘need’ tending or ‘fixing’, this voice stopped me in my tracks.  What is most true is that any effort for me ‘to know‘ only prolongs my capacity to feel the gifts in my life right now.

Do Emotions Control or Inform You?

Do Emotions Control or Inform You?

Anxiety and fear are common emotions many of us experience in response to our life circumstances and the uncertainty of transitions and decision points. These emotional states can feel disorienting and we may find ourselves acting out in behaviors or activities that are not healthy or supportive.

How To Lead As A Samurai

How To Lead As A Samurai

To travel the terrain of an authentic leader requires a level of listeningwitnessing and an open-heart similar to that of a Samurai. The unwritten Samurai code of conduct, is known as Bushido. The Bushido code holds that the true warrior must possess loyalty, courage, veracity, compassion, and honor as important, above all else.   The samurai’s code is in honor of their masters and fellow warriors.

Wholehearted Leadership In A Time Of Fragmentation

Wholehearted Leadership In A Time Of Fragmentation

One of the highlights of a trip to Egypt was seeing a mummified alligator in a sacred temple.  Quite a contrast from my days living in New Orleans where blackened alligator, colorfully garnished, was served as an ‘exotic’ appetizer.