Practicing Balance - Part 2 of 2

This post grew out of my reflections on being confused...read Part 1 if you haven't already. With all the talk of clarity, power, intention, success, and purpose, it can be a little intimidating to acknowledge when you have a moment of confusion.

But there is a time for confusion.

And until we can acknowledge and admit this to ourselves, we cannot move through it. We gloss over the surface of it, trying to fix the outer appearance of our lives, staying busy and enrolled in things, buying more, doing more, hoping that all that activity will make the confusion go away.

It's true that action and forward motion is such a powerful antidote to feeling stuck and ruminating for too long. But I've also found that acknowledging the truth, and being able to rest in the feeling of truth, is an essential starting point.

From "Woo Woo" to "Win Win"....where's the balance?

There seem to be two ends of the spectrum in the world of self-help and personal development. At one end are the offerings which many people call "woo woo", which encourage us to slow down, create space, and connect with our internal guidance and spirit. For a typical "high-achiever" person like me, what's frustrating about these offerings is the apparent lack of structure, total acceptance of all possibilities, and absence of clear end-points, none of which feel totally authentic or effective. I've found, however, that dwelling in this discomfort, and being with it at a time in my life when I was receptive to change, was exactly the healing environment I needed.

At the other end of the spectrum are the myriad wealth and success and "winning at life" programs designed to provide formulas for achieving the material goals we think will help our feelings of dissatisfaction or angst. These I call the "outside in" approach, where money or an organized living space or achieving higher status of any kind is used as a gateway to attaining the lives we think we want. At first glance, these leave me with a distasteful feeling, because I feel that our culture is already sufficiently addicted to material proxies for inner peace.

I've found that there is a place for using the tools at both ends of the spectrum at different times in our lives, and the real challenge is to discern what's appropriate, and how much to use, for where we are right now.

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Balance in life turns out to be a lot like seasoning a good dish - just the right amount of the right ingredients yield a delicious result.

In order to create your very own unique taste, you might start gingerly, adding just a dash of this or a dash of that. Or you might be zealous and overshoot at first.

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But you'll never know until you TASTE it yourself!

It's all part of your learning and gaining skills! And a chance to practice celebrating failure.

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No recipe can really tell you exactly how to make the dish to your liking...it's only a guideline, and your tastebuds are the final, and only significant, judge.

Similarly, no expert or guru or formula can really tell you how to achieve the balance you desire in your life. You'll just have to start trying to learn...and be willing to be confused every once in awhile. Just think of it as your clue that you're actually moving and changing in some way.

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Life balance is about your ability to respond to constant changes and your willingness to learn to trust yourself. You can enhance your abilities by increasing the range of tools available to you, and by practicing them consciously.

But in the end, remember that you are the best teacher you'll ever find.

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Bouillabaisse photo credits: http://cookthink.com (top) and http://johnmariani.com (bottom)

To learn more about restoring balance and observing yourself in yoga Tree Pose, watch this video blog.

At Peace with Confusion – Part 1 of 2

[singlepic id=257 w=320 h=240 float=center] I don't know about you, but I'm finding that I'm easily hooked by the idea that I need expert advice in order to do something "right", and that I need a formula to follow in order to be successful.

With all of my inner work over the past year and a half, you'd think I'd be over it. You'd think I'd have found Nirvana, bliss, equanimity, access to Buddha nature.

Yeah, I thought so too.

What I'm really finding is that life keeps challenging me to keep a sense of humor as I learn to trust myself. I veer off the path (or am I merely on a twisty part of it?) and find myself enrolled in another program, following dutifully along like the great student I've always been. But then I look at the pile of assignments I've given myself, and I wonder, "What test am I studying for? Whose grade am I trying to earn here?"

Lately, life has been challenging me to keep stepping back into observer mode, as I charge forward with every opportunity life serves me. I step into my own power, and then my mind leads me back into the weeds, as if to test my own abilities and force me to validate what I say that I believe in.

It's all part of building confidence, becoming clear, and feeling real in this new incarnation I've been given.

That's what I tell myself as I sort through what feels like confusion.

Today I read a Self-Care card that said, "Peace" on one side, and "Embrace your confusion" on the other. I smiled, because it seemed perfect for me on this day to read that message.

I am confused. There, I said it. And I haven't been able to admit that to myself for awhile. I can tell I'm confused because I'm looking outside myself for answers. I'm asking other people for their advice, opinions, inputs, and when I hear the answers I don't know what to do. I don't know what I want to do.

Correction: I do know what I want to do, but I have not freed myself to just do that one thing in front of me right now - the very thing I know will take me one step closer to where I want to go. I am caught in a feeling of needing to do Something Else, or More, than what I'm doing right in this moment.

Breathing, hiking in nature, and reading the affirmation, "My full attention is always enough" have helped. But my "full" attention is too often spread diffusely across a list of Something Else or More to do, rather than just this one task in front of me right now. I know I need to say to myself, "Never mind whether or not it will sell, never mind if it's "too late" to start marketing it, never mind if I don't know what to call it yet."

"Just do the one thing in front of me right now."

Just this.

Right now.

Using that mantra, I finished a whole blog post from beginning to end in less than one hour. Including finding a photo, uploading a related video, and composing all the written words.

How did I do it? I didn't worry about anything else that I could be, or should be, doing. I just wrote the damn blog post. I didn't worry about whether it would fit, who would like it or even read it, or more importantly, who would get pissed off about my being totally honest. I didn't worry about the Rules that say what you should write about, and whether keywords would match search engine optimization for my site.

I just wrote from my heart about what I'm experiencing right now in my life. Not what I think I "should" be experiencing, not trying to be a "role model" for anything, not putting pressure on myself to be "put together" and perfect. But being all of me, who right now is a little confused, a little challenged, a little faced with conflicting messages, a full schedule, a juggling act of balancing personal, professional, and just plain fun in my life.

That's what life is for me right now. And if I'm really calling myself a life coach, it's only fair for me to talk about what's really happening in my life. Right now.

For some strategies to help with the feeling of confusion, watch this video blog.

For how to strike a balance between confusion and action, see Part 2, to be published tomorrow...

Find Your Oneness, Find Your Passion: What I Learned From My First Monday Night Football Game

[singlepic id=255 w=320 h=240 float=center] I went to my first Monday Night NFL Football game this week. It was a very exciting opportunity to experience such a central piece of American pop culture, especially since I grew up in the Midwest in a football-watching family. My mom actually started getting interested in football as a result of wanting to feel included in her male coworkers' lunchtime conversations at the suburban Catholic hospital where she worked. For her studious dedication as a fan, she was rewarded with a Chicago Bears Super Bowl win in 1985 (Chicago 46, New England Patriots 10).

That was the last year I remember caring about football. This apathy continued for me throughout high school, college, and even in medical school at University of Michigan, where football is the closest thing to religion in the town. It did not earn me any popularity points at any of the schools I attended, since sports is the quasi-religion at most schools, athletes acting as demi-gods, and loyal fans as humble worshippers.

So, in my state of Being Open To Life, and Saying Yes, I went into Candlestick Park on Monday with an open heart and an open mind. What I noticed rushing in to all that open space were profanities. Adults yelling at other adults just because of the colors of the jerseys and hats they chose to wear. Adults telling other adults to "Go *%@& yourself!" in broad daylight, as if it were a completely acceptable and justifiable thing to do.

All in good fun, you might say.

Well, the loudness and general license to yell whatever-came-to-mind at whomever-happened-to-be-walking-by continued inside the stadium. In my state of openness, I felt very vulnerable, like I had stumbled into a warzone that I never meant to participate in.

I observed my own judgments come up, I felt my own discomfort at being around all the vicarious violence, and then I smiled at humanity. I noticed that throughout human history, every culture has had a means for its people to feel "at one" with something larger than themselves. Humans have an innate longing to gather, and to feel understood, and to express a group energy.

I looked around the bowl-shaped stadium and recalled my visit to the Coliseum in Rome. I watched the players dressed in helmets, body armor, and uniforms, and recalled a time when Roman citizens gathered by the tens of thousands to watch human gladiators battle ravenous animals, fighting to the death.

I also imagined tribal or indigenous island cultures creating ceremonies and rituals involving costume, dance, chanting, drumming, and roasting of animals for food. I noted how we "modern" civilizations tend to look at "primitive" cultures in a distanced, academic way, as if to say, "Aren't we lucky we've advanced beyond THAT?"

And right there, sitting in the stands of Candlestick Park, I felt a kind of oneness with humanity. I won't say that I got to a total state of equanimity, especially as I witnessed what I assumed were otherwise civilized adults arguing about the merits of standing versus sitting, a verbal altercation which ended in one of the men saying, you guessed it, "Why don't you go *%&^ yourself!"

But I did manage to find a Buddha-like source of joy in my heart to laugh, instead of cry, when the young man next to me, perhaps in his 20s, responded to the injury of the opposing team's player with the comment, "Yeah! Get him a stretcher! Take him off the field for the rest of the season! And amputate his leg while you're at it!"

I laughed not because I appreciated his comment. I laughed not because I joined in his disdain and free-flow remarks about another person just because he was wearing the jersey of the opposing team.

I laughed because I was observing yet another aspect of humanity.

We are one in our longing to feel a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves. I looked around and saw the colored jerseys, hats, seat cushions, and beer containers as modern-day versions of tribal costumes. I listened to the roars and rants from the crowd and heard them as modern-day chants and battle cries. I saw the entire Candlestick Park as the modern-day expression of what has united us throughout time as human beings and produced grandiose structures like cathedrals, temples, arenas, theaters, and even town squares -- our need to feel oneness with SOMETHING.

What I was really seeing around me was vicarious passion. As a society, we need fans as much as we need the players on the field. Just like musicians need listeners. It became clear to me as I was sitting in the stands that I am here to find my own playing field, and not to remain a fan.

So the question I was left with, since I was not converted into any more of a football fan after this than I was going in, was, "Where do I find my feeling of oneness? How do I experience the release that these football fans experience by gathering here?"

I have a sneaky suspicion that when I fully admit all the ways in which I connect with this place - the place where I truly feel my own oneness with a spirit larger than myself - I will have found my power and unique medicine to heal and serve the world in my lifetime.

Where do you feel your oneness? Where do you experience your own passionate expression? Observe yourself and you might find clues toward the life you were meant to live.

Here's another video taken from the stands, including my non-duality hat and T-shirt combination!

Photo credit: http://sf49erstickets.com

Original versus Cover Songs: So what's all the fuss about?

[singlepic id=253 w=320 h=240 float=center] One of the interesting versions of partisan politics I've noticed since joining the local open mic scene is between two apparently opposing camps in the music scene - those who play "original" songs versus those who play "covers". "Covers" is a term, uttered either under one's breath with a hint of shame (by the people playing them) or with a distinct tone of disdain and perhaps a spray of saliva on the "c" sound just for emphasis (by those staunch supporters of playing only originals), used to designate music composed by someone other than the performers themselves.

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This distinction is a foreign one for me since I grew up in the classical music world, where the Great Composers Of All Time were revered and respected as part of my musical education. Some of these Great Composers were Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, to name a few. I focused all of my attention on training and developing the technique required to execute the intentions conveyed in increasingly complex written notation, leading up to the Great Concertos. These were the truly epic compositions that required a tour de force of virtuosic technique and range of emotional expression imagined to be conveyed by the Great Composer.

There was no talk of writing music.

No conversations about "creating" our own compositions. I had never come into contact with any live person who wrote music. I met plenty of other violinists, who were soloists on the international circuit, or who were in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, or who taught at Northwestern University, or who were members of a Named Quartet, or who were conductors. That was my world.

We ALL played "cover songs".

I was surrounded by people whose world-class careers were made on their ability to interpret, perform, and bring alive the compositions of men whose creations have lived on for centuries. I learned to respect the art of specialization. I learned that there was enormous depth and expansiveness to the art of bringing life to written music through an instrument. By watching the very few artists who I considered truly great, having developed a seamless relationship with their instrument (Yo-Yo Ma and Anne-Sophie Mutter to name my favorites), I learned that a particular performer's rendition of the same song could make the difference between sitting through yet another classical music concert, and being totally transported to another realm.

So naturally, when I first began to hear about this imaginary "line in the sand" between "Those Who Do" and "Those Who Don't" play original songs, I was puzzled. When I first heard the question, "Do you play any originals?" I mistakenly thought that it was just curiosity. I was also confused because all of the parts I play on my violin right now are improvised, in other words, composed in the moment by me. With very few exceptions (two pieces right now, to be exact), I don't consult a chart or instructions beforehand, preferring to train my own listening presence and self-trust.

From my short time of being exposed to original singer/songwriters, I feel great awe and respect for people who can actually write great songs, with melodies, harmonies, rhythms, textures, lyrics, and emotion, AND perform them with conviction and connection with an audience.

But gradually I've learned that there is a dividing line in this particular corner of the music world, between the “Have”s and “Have Not”s. Certain open mics don't even allow acts who play cover songs. And the question, "Do you play originals?" is more a screening question for respect among the Lone Artist masses who make the rounds of open mics.

Does "original" necessarily mean more creative?

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My band, which plays acoustic renditions of songs originally written and performed for other instruments (electric or otherwise), is often relegated to the "covers" camp immediately, since we don't lead with the fact that we "write" our own songs. However, what we are doing is creativity in just as valid a form as any other. We build upon great music, we capture the essence of what we feel from that original music, and we make it our own. We create a great experience for our audiences through our particular instrumentation, layered with some improvisation and a healthy dose of passionate feeling (hence the name, "Melodrama"). Right now, we're building on the great writing and musical backbone of songs that came before us. And we're open to seeing where the creative process will take our music next.

At the end of the day, I believe that the "original" versus "covers" distinction is less important than the listener's experience. Did our audience enjoy the time spent with us? Will they tell their friends about us? Would they come to another show? Did we as musicians enjoy ourselves while we played? Did we find outward expression for an authentic feeling within us? These are the most important questions. (Just for the record, we are beginning to explore the creation of some "original" songs.)

On Sunday afternoon I went to see my friend perform in a play.

As I sat down in the small experimental theater, settling in to receive whatever the performance would bring me, it occurred to me that I would never ask an actor or actress whether they write their own material. The fact of the matter is, I don't care. A good performance of a good play written centuries ago is no better or worse than a good performance of a good "original" work from the present-day. The same goes for mediocre performances or mediocre writing. The combination of great material AND great performances is what makes a great audience experience.

So as a newcomer to this particular corner of the wide, wide musical world, I'm very content to focus on giving great performances of great material, whether or not it's written by someone I know or someone who's in the room. If I can connect convincingly with an underlying emotion in sound and reproduce that in my instrumental rendition of a piece of music, then I consider myself a musician. That's my original sound you're hearing.

And that's all I need to be right now.

Is living really as simple as being open to change?

"Truth is living, and therefore, changing." - Bruce Lee

I read that the other day and it shifted my thinking. It hit me like the ring of truth. Could it really be that simple? That living is simply changing? I recalled that the first piece of information that drew me into the field of life coaching was Martha Beck's Change Cycle. It was simple, yet no one had ever presented life as a cycle of change - meaning a continuous circular flow, not a straight line pointing in one direction.

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I also loved the image of caterpillar turning into butterfly. I had read Trina Paulus' little yellow book, Hope For the Flowers, many times over the past fifteen years, and it always resonated with me as the truth. That within each of us, when we are born, is the potential to transform, to fly, to be beautiful. That it also takes a single act of courage on each person's part, at some point in their caterpillar life, in order to make that transformation possible. Here's an excerpt, paraphrased from Trina Paulus' book:

"How does one become a butterfly?" asked the caterpillar.

"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."

"You mean to die?" asked the caterpillar.

"Yes and No...Life is changed, not taken away. Isn't that different from those who die without ever becoming butterflies?"

So isn't it interesting that our minds resist change.

Our bodies crave change and movement, but our minds crave solidity. Changing my mind used to be something I considered almost a crime. I stood by commitments with such fierce resolve that I could override most of the signals sent by my body. This made me great at staying up for 36 hours straight on call in the hospital, sitting in a desk for as long as it took to crank out a spreadsheet that satisfied my bosses in the financial world, and doing whatever it took to produce what I considered "perfection" in my violin students.

It did not, however, serve me well in bringing me happiness in my life, or a sense of peace in my heart. It did not help me notice the small things, acknowledge myself for tiny gains, or cut other people any slack when it came to honoring their differences or shortcomings.

The ability to adapt and change, to die many deaths within one lifetime, to flow with the current of our highest self and deepest truth, is simple, yet requires practice in order to become habit.

Today I am thankful for being more familiar with my own internal feelings of peace, joy and freedom than I was even a few months ago. Every day I grow in this capacity to recognize and rest in these feelings in my body. They are part of me now, and they have been waiting for me patiently my whole life. It was just up to me to learn how to access them.

So, ask yourself this: Have you changed your mind lately?

Give yourself a gift and try it today.

We become the best teachers of what we've struggled with...

In this video blog, I share some observations of first being with and then transforming my own self-criticism. I'm learning to accept myself in all situations, tuning into not only how I react when I'm accomplishing things, but also how I react when I experience an energy low or less productive moment.

Starting the day in reactivity versus creativity

So what happens when I start my day REACTING instead of CREATING? Here's my video blog (yes, I filmed while driving! Please don't try this at home...) with what I noticed about my day last Thursday...