"No" Is No Longer an Option

When it comes to living out my dreams, “no” is no longer an option. When it comes to asking for what I desire, “no” to myself is no longer an option. When it comes to giving myself permission to fail, “no” is no longer an option. When it comes believing in myself, “no” is no longer an option.

For a long time, saying “no” was the default. It was my answer to everything. To having fun. To playing. To being imperfect. To failing. To trying new things. To being uncomfortable. To doing what I wanted. To asking for what I needed. To being myself. To saying what I needed to say.

Then someone pointed it out to me, point blank in the face: “you say no before you say yes“. It was poignant – and it hit me straight in the gut. I was guilty as hell.

I started to become aware of my self-talk, painfully aware. I started noticing all the places where I said “no” to myself – and it was everywhere. I observed myself wanting to say something in a conversation and shutting myself up with “I cannot say that“. I noticed how thoughts and ideas come up in my mind, and I smother them with all the reasons why they will fail. Little things, such as a new project at work or doing something with a friend. I noticed how quickly and easily I say “no” before I say “yes” – to myself.

I have always been my toughest judge and critic, and I held myself against the highest standards – perfection. I wanted needed to be perfect and to do perfect. In the eyes of society. In the eyes of my parents. In the eyes of my peers and lovers. Perfection required discipline: denying my true desires and acting in a way that would get me approval. It required curating my every word to make sure I came off smart, polished, polite and perfect. I ran everything I did and said through a filter. And it sapped me of all my energy.

“The longer you stay in a place that’s not totally in line with your desire, the more expensive it becomes.”
~ wise words from a friend

In effect, in denying ourselves and our true desires, we affirm our own death. The death of who we genuinely are and the gifts of what we bring to the world. In self-denial, we discard who we are for the sake of who we should be.

And I found the cost too high to bear. I had lived my life in total self-denial. Denial of who I am and all the things that make me unique – my thoughts, ideas, quirks and imperfections. By worrying so much about how I came across to others, I had run dry. Dry on energy to do what I love. Dry on relating with others and true intimacy. Dry on wanting to live.

So I am running an experiment on my life – a completely different way of living than I know how. A life-affirming way that celebrates who I am.

I am choosing to live from a place of “yes”. I am choosing to live from desire and approval of who I am and what I have to contribute. I am choosing to live in acceptance of whatever comes up for me – a thought, desire or intention – without curation or filtering. I am choosing to experiment with how life would be different if I let myself be who I am, raw and unfiltered.

I am choosing to affirm my life. So how will it be for me to live from a place of “yes”? How will the world respond if I show up fully as myself?

If you’d like to experiment with me, start by noticing when you say “no” to yourself. Notice when you don’t give yourself permission to desire or want or ask for what you need. And ask yourself, what is the cost?

It Was a Good Day in That It Was not

You can feel the anger in the room. One guy is almost scowling. Another woman is sitting with her arms crossed squarely on her chest, brows smashed together. There is little to no conversation.

We are in a workshop and no one knows what’s going on. There is no agenda or outline. The group leaders are jumping from one topic to another, and they have changed plans once already. We’re being asked seemly random questions and told to step up to the plate without knowing which game we’re playing.

I am in the midst of a rotten day of missed expectations and less-than experiences. I am already annoyed, and become more so in this chaos. My breath is shallow and short, my temples are tight. A burning sensation is rising in my chest like mercury in a heated thermometer.

The group leaders notice the dissonance in the room. The comments are getting more biting. They offer that they are there – in their fullest commitment – to make the most out of our experience. They admit that they did not start out gracefully and open up the floor to figure out what would make our experience of this workshop better.

But I am long gone. Meetings are supposed to have clear agendas, I rant to myself. Why are they so disorganized? Did I really pay this much money to get this? I cannot function without clarity and structure. This is a waste of my time, I conclude with a sense of righteousness.

Uncertainty and chaos are uncomfortable for me. Not getting what I am expecting is painful. In my desperate need to escape the discomfort, I did what I always do – I fortified myself against it with a great internal story of ‘they are wrong and I am right.’

By the end of the workshop I had realized how far I sank in this downward spiral of judgments and internal dialogue, shutting myself off from what was happening, from the leaders, and from my workshop peers. I was barely able to hear their genuine attempts to improve the situation, much less productively contribute to the conversation. I was in the workshop to learn and to participate, and I was doing anything but.

I was blinded by my own annoyance and a sense of righteousness that things have to be a certain way. I am entitled to my own perfect experience, I decided, and these people are getting in my way.

I was caught in binary thinking: my way or the highway. Black or white. I am right and they are wrong. My thinking became rigid and my reality too.

In the moment of internal storytelling I was using to cover up the discomfort I was feeling – and in that feeling of righteousness and entitlement, I shut off what was possible.

“The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.”
~ Pema Chodron

Almost everything went wrong that day. And it went so right.

I watched myself come to the cusp of the point of no return, that pissed-off state when I am not paying attention and am disconnected from reality. I got in the way of my own possibilities, once again.

And I recovered. I got triggered and then I caught myself (with the help of our expert group leaders, no less) from spiraling down further. And in that, I learned how my discomfort of uncertainty creeps in and how I mobilize my energy to push it away – to the detriment of my own learning. I was reminded how blind I become in that triggered state.

I am learning about my “buttons”: what triggers them, and more importantly, what I do internally when they get pushed.

The more I am willing to see my part in pushing away the discomfort of uncertainty – all those mental tactics I employ – the more it dissipates and becomes just another sensation. And the more I am willing to sit with that sensation and let things unfold, the more open and encompassing my own perspective becomes.

I learn, and growth become possible.

I Am Done Waiting to Be Ready

am done waiting to be ready. I am done waiting to get everything perfect. I am done waiting to be perfect. I am going live.

May 20 2012 was the original launch date of this blog. The closer I got to the day, the more pressure I put on myself to get it right. The less the words flowed. The further I got past the date, the more scathing and self-loathing the inner voice became. I shut down and the words stopped.

The blog I envisioned was going to be perfect. The words were going to flow and the prose was going to be lyrical. Then the writer’s block hit. Then the fears of no one reading the blog. The voices started getting louder. I fell pray to their arguments: I cannot do this; my words are not interesting enough. And then the ultimate defeat: I questioned the dream of starting the blog in the first place. What’s the point – who am I to share my life story?

My inner critic was partnering with the idealist in my head – and I was letting them both win. I spent months dismantling a deep desire to share my experience and learnings with the world, a dream that still sends electricity down my body. A desire that’s deeply connected to my purpose in life.

I give birth to this dream – and I was killing the mere possibility of it. I was getting in my own way. It’s a pattern of thought that has realized itself over and over in every corner of my life. I have deep, body shattering desire, and I get energized. I go into planning mode, designing how the outcome will be. I get attached: “It will be perfect and grand,” I say to myself.

Then something does not go according to plan. It always does: writer’s block, discouraging comments, a missed deadline, and on and on. I start using these failures as evidence that my desire was not good enough in the first place. And I blame myself: I am just not good enough to carry this dream out.

Thought by thought, I destroy what I had been deeply wanting. I smother the fire that’s been burning inside of me. I dismantle what is possible for me.

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And then it hit me. These realizations seem to always “hit” me. I have been complicit in idealization and self sabotage. I listened to the voices and let them drown out my desire.

It all became clear, and I knew what I needed to do. I am done waiting waiting for the blog to be perfect. I am done waiting for me to be perfect. I am going with my gut feeling that I am ready to go live with this blog. I am trusting my desire that this is what I want and it is right for me. In whatever happens will be a lesson.

It was not easy writing this, but it was easier. I focused on what I had been wanting in the first place: to share my journey with the world and to live out my life purpose. I want to free myself and release others from the different ways we get in the way of achieving our dreams and what is possible for each and every one of us. I may not get it “right” the first time or the hundredth, but I am willing to try.

And honestly, I could not have designed this more perfectly: a lesson about possibilities helping me launch my blog about opening up to possibilities.

The lesson: I watched myself get caught in idealism and expectations, nearly killing my dream. I got in my own way.

Idealism seems like the right thing to do – we are taught to live according to our ideals and to do the best we can. But it’s tricky. Idealism is narrow-minded and rigid, like a train running on a single set of tracks. There is little room for failure and learning from mistakes – it’s all good or it’s a derailment, and nothing in between. And that immobilized me for months. Cynicism was running not too far behind – when things did not go according to expectation, I made sweeping conclusions that the world is just a rotten place and that I am just not good enough for this.

“Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist — someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations.”
~ Peter Senge

I know why I wanted this blog to be about possibilities. Possibilities open up when we let go of the attachment to the outcome, when we trust our desires and intuition that what we are doing is important. A knowing that my desire is not wrong, my dreams are valid – and that it will take a lot of learning and resilience to keep going. It’s about trusting that process and that things will work out in the end. It’s about focusing your energy on doing your part right – the part that’s coming from your heart and is driven by your intentions, and letting go of outcomes. Let the Universe take care of that.

Possibilism is about awareness and living life with intention – conscious and true to our desires and hearts. It’s about designing life around these principles. At face value, it may seem that it’s about lowering standards. And it’s just the opposite – you are raising your standards when everything you do is done at the highest level of your integrity, at whatever lever you are. Being the best that you can be without worrying about what others thing or will accept. Being gentle on yourself as you are learning – and we’re all learning every day.

In publishing this blog, I realized that what is possible starts with my commitment to my desire – it’s the fuel and the energy that keeps me going on the journey.

“Let hope inspire you, but let not idealism blind you.”
~ Don Henley

This blog is about possibilities – about opening up to failure and learning and not being blinded by a specific outcome. It’s about growing into the person I want to be, and that starts with following my desires. And so the blog goes live. Let the journey begin.