In Defense of Anger - Feeling It

This is a vulnerable post to write. Anger has always been my shadow – the one thing I have never wanted anyone to see. Anger was synonymous with being aggressive and vicious, manipulative and violent.  Most of all, it reminded me of my father and the ways his explosive anger towards me and my mother hurt us. The scars were deep.

I never wanted to be “that” kind of person. I wanted to be a good girl. A kind person.

Yet, all my life, I would irrupt in anger and rage. It would be unexpected and random, provoked by the smallest things. My body would fire up and my face tense up. My pupils dilate, lips thin, and face contort in rage. Words - caustic and malicious - would spew out of me as if I were possessed. I blamed, making sure that the offenders knew their fault – and knew it well. I was like a wild fire going through a forest, wiping out everything in its path.

When it was over, I would calm down and come about, as if from an unconscious trip. I would see the wreckage and regret what had happened: the things I had said, the hurt I had caused.  I’d feel a wave of shame wash over me. I’d cry: “How can I do something like this? This is not me. Why can't I stop?”

I would make amends in deep shame for hurting those I loved so deeply. It was always people I loved. I hated the idea that I was becoming more and more like my father. And yet, it would happen over and over.

You’re probably wondering, why am I writing in defense of anger?

I worked hard to dismantle my anger, or “cool the flames,” as Thich Nhan Hanh calls it. In fact, I was resolute on eradicating it. It was in the name of a big cause: I was not going to be like my father. I was going to be a loving person that I knew I was.

I found calmness and serenity in meditation and used my breath to separate myself from my anger. I learned from Buddhist teachings that my anger is not me; in fact, I am separate from these “toxic emotions”. I followed emotional intelligence work and found support in the perspective that anger is a “negative” emotion that has to be managed.

I felt like celebrating: I had found my way out. I was saved. 

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Three years ago, I had a rough year. I felt stuck in a job where I was being underutilized and frustrated. I made bad financial decisions and lost money. I wanted to move and logistics made it impossible. I had suddenly lost friends in a situation where I felt unseen and misunderstood – and I had no say in it. And my body was acting out with mysterious and undiagnosed allergic reactions, one of which left me hospitalized and had me miss more than a month of work.

My world was falling apart. I was falling apart.

In the years building up to this, I had worked hard on my anger management. I learned to breathe through my anger. I practiced acceptance and non-attachment.

I noticed that I was not angry any more.

I also could not feel anything else. I became numb – not only to anger, but also to joy, excitement, hope.  I lost touch with my desires and turned into a life-less lump with just enough energy to do the most routine work and necessary errands. Nothing really mattered. I had lost my appetite for life. I could no longer feel.

I had resigned.

I had stopped fighting.

I had stopped living.

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I woke up from this nightmare when I realized I was not living my own life.  I was following other people’s scripts. I was living in response to past hurts and scars. I was stuck in a prison of my own making, constantly trying to prove something to someone.

In all those years of being made feel small, of not being heard as a child, of being told I am too much and too emotional on one side, of thinking I am not good enough for this boy or that teacher on the other, I felt powerless. Powerless to be myself. Powerless to follow my own path. And this powerlessness was building up.

It was uncomfortable feeling powerless. Hell, it hurt feeling powerless, as if I were being held down against my will.

And, I had no tolerance for feeling powerless. I believed that feeling powerless must mean that I am powerless.

So I kicked and screamed against powerlessness in the only way I knew how: I took out my anger at someone else at the smallest provocation. I made them responsible. I retaliated and punished in the most caustic ways. I made them suffer. I made them feel small so I could feel big, powerful. That is what I learned from my father – and to a great extent, that is what I learned from our culture.

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And here is why I am writing in defense of anger. 

Anger itself was never to blame. It was not “my anger that made me do it”, as if it's some ailment I was born with.

Anger is a human emotion – as natural as feeling joy or disappointment. Anger is the emotion that I natural express when I feel powerless, dismissed, discounted, and scared. We all have some kind of a similar reaction.

What I did not know was that feeling anger is separate from expressing anger and is separate from blaming others for making me angry. They were all jumbled up together in my mind.

So I disowned ALL anger.  I did not want to hurt anyone with my angry behavior – ever. So I judged feeling anger as bad, a poison to get rid of. I held it down, until it had to explode, Molotov cocktail style.

In shutting down my ability to feel anger, I had in fact disabled the alarm that was warning me that a fire was raging inside.

Deep inside, nothing was changing. All the things that I was angry about in my life were still there.  I was on the wrong path. I was not being seen. I was stifled and not able to express myself fully. I was feeling powerless to live my own life in the way I wanted. My life force was dying, and it was dying to get out any which way.

“When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it.”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Today, my anger is my fire alarm. It's my body’s – my soul’s – way of saying: "Something is not right here. You are being hurt. Take a look here".  It is a signal to me to pay attention and ask: what is important to you and what is being stepped on.

What I realize today is that underneath that anger and powerlessness were desires I was never able or vulnerable enough to admit, even to myself – desires for connection and love, for being seen for who I am, for wanting to receive love, for wanting partnership and help. 

I notice today that when I get triggered into anger, it is around places where I feel powerless. Where I don't feel seen for who I am or where I am judged.  So I look deeper. I check  with myself for a feeling of powerlessness and feel into what that’s like in my body with no judgment. And then I check for unspoken desires or things that are important to me that might be getting stepped on. 

Don't get me wrong, it's not that the anger went away. It's still there - and I want it to be there. The difference is that I befriend as if it were a messenger, my guide to what's deeper. And I listen to its message. In the process, my anger shifted from the explosive kind full of rage, to the calm kind - I get to express what is important to me and stand up for myself - full of power. 

“Universe, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

— Serenity Prayer from 12 Steps Program

My anger was my shadow, and like all shadows, it wanted to be seen. Having no familial or cultural role models to show me a healthy way to work with anger, I am learning to chart my own path and break the cycle of angry generations powerfully ranting about their powerlessness (it's in my Russian blood).

The crazy thing is that all this time I was trying to manage my anger as if it was this wild beast inside of me that needed taming and socializing so that I could be a normal and good human being. I made efforts to tranquilize her and make her behave.

There is indeed a beast inside, the wild one. And all she wants is to be free. She was yelling and begging to be seen. She wanted to feel wanted and important. She wanted to play in her own way. She wanted to be loved for who she is. And she had a message about what was important to me.

My story of anger is about standing up for her freedom. It’s about going into the anger instead of avoiding it.  It’s about feeling the powerlessness - with all its sensations and discomfort – and alchemizing it into power and self knowledge.

My anger become my power when I learned where true power comes from. No one can give me power, and no one can take it away. The power lies in me – always. 

Living in Fear of Being High Maintenance

One of the most damaging and destructive beliefs or fears I have ever had was that I am “high maintenance”.  I lived in fear of asking too much, of wanting too much, in fear of being judged as selfish and needy.

There were two places where this manifested: in my romantic relationships and at work - and the effect was the same.

Over and over, I prided myself on being low maintenance. I took care of things myself. I never asked for help.  I learned to be modest, never asking for what I really wanted.  

I thought out my requests to my ex-husband, boyfriends, lovers. I rarely asked or said anything that would hurt their feelings, inconvenience or overwhelm them.  I learned to hold back desires - what I wanted to do, where to go, in sex -  to compromise, to ask what had the most chance of being provided, but rarely what I had actually wanted.  I toned down desires, calculating what would a “low maintenance girl” want. 

Most of all, I feared them leaving for the low maintenance girl. The “it” girl was easy-going, put-together, stable and most of all - undemanding. 

The most damaging place where I learned to hold back was restraining my emotions and adhering to the stoic masculine model of pushing through emotional challenges. I strived to be "calm and normal".

I held back what was really happening inside. Every time I said “I am fine!”, I closed the door on a fire that burned inside.  Every time I did not ask for a hug when I needed it, I cut blood flow to my emotions and watched a part of me wither away and die, like a limb from a gangrene. Every time I did not ask to slow down when my body said it wanted to, I denied myself the attention I really needed. Every time I did not ask for quality attention, I deaden a piece of my sexuality, my womanhood, my femininity.

With every neglect of what I needed in the name of being low maintenance, I developed resentment. The part of me that needed hearing was being silenced. The part that needed to be held was being abandoned. My fire was dimming - and I was the last one to know.  

This deep cycle of holding back and resenting, retreating back further and then resenting more, kept playing itself out in every relationship (and relationships at work were no different). And I resented the men because the desires were still there.  I resented them even though it was I who did not express my truth.  

It was I who held back.  It was I who believed that my needs and desires were not worth the attention.  I had shirked from my own responsibility to express my desires and ask for what I needed.

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
~ Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

I watched my relationships fail from the sidelines, helplessly, in resentment.  It is from this place that hell broke loose. I created drama to get attention.  I burst out in anger and blame when my needs were not being met.  I shut down and withdrew, in hopes that someone will come to rescue me.   Paradoxically, I had become the woman I feared I'd be - the "high-maintenance bitch". 

Eventually I buckled at the knees in resignation and began the slow descent into invisibility and reclusion. Along the way, this behavior became an unconscious habit.  I had learned to be helpless.  It had become a way of life.

Every time we compromise and hold back, keep silent and do not ask what we want and need, we cut blood flow to what was essentially us – our emotions and our desires.

“Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”
~ Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

Women know this type of sacrifice really well.  It’s in our culture. It's in the fiber of everyday language and thought.  

But we have no one to blame.  It is us, women, who teach men to look for women who are low maintenance. We hold back lest he'd think we are high maintenance.  And the worst part is that women tear each other apart for asking for what we want, vying for the low maintenance status as if were some prize.  I commonly hear “She is so high maintenance; I don’t know what he sees in her” used to criticize and demonize women who have the confidence to know and ask for what they want.

Women, it's time to take responsibility for our own part. Every time we hold back, we reinforce the stereotype that women are high maintenance and not worth the attention that we need. We reinforce the norm that women should not take up space.

It's time to create a new feminist movement, where we take responsibility for taking up space for being a woman - and where we teach men how to meet us where we are. 

And it's not going to be easy. We live in a culture – a global culture - where the marker of success is a masculine one.  Where powering through emotions is the standard and feelings are just obstacles in getting to the goal.  

This strategy worked well when women had no space in decision making and society.  Thanks to the feminist movement of our mothers' generation, women got a seat at the table.  They fought against men using their own tricks, with force and rational thinking.  And they've come a long way: we got a chance to express our voice.  

Yet something was lost in the process.  Women learned to be men to succeed in this world. We matched men at being masculine: at thinking linearly, tapering down emotions, toning down our passion.  We lost our ability to connect and work collectively; we lost the power of seeing multi-dimensionally; we lost our connection to feelings; we lost the ability to communicate heart to heart instead of bottom line. We lost love.

Along the way, we – men and women alike – confused femininity with the high maintenance of the sort when women manipulate and control.  We feared losing "the one" because he could be scared off by the “controlling bitch”.  We chose to lie to him and diminish our desires – our life-force and our birthright – in fear of losing him.  

Our culture calls it compromise.  I call it self-sacrifice.

We grow up with this cultural belief that attention is selfish. That asking for attention from others means intruding or bothering them.   Essentially, we adopted a position that we are not worthy of attention.

It's time to change that.  We are now in a different place.  This is a new feminist movement where women are taking responsibility for reclaiming their woman and teaching men what that means.  

Because, the opposite of being a "high-maintenance bitch" is asking for what you want and how you want it - and owning your desire.  Your desire is most potent at the time when it arises.  Let it out fully, and let your fire roar!  

Women, my plea to you is: take up space and learn to ask for what you want.  Be as emotional as you need to.  Ask your man to hold you where you are - whether it’s in ecstatic laughter or a cathartic cry.  Do not apologize for not being one way or another.  Just be. 

When I Decided Being a Woman Was Dangerous

By the time I was 20, I had decided that being a woman was dangerous.  Gravely dangerous.  A matter of life and death dangerous.  

Message after message all around portrayed women as the dangerous kind: emotional, moody, needing medication when our womanhood got out of control around our menstrual cycles, needing perfumed feminine products to hide our ungodly scents.  I watched girlfriends tear each other down for being too high maintenance, for requiring too much attention, for being emotionally needy.  When I got to the business world, I watched women hold back for fear of being too sensitive and not business-like enough in the boardroom (and some were certainly punished for it too).  Messages about sex were not less mixed.  We were told that we are more than our bodies; yet, our self confidence as women comes from owning our bodies and being comfortable in them. 

I took this all in and I learned that my sexuality was something to hide.  I learned to turn it off, dress it down, and eventually to hide it.  My sexuality - the chaos of emotions, the volatility and the subtleties - became liabilities.  I pushed away my feminine qualities in exchange for masculine ones in an effort to make it in the world.  It just made sense if I wanted to succeed - at home, in the business world, in life.

I made a lot of conclusions on how to live my life - and that meant having everything under control.  I wanted to hide any appearance of being needy - and that meant I could not ask for help, which cut me off from collaborating with others in a healthy way.  At home and at work, my relationships suffered with my efforts to curtail my emotions and hold back not to appear "too crazy", which contributed to my not being able to tap into my intuition and make important personal decisions.  I judged my sensitive nature as not being tough enough; I indulged in self-loathing for having mood swings, which were in fact an indication that something in my life was not going right.  

In fact, most things were going wrong.  I was exhausted.  Exhausted of putting all these parts of myself and my emotions under lock and key, as if they were monsters waiting to hurt the world, and most importantly to hurt me and my success in life.  I was exhausted of having my "woman" under control.  

Instead of putting attention on my dreams and my passions, I was draining my energy by holding back, suppressing who I was because I believed that being a woman was dangerous in the world. 

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So much of our culture supports this stereotype - that women are crazy - and no one more than women have colluded with this belief.  Women like myself, the highly-educated overachievers who knew that we have power to change the world, believed it.  We bought into it and rearranged our lives to tone down our womanhood to be "a successful woman". We compared ourselves to men and took on masculine power - and in the process, we lost our own.

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We have very few role models to pave the way.  We have to create a new way of being as powerful women - women who own their sexuality, without apologies.  And we also have the responsibility to use it as a source of power - not of force, control or manipulation that we have adopted in our culture.  

Our fire has been reduced to embers, barely sustaining what we need to do in the world.  Women - we have a lot of work to do in the world.  This world needs love and connection.  Our families and children need nurturing.  Our businesses need compassion as the bottom line.  

And most importantly, we need to practice compassion and self-love to ourselves.  We have to accept our feminine nature and no judge it against masculine standards.  And we have to show that compassion to each other by accepting each other for who we are and collaborating to create a strong fabric.

This is the Ignited Woman Movement - a movement to tune into who we are, rekindle our fire, and to harness our power to do good in the world.  It’s a movement to turn on our sexuality and to use our feminine power.  

Our power lies in our ability to create connection through emotions and our ignition. Women are creators of life.  Our desires are the fuel to change the world and create the love, life and connection that we all long for.  We are here to start the conversation of who we are and who we can be when we are in touch with our nature as women.  

What I long for is for every woman to feel fully alive in every moment, to be fully in power of her feminine nature and embody it with pride and power.  

Join the movement and redefine what it means to be a powerful woman.

Women, this movement is for you!  

The Hungry Desire Within

You know how sometimes you have a desire for something but it never feels important enough. There are a million other things more urgent or valuable on the to-do list, like the practical, the rational, the immediate. You don’t plan for it or include it in your immediate plans – except it never goes away. It’s in the back of your mind, hungry but shy, like a forgotten stepchild. A desire that’s always there, always hungry – and it never gets fed.

Singing has been that desire for me. I can say that I love singing. I sing along to the radio while driving. Sing while dancing. Associate songs with feelings and sentimental moments. And I have never took singing seriously.

This past weekend, a friend was playing his guitar and he asked me if I wanted to sing something. I felt a rush of heat on my face, so much that I burst out laughing, unable to contain the sensation of excitement sprinkled with fear. “Yes”, I said, “I want to sing”.

I took a breath. I let out a sound. My voice came out of my throat, shallow and scratchy, weak and hesitant – and definitely under-powered. I was consistently missing the melody, mixing up the notes, the tune, everything. My friend supported me, guiding me where I was falling, holding the space, making it fun. We played.

And then he said, “Scream it at the top of your lungs”. I felt this deep constriction in my chest. I wanted to pull away and abandon the game. The ‘I can’t do it’ voice was about to highjack the entire experience. I do not scream.

Instead, I took another breath and I pushed my voice out – out of my gut, from the depth of my being.

My voice felt loud. Big. Too big for the room, for him. He gently affirmed me: “You are doing good.”
I kept going. I no longer wanted to hold back. I was screaming and it felt good. My voice came out with power, and with it came the melody. I relaxed into it and something shifted. I felt a taste of freedom.

This freedom – to sing, to express myself – is the antithesis to the way I have lived my life, the only way I knew how. I hushed my voice in public. I held back my truth and my desires – because they could hurt me. I was a “big” child growing up – a lot of emotions, powerful emotions. Too much for my parents to handle and approve. Too uncomfortable for my peers. I was told I am too much and that I needed to calm down and act normal. I was told I want too much. And I felt I was too much in school. In middle school, I sang in the choir – because we all had to – and I hid behind the better singers. Both success and failure meant attention so I just slipped by, unnoticed, avoiding it all. I became the girl without a voice.

I learned that was the way to be in the world. I learned to hold back my voice. I judged it the way my parents did – it’s too much. And I never permitted myself to express it. It withered away, like a muscle not used, until it was a whisper. And the cost was high – with it went my whole being.

But the desire burned on the inside. And it was more than a desire to sing. It was a desire to express myself – through music and words, through emotions and voice. I was hungry for self expression. I was hungry to regain that voice that I gave up – and in a sense, to find the woman that I gave up on a long time ago.

It was no surprise that I sang in harmony. It was no surprise that I held back from singing gutterally. And it was no surprise that my powerful voice shone through when I sang from my core.

This was a profound experience with a deeper meaning for me than merely learning to carry a tune. I realized how much I’ve lived in the background, like a support singer. How I shied away from projecting my voice and my truth. And how much power – in my voice and in my life – I really carry when I sing and act from my core.

I was cracked open. I felt my power. And I saw possibilities.

I saw this pattern flash in front of my eyes – how I keep my voice down, how I hide in many areas of my life. Work, relationships, sex. Seeing this pattern is allowing me to understand myself – why things happened in a certain way in my life, and more importantly, how I can be who I want to be and go where I want to go.

Those desires that we hide in the back of the closet are powerful – they hold a message about who we are.Trust these desires, and they will tell you what you need. They are an expression of your uniqueness and potential that is waiting to break free.

When I sang from deep inside, it was pure me to the core: feminine, powerful, dark. I felt free to be. The singer is out of the closet, and there is no turning back.

"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.