I’m a fan of Seth Godin.  I’m a fan of Poke the Box.

In a nutshell, this short manifesto of a book outlines the formula to success in today’s quick paced, create-your-own-outcome world.

• Start something new without permission.
• Show up.  Consistently.
• Create to completion.
• Ship.
• Be open to fail.  Often.
• Be open to success.
• Rinse and repeat.

If we continue to try and maintain the status quo in mature industries, in outdated business models, in a life that doesn’t serve us, we will sink with the ship.  Our ability to be creative in our ever-changing world is the biggest strength we can cultivate within ourselves.

Doing work that matters is dependent upon showing up on a consistent basis, failure after failure, in order to hit upon success.

I am on board.  With one tiny exception.

I am a fan of naps.

Godin goes so far as to suggest that “When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out – this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break.” ~ p.18

I do get that his frequent suggestion to not nap is his way of saying to stay the course no matter what obstacle appears.  I also get that my ex-workaholic brain and recovering adrenal system rebelled with an emphatic “Hell-to-the-no!” each time I read those words.

And I’m honoring that.

Some of my most creative and connected moments have been when I’ve taken a break and done nothing. When a customer meeting didn’t go as planned or a class didn’t sell, the way I return to the map the fastest is to take a mental break and breathe.  Take a walk.  Look out the window and meditate.  Maybe even nap.

Godin’s book is all about creating your own maps and initiating change and success under your own terms. Then, ironically, he lays out a rule for doing this that doesn’t work for me.  It’s in the spirit of creating my own version of success that I give myself permission to respectfully disagree.

You can do the same thing.  This is what finding your own Ground Truth is all about.

In anything that you do, if there is guru or a rulebook involved, try keeping only what inspires you to create your thing or meet your goal.  Then ditch anything that makes your shoulders rise to your earlobes or your stomach knot.

No need to poke any boxes that don’t serve your purpose.

In Truth & With Love,

Ps – From the Dustcover:  “Poke the Box is a manifesto about producing something that’s scarce, and thus valuable.  It demands that you stop waiting for a road map and start drawing one instead.  You know how to do this, you’ve done it before, but along the way, someone talked you out of it.”

Just so happens that I taught a class in July for the Martha Beck Master Series that is all about drawing your own business map.  Click here for the details.

My favorite prompt from #Trust30 this week took me back about three years.  My response is an excerpt from a blog post written after leaving the corporate world to become a coach.  #Trust30  is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.  You can read more about it here.

Prompt:  Wholly Strange and New by Bridget Pilloud

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name ~~  the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. ~  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own? 

Write about that moment. And if you haven’t experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind’s eye and write about that moment in your future.

From June 3, 2009 blog post:
When Your Essential Self Speaks... Don't Freak Out

What if you have followed your intuition, have a wonderful life… and then realize ten days or ten years later that something isn’t right?  What if you hear a calling to do something different than the life you worked so hard to create?

The first step: Don’t freak out. Your lizard might think it’s necessary. It isn’t.

Listen to what your essential self has to say and process the message. (No… Ben & Jerry won’t help you process… put down the spoon.)  Advise your lizard that no action is necessary at this point and thank her for her concern.

The Journal
This is where that journal I found from last year comes in. I really had no socially valid reason to be dissatisfied. However, a little over a year ago, I woke up to the suffocating image that I was trapped in a snow globe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

April 2008 - Early morning:
Now I have to go to work.
I love my corner office with windows.
In the winter when it snows, it feels like I’m in a snow globe. Right now (if I were sitting at my desk), there’s a dogwood blooming outside the window to my right. If the windows opened, I could touch the blooms. Outside of the window in front of me, a pair of gray and red birds is building a nest. I can’t see the nest because it’s under a branch. But I can see them flying in and out, bringing twigs and other stuff. If I could open that window, I could lean out and see the nest about 5 feet away.

Come to think of it…
A snow globe is a great metaphor.
I can’t open those windows.
I can look out into the beauty of the world… but not touch it.
I suddenly feel trapped, restless and in an environment that is unnatural and unsafe.

I want out of the snow globe.

I want the snow to land on my head and I want to sit under the tree and watch the birds. Today, after a few less than joy-filled meetings… I will start devising my exit plan.

Mid morning:
On the way to work, the emotion of writing about the snow globe effect overwhelmed me and I started to cry. My first reaction was to reach for the Xanex. I stopped, though, realizing that this is an ingrained reaction to dealing with raw emotion and fear. I stuff it down or snuff it out. I don’t want to feel the emotions. This emotion is spawned from the joy of listening to my true self and allowing it to speak. It’s annoyance over having to go to a meeting and pretend like I care. My life is not bad… but I might choose to replace it with something better. I let myself cry and feel the feelings. I did not touch the Xanex bottle.

Early afternoon:
I am now in the meeting. I do care… but I care with a plan to leave this a better place than when I got here 9 ½ years ago. This will have been a better place for me being here. I will leave here at peace with the job I did and with a graceful exit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What fascinates me the most is how VERY clear the message was at the beginning and end of the day. Slap in the middle, my lizard came out to play. I can hear her now:

“Are you crazy? The snow globe is safe. Take a Xanex and you’ll be calm, rational and able to go work. You’ve worked all your life in this industry. This is who you are and what you do. ”

Thank goodness I didn’t listen to her!

Instead, after sitting through the day of revelation, slight claustrophobic panic, lizard fears, annoyance and sadness, came what appears to have been peace. Peace and a vision to create options. By not freaking out, I was able to hear my way out of the snow globe and count the blessings of my past.

If I had chosen to ignore my intuition, medicate my lizard and shut my essential self up by feeding her, I wouldn’t have been able to think so clearly. The nagging sense of “not right” might have manifested into stress and anxiety over who knows what. It makes me wonder:

How often have I tried to make things right in my social world when my essential self was really in need of attention?

How often is no action the best way to hear what your whole self wants?

Doing nothing is an art upon itself.

In Truth & With Love,

The third menu item on this “diet” is Desire.

Not the “I’d sure like chocolate AND vanilla” kind of desire.  Instead, it's your heart’s desire.  The desire that shows up when life takes you by the hand and leads you toward your destiny.

“Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it… Any sentient being knows when it wants to eat, mate, run, sleep, or fight – any sentient being, that is, except most members of the human race. We are the only beasts in creation who systematically eradicate the knowledge of our own desire.”                – Martha Beck, The Joy Diet

So get comfortable in your moment of doing Nothing (menu item #1) and open yourself up to being truthful (menu item #2).  Then search around for a pebble of desire.  Once you find one, sit with it and visualize what it would be like to meet it.  Try and feel if it’s on the path to your destiny.

To illustrate, let’s explore the number one spoken desire of my clients:

“I want to lose weight.”

In a state of complete compassion and truth, and without judgment, visualize yourself and your life at your ideal weight.  What is it about being lighter that you would enjoy?  Would your doctor be pleased?  Are you finally happy in your own skin?  If the time consuming obsession over food and your body ended, how would you spend that time differently?

While inquisitively sitting in your vision, you might begin to see pieces of your true destiny.  You might also see some pieces that are less authentic, possibly false, but part of the story.

The below chart is from The Joy Diet (modified slightly for this example).  Continue to hold the “I want to lose weight” desire in your mind and see which column best describes your vision now and down the road.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight to impress friends that you haven't seen in twenty years at a class reunion.  The point is… if that’s the ONLY reason why losing weight is on your wish list, it will result in deprivation dieting, obsessing over food, inevitable overindulgence and the despair that whole downward spiral seems to bring.

The spoken desire of “I want to lose weight” acted out as if it’s the only answer to your happiness almost always ends up with false desire after-effects.

Here’s the good news:
There’s a bit of magic when it comes to following your true desire and losing weight.

Action upon your TRUE heart’s desires comes coupled with a desire to relax into your own body’s rhythm and to treat yourself with ultimate self care and love.  This will lead to a sense of fulfillment in your life.   It eliminates the need get full-fillment from food.

That’s the place we call “thinner peace.”

What true desire will bring you to this place?
Next week we'll get creative (menu item #4) about getting there.

Yesterday, I was going to write about “Truth” in the basic “tell the truth, it’s good for you” context.  Then I found myself in some pain and remembered that sometimes truths can be felt in your body before your mind even knows you’ve told a fib.

In Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet, absorbing a new truth about yourself is the second item on the menu.  The idea is to compassionately check in with your life.  Is there anything that you’re hiding from yourself or others that is keeping you from experiencing full time joy?

Truth digging is most effective on the heels of doing your daily 10 to 15 minutes of Nothing.  On Friday, I went through Martha’s six suggested questions with a touch of a temper and a side of Excedrin.

“What am I feeling?”

Like a giant pain in the neck.  Literally.   I’m also fidgety and unfocused.

“What hurts?”

I told you… my neck!  It’s a crick on the left side, coupled with a headache.

“What is the painful story I’m telling?”

If I were focused, I’d be able to tell a story.  There’s just pain.  No story. I haven’t had a crick in my neck like this since leaving my old j.o.b. back in January.  Now I remember how I used to feel on Monday mornings.

Fascinating.

I had agreed to step back into that life for a few hours that day to help them with a project.

While I was not spinning painful stories in my conscious mind, my body kicked in to tell me the truth.  I’ve looked back occasionally wondering what would have been different if I had stayed.  Now I know.  I really didn’t want to go back there.  I felt like I was about to waste a day of my life walking the wrong path.

“Can I be sure my painful story is true?”

No.  No experience is a waste.

“Is my painful story working?”

No. If I think it will be a waste, it will be a waste.  What a waste that would be!  And my neck hurts.

“Can I think of another story that might work better?”

First observation:  I do not feel compelled to eat my way through this like I would have a year ago.  I love this coaching stuff.  It, like, works.

Second observation: I left that job when I came to a fork in the road where the corporate world path and the one toward my destiny split. I made the right choice.  My neck just told me so.

As I drove away from that office building Friday afternoon, my headache died away and the tension in my neck eased.  Amazing what a good dose of Nothing and a teaspoon of Truth will do to turn a subconsciously wasted day into one of gratitude and thanksgiving.

I’ve been practicing this (almost) every day and never seem to run out of food for thought.  As a result, I have new friends, a new career, have lost weight and have emptied at a ton of clutter from my mind and home.  In other words… the truth will set you free and, quite possibly, turn your life upside down.

Next week we’ll add Desire to the mix.  I mean, if you're going to turn your life upside down, it should certainly be for something you desire!  Right!?

Until then, I'd love to hear about ways you uncover your truth.

Through a string of Twitter synchronicities, I stumbled upon a group of bloggers who are book blogging* through Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life.
Being that this is one of my all time favorite books, I couldn’t resist jumping in.

In the introduction, Martha writes:

“If you’re looking for ways to shed that potbelly or firm your buttocks, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere. As far as I’m concerned, your belly and buttocks are absolutely magnificent right now, not that I want you to send me photographs. This book contains instructions for a different kind of ‘diet,’ one designed not for the body but for the soul.”

While Martha is one of my mentors, and smarter than I’ll ever pretend to be, I have to respectfully disagree with one of her statements.  (Not that you aren’t magnificent.  Of course you are!  And, no, I don’t want pictures either.)

I believe this is the exact diet you DO need if food is your drug of choice to soothe your emotions.  Not only to shed pounds, but to keep them off permanently.  Once you have learned to nourish your soul, your body will naturally follow to that lighter place of “thinner peace.”   She is right that The Joy Diet is not a traditional “eat less, move more” instruction manual, but it’s funny how this works…

The practice of embracing Joy more leads to embracing Ben & Jerry’s less.

Here’s the run-down of the chapters.  We’ll cover one chapter each week.

• Nothing
• Truth
• Desire
• Creativity
• Risk
• Treats
• Play
• Laughter
• Connection
• Feasting

“Nothing” is my new favorite past time.  “Nothing” was the subject of this recent blog post!  Click here  : )

“Nothing” is also the key to tuning into your internal wisdom and developing the skill to trust your body. Your body knows what is best for you in terms of how to go about shedding those extra pounds.  To hear what it’s saying, though, you have to be still and willing.  To some of my clients, this is a really new concept.  It was for me when I started doing this work.  Doing Nothing will get you in tune with the voice of your body and soul.

Grab a copy and read along.  Only one chapter a week.  It will definitely help lighten your mental load.  It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if you lightened your physical load too.

* Jamie Ridler, who is hosting this blog fest, says that “The concept behind book blogging is that a group of bloggers work their way through a book, sharing their experiences by posting on their own blog and by reading what other participants are sharing. You can choose to share as much or as little as you like. The process is free, self-directed and shared in community.”

Following your intuition can only happen if you can hear it.

The journal from the last post was written when I didn’t know whether I wanted to be a life coach, or if I just needed one. I was also reading Martha Beck’s The Joy Diet. Instead of simply reading it, I decided to do something revolutionary. I would actually DO the exercises as suggested.

Chapter One is entitled “Nothing.”

Go ahead. Laugh.

The book I finally decide to DO starts out with a chapter about doing nothing. When you are done laughing, we’ll resume…

Doing nothing for ten to fifteen minutes a day is a life changer.

While some people call this meditation or mindfulness, I called it wasted time at first. I could physically sit still, but my thoughts were like the incessant chatter of a hyper child. This was frustrating until I surrendered my control over the chatter (which, I of course, never really had). I watched my thoughts come and go and compassionately allowed myself to address them later.

When I stopped resisting, I fell asleep. Instead of wasted time, doing nothing became a nap.

Right there was my first lesson. I was over working and under sleeping.

Finally, I got to the point where I could simply sit for fifteen minutes, watching my thoughts until they slowed to the point where I could hear and feel my soul. This is the time when I can hear God most clearly.

This is the place where I realized that I could trust my own internal wisdom.

This is the place where I sensed a true joy and peacefulness behind the war in my brain around food and my weight.

This is the place where I knew that when I figured out how to feel safe standing and acting on my own Ground Truth, I wanted to pay it forward and help others do the same.

This is the place that harbors your own internal wisdom.

Trust in it.

I highly recommend that you do nothing for a while and see.

This is when magic happens and the synchronicities of life will blow you away.

Up next is the last post (for now) in this series:  When Your Essential Self Speaks… Watch for the Magic.

Until then:

What does your essential self have to say when you are still?