Be The Change You Want To See In The World

Let’s talk about writing books that help change the world

Sharing yesterday's talk with Michael Redhead Champagne about his new book, We Need Everybody, and the process of writing books (or pursuing any kind of dream) that help to change the world.

This is AMAZING, so rich and inspiring.

Watch it on Instagram to leave your comments.

We Need Everyone is currently available as a pre-order. Get the info here.

Let’s talk about writing books that help change the world Read More »

How do we move towards unity with the world so divided?

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

Things are intense in Canada right now.

And one of the things that has felt distressing to me personally, is how we can no longer agree on what is a fact and what is not and that makes it really hard to even begin to have a conversation about how to find common ground.

There are no more gatekeepers in the media, and so everyone can choose the media that reflect their own biases. We can all feel like the media we choose is telling the truth and everyone else is biased. That's always been true but never to the same extent as now.

So, right now, for some people it feels like this amazing freedom rally went across the country and is fighting the communist Canadian government and standing up for freedom for all.

And some people, me included, feel like white nationalist groups, many of which are funded and organized from outside of our country, are occupying the capital, displaying white supremacist symbols, allowing thugs to run wild, assaulting people for wearing masks, committing so many hate crimes the police have no way of keeping up with the reports coming in and appropriating First Nations sacred items and practices in disgraceful ways.

And everyone has a cell phone. There is plenty video evidence to show what is happening on both sides.

Both of these things are happening.

I looked at some photos that the people who support this protest were sharing and I saw the love and unity that they saw. I saw how badly they want that, they are have been willing to "overlook a few bad apples" and keep supporting this movement, despite all of the controversy and reports of hate crimes.

We actually ALL want that. Unity and freedom and every opportunity to feel good.

But if we want our movements to be supported by everyone, we have to include everyone.

There was a ridiculously hostile happening on the social media accounts of my favourite doughnut shop this weekend. And supporters of the freedom rally were getting angry and saying "but we're fighting for YOUR freedom too" and that's when I saw it so clearly.

You can't angrily tell someone you are fighting for their freedom too.

If you truly are fighting for their freedom, you have to find out where they are not free. You can't project your own experience onto them and expect it to fit.

So the people in favour of the freedom rally feel oppressed in a specific way, and want to create freedom in a specific way.

And the people not in favour of it don't feel oppressed in that particular way, and the solution being presented by the freedom rally actually feels oppressive to many, even dangerous to some, or at the very least not helpful.

It's not the flavour of freedom I want. I agree with you that freedom is great! But this particular flavour of it actually doesn't taste like freedom at all, to me.

I wrote last week about how much I am loving couples therapy.

One of the things I've received from it that I love most is the life-changing magic of accepting things as they are.

For a person who has makes her living by helping people make their dreams happen - accepting things as they are is NOT a place where I thought I would find a lot of magic and healing.

However, the magic of accepting things as they are can be a vital tool for relationships because when applied right (I'm not talking about resigning yourself to having less than what you really want) it helps you make space to find common ground.

So I though about my experiences with that, and laid it over my thoughts about the freedom rally and.... oh.

We really all do want unity and freedom.

So the only effective way to go about it is to take an intersectional approach and find out what that means for everyone.

Hold space for what every single person wants here. *There is a HUGE caveat to this of course and I'll come back to that.

Even though many people will want the exact opposite of what others want, and the wants will conflict in ways that make it seem impossible that we can ever come together.

That's where we apply the life-changing magic of accepting things as they are. In accepting what other people want, too.

You don't have to agree, to accept.

How can we make space for being aware of and accepting of what other people want?

How can we assume that other people have valid reasons for wanting what they want?

It really shifts the way the you look at it, and creates space where new possibilities can emerge.

Conflicting wants and desires actually CAN all be held together.

When you can sit with WHAT IS.

Even when it's uncomfortable.

Even when there are no solutions in sight:

You want an end to the mandates now.

I want the mandates to stay in place, and get better (with more forms of support for everyone) until the pandemic has subsided to the point where our most vulnerable people are as safe as they were pre-pandemic.

(Ideally I'd love for the pandemic to have taught us about what vulnerable people go through in our society, recognize that they're not vulnerable by nature but MADE vulnerable by the way organize our culture, and make some changes, but that's a bigger topic)

Clearly, these two wants conflict directly and it appears that we can't both have what we want.

And we can both point to information and ways of seeing the world that completely invalidate the other person's point of view.

But what if we don't?

What if we see the pain everyone is in right now?

What if we recognize that we're all acting out of our trauma responses because living through a global pandemic is traumatizing?

What if we just stay there for a minute, without any solutions at all?

I don't see another way of coming to any kind of unity.

Not that I see solutions right now, but I see this as a way to move towards them.

Back to: We need to hold space for what every single person wants here.

***Except for the white nationalists and nazis who have been given carte blanch to run around committing hate crimes for over a week in Ottawa.

If your values include the oppression of other groups of people, there is no room for you in unity.

Unity can't be ALL peace and love and rising above and saying "we're all welcome here" while turning a blind eye to the hate crimes. It's an EXTREMELY privileged stance to allow these people in your movement and give them the opportunity to do harm.

While I recognize that all people are, at their core, good - if people are so disconnected from who they really are that they're waving nazi flags, threatening rape and murder to people who chose to wear masks, throwing rocks into windows in apartment buildings that have pride flags on them (all documented events that are happening at the rally in Ottawa) - then good people can't unify with them.

You can hold space for them to get better - if they want to.

But hate can't be a part of unity.

Unity needs judicious boundaries.

And if you're feeling like "oh no I can't dis-include people from the movement" please think about how well you are including people who have been the victims of all of these hate crimes.

The presence of hate groups means everyone can't be safely included.

So you do have to choose: groups of people who actively want to destroy other people or everybody else?

But once you've done that, some form of unity has got to be possible.

In truth we are all one.

How do we move towards unity with the world so divided? Read More »

Join me! Celebrating + Supporting the new book for young dreamers: We Need Everyone ❤️

 

Micheal will leave you motivated, inspired, and ready for action.

Michael Redhead Champagne, born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, is an award-winning community organizer, public speaker, and a proud member of Shamattawa First Nation. Michael believes we all have a gift and shows youth the path to discover their own. He is solution oriented and passionate about building system literacy, encouraging volunteerism, and engaging communities to be involved in the design, delivery, and evaluation of any initiative that affects them.

He's also been a HUGE source of inspiration to me for the last 12 years.

I am so excited to go on Instagram Live with him and talk about the making of this book:

We Need Everyone. (<--- follow that link to get your copy!)

This is a children's book and it is a celebration of our many gifts!

We'll go live on Instagram at 2pm (Central, North America) on February 7.

If you go to my Instagram account on your phone (doesn't work from a computer) you can sign up there to get a notification when we go live.

Join me! Celebrating + Supporting the new book for young dreamers: We Need Everyone ❤️ Read More »

This is the path to a better world

This is how we create a better world

Photo by Sparks Reliance on Unsplash

We're all plugged into systems - ways of being, ways of thinking, ways of feeling, ways of doing - that are not in alignment with our values.

This is just a part of what it means to be alive at this time.

There's the dream that we can just rise above. Just don't focus on the hard stuff. Be happy and free.

This is what the Life Your Best Life Industry has been selling for so long. The idea that we can change our thinking about ourselves, go after our dreams, and that this contributes to making the world better.

And I have felt that way in the past.

Feeling good about making money and then using that money to support the things I want to see in the world.

Feeling like that's somehow enough to transform entrenched systems of patriarchy, white supremacy and colonialism in our capitalist society. And not learning enough about how these systems actually function to know, for sure, what it would take to transform them.

AT THE SAME TIME

Of course I believe that every dream made real contributes to making the world better.

HOWEVER

When talk about dreams, I am talking about something very specific. I am talking to listening to your inner truth. FOLLOWING your inner truth. Living your values, in a meaningful way.

I'm not talking about winning the lottery and buying a Greek island and living happily ever after. Or building a 6 figure online business in 3 months.

I am talking about something much deeper - which of course can result in big businesses and Greek islands but more often is not so flashy.

The work it takes to hear your heart's desires and act on them is the work that grows you.

No one like to grow up. No one likes to take responsibility. Everyone likes to avoid discomfort.

And - in general - this Live Your Best Life Industry is going shallow when we need to go deep. Spiritual by-pass instead of growing up.

Manifesting big bucks instead of sitting honestly with our feelings, our behaviour, the state of the world and what we might be able to contribute to improving it.

We need to do better.

Because you are a part of the earth. So your true heart's desires are not going to contribute to climate collapse.

Living your values would have you actively supporting a livable future for everyone.

You are a part of humanity. So your true heart's desires don't contribute to the oppression of other humans.

Living your values would have you caring about everyone having a good life, not just you and yours. Living your values would have you looking for ways to show up and BE the change.

But we're so tangled up in colonial ways of thinking, in unconscious white supremacy, in capitalism, that these systems are infecting our dreams and making us feel discouraged and like the idea that a society where EVERYONE has EVERYTHING they need is preposterous.

It's not.

We need to get free. Truly free.

Not by thinking positive and letting go of everything that holds us back.

By making space to really hear our deepest inner truth, to really hear what our hearts are calling us towards - beyond all the ways we've been brainwashed by colonization and capitalism - and then getting our lives into alignment with our deepest inner truth.

AKA by creative dreaming.

This is one of the paths that lead to a better world.

This is the path to a better world Read More »

Is the New Age/Wellness/Live Your Best Life Industry worth saving?

I have been accused of being overly critical.

But it's BECAUSE of how much I see the good and potential of the New Age/Wellness/Live Your Best Life Industry, that I can't turn a blind eye to the bad.

For every white person who found it empowering to just focus on the positive and not let the news (AKA reality) get them down, how many Black, Indigenous and People of Colour who couldn't see beyond the blind privilege of that approach were shamed for not being more spiritually evolved? And them had to process those feelings ON TOP OF all the ways systemic racism makes life harder for racialized people?

For every person who's NEVER experienced a serious health issue who could feel empowered by the idea of "I am responsibility for the state of my health. I create a healthy body with healthy thoughts." how many people with disabilities or chronic illness felt shamed, blamed, and like they were not positive enough, and so deserved their symptoms? And them had to process those feelings ON TOP OF their health challenges and ON TOP OF all the ways our culture makes life harder when you have any kind of challenge?

Also - given that underlying victim-blaming attitude - how many organizations were truly open to meeting everyone's accessibility needs?

(I say this knowing that the Creative Dream Incubator is NOT a role model for meeting everyone's accessibility needs)

I mean, personally, I was fat shamed as a normal part of any kind of "healing experience" I attended in the New Age community. Even though I never once brought up the subject of how I felt about my body, I was told repeatedly that if I would just love myself, the weight would be gone.

No one, not even once, asked about my blood pressure or blood sugar reports - more accurate measurements of health than weight.

No one, not even once, asked me how I felt about my size. I feel good! I eat healthy, I exercise, I LOVE carbs, I have the metabolism that I have, and I'm enjoying my life.

All of the shitty things about the culture we live in, now live in the culture we created in the New Age.

But then we added some extra layers of blaming and shaming because we use the "your thoughts create your reality" concept from a place of blind privilege AND a complete political disconnection to the realities of the world - which IS actively encouraged as a way of "focusing on the positive".

A LOT has already been said about that complete disconnection from politics made it possible for the far right Q Anon conspiracy theories to take such a strong hold in the new age. And there are some really eye-opening ideas about how the new age was founded on white supremacist principles, that once you see it, it's hard to un-see it. (If you want to know more - conspirituality is a good place to start )

It's because I believe so completely in the potential of our creative power that I speak out about this.

I believe we can do better.

My hope, with everything happening politically in Canada right now as we continue to discover more children's bodies buried under former residential school grounds, is that we use this time as an opportunity for RADICAL DECOLONIZATION.

We, white Canadians who have been so gifted at turning a blind eye, are being faced with the reality of what colonization is.

It is my hope that we open our eyes, be present to how violent and destructive colonization is, and become actively engaged in the process of truth and reconciliation to stop the violence.

It's because I believe so completely in the potential of our creative power that I know we can do this.

If your healing tools and practices are not sturdy enough to allow you to be present with the real pain of the world - you need to upgrade your tools and practices.

(Dream Book can help you do this, and process the layers of feelings that come up as you AND get more clear about wha you want to DO in response to what you learn - our members are doing amazing work at confronting privilege and cultural appropriation and finding better ways to do things)

Spiritual bypass tools are not going to get us where we need to go next.

All they can do is help individuals feel more comfortable leaning into their privilege to "feel good now" while we watch the whole world get destroyed. Which isn't even hyperbole at this point.

Colonial culture is violently oppressing and destroying Indigenous people every day. But it won't stop there. It will destroy us all, by continuing to squeeze every penny out of resource extraction until most of this planet is no longer livable for humans.

It's because I believe so completely in the potential of our creative power that I know we can create a whole new world.

One of the ways I have most benefitted from learning anti-racism and taking actions outside of my comfort zone, is how my perspective has shifted to include seeing that there are so many more solutions that it seems like there are.

When we stop seeing the world from our own places of privilege, whatever they may be, and instead learn to see from the perspective of those with the least privilege, so much opens up.

Making the world work better for people with less mobility makes it easier to navigate for people with more mobility.

Since the majority of my readers are women - I think you can see that if we eradicated sexism everywhere and made the world safer and more supportive for women - this would benefit men as well.

Following that logic, making the world safer and more supportive for trans and non-binary people would serve all of us in ways we can't even currently see. I mean can you even imagine a world where your gender doesn't determine ANYTHING about who you are or what your potential is? It goes beyond the end of the "pink tax".

This works for literally every marginalized community.

And that's why all of this matters: Because we can get to a better world - but only if we don't leave anyone out.

And the New Age, with the blaming and shaming and blind use of privilege and spiritual bypassing, leaves a lot of people out.

It's time to do better.

Is the New Age/Wellness/Live Your Best Life Industry worth saving? Read More »

Creative Dreaming In a Broken World

Creative Dreaming In a Broken World

I often feel dismayed by the state of the world and too small to do anything about any of our larger problems.

It's a weird combination of angry and overwhelmed and exhausted and determined to DO SOMETHING without knowing WHAT to do and sometimes it causes me to spiral a bit.

I STOP the spiral and I STOP feeling so small when I focus on doing what I CAN do - using the unique gifts that I have, to do my part, to make the world better.

But where is the line between using my privilege to stay in a bubble of positivity to avoid looking at the brokenness of the world, and getting so lost is how the brokenness of the world breaks my heart, that I end up unable to do anything?

Intersectionality is key to building a better world, while we build our own dreams.

"Using your creative gifts to offer something helpful to the world" is the MOST common dream people have who work with me.

This looks like a lot of different things - books published, coaching programs developed, non-profits created, bodies of work painted... but at the core it's this same thing, of using your unique gifts to help shine a light.

While we are using our gifts to help others - we HAVE TO be seeing from beyond our own perspectives and privileges.

Otherwise, the things we create with our dreams only help reinforce the systems of oppression that we live in.

We can see this in what happened with the "make money online" world.

In 2009 this was an open, level playing field where anyone with great ideas to share was suddenly given a platform. It was the democratization of media and it had the potential to change everything.

Today? It's this weird late stage capitalist influencer culture where lots of great ideas are buried while really stupid things get elevated. Just like the old media.

We re-created all of the old problems in this new playing field.

Which is why, for me, as a white person, it's been important to be really deeply LEARNING what white supremacy is and all the forms of systemic injustice it creates. And how that intersects with other forms of systemic injustice.

Because until I can see it, I am re-creating it in whatever I create.

That's why I talk about it so much.

We are unknowingly hooked in to the myriad of oppressive systems that we live inside of, and we drag them with us everywhere we go until we learn to see them for what they are.

Following your creative dream is about getting FREE.

The work of dreaming IS getting free of the things, inside and outside of you, that hold you back, so that you can BE who you really ARE and CREATE what you are here to CREATE.

You can't actually get FREE of things that you are unconsciously hooked into, without learning to see the hooks.

This has been a theme in my recent blog posts: everything you avoid weakens you, everything you face strengthens you. As long as you're using spiritual bypass as a tool, you are building your dreams on shaky ground.

We need to walk that line, to be present with the world as it is while we hold the vision for a better future.

Your creativity has purpose.

Your dreams have purpose.

We can build a better world.

Still, some days, when I look all of the problems in the world - this work I am doing feels VERY small.

But then I think about each time a member of Dream Book has published a work of art or book or created a coaching program that has helped seed new ideas into our culture to shift consciousness.

And I think about how each person who is actively doing this work of GROWING into their dream and ALIGNING with their inner truth impacts the people around them.

Honestly, it still feels small, in light of everything in the world.

But it feels IMPORTANT.

It feels like me doing my part.

Creative Dreaming In a Broken World Read More »

How to move beyond spiritual bypass and lean into your true power to heal and create – and why you want to. (With journal prompts!)

How to move beyond spiritual bypass and lean into your true power to heal and create - and why you want to. (With journal prompts!)

About my post from last week on how Love & Light are used as New Age gaslighting....

Being uncomfortable about other people having human feelings is generally a sign that we are not allowing OURSELVES to have our feelings.

And it's not a crime. It doesn't make you a bad person.

But it does make it harder for you to heal, grow, and create more of what you want in your life.

If does make it harder for you to be the change you want to see in the world.

Because everything you avoid has power over you. Everything you face strengthens you.

We are powerful! We are healers and artists and world-changers.

We can look hard things in the eye BECAUSE we believe in our power to do better.

BUT the New Age/Wellness/Live Your Best Life culture is RIFE with spiritual by-pass.

PLUS it's human nature to want to avoid discomfort.

If you think of a spectrum between:

[full on facing everything like a boss, healing and growing through very little obstacle in your way]

and

[#goodvibesonly I won't acknowledge anything negative and will even shame others for "being negative"]

recognize that we move around on this spectrum all the time.

Self awareness helps!

Reflecting on your own tendencies to bypass helps you be more aware of when and how and why you do this, so you can make more empowered choices.

So here we go...

The journal prompts. How do you know if you are really healing the thing or attempting to spiritual bypass the thing?

 

What happens when a life event knocks you down and you're right up against the thing again (the thing you thought you'd healed)?

Has it changed at all? Or are you up against the exact same thing?

We talk a lot about the healing path being a spiral. But is it?

Are you really seeing your issue in a new light?

Or are you just coming back up against this thing because you haven't actually dealt with it?

Are you sure?

What makes you sure?

If something has changed about how you are engaging with this thing: what is it, specifically?

Are you reacting in the same way that you used to? Don't focus on how you feel, it's easy to "feel like" you're seeing this from a more evolved place. Look at your behaviour. How has it changed?

Spiritual bypass keeps things VERY vague and a LOT can hide in vagueness. So get specific.

You are drawing from your true power to heal and create when you can be specific and clear and un-flinching. Especially when you're dealing with the things you really struggle with.

If you've been using spiritual by-pass as a tool, it will be VERY uncomfortable to lean into your true power instead. You will try to stay vague to get out of the discomfort of facing the thing you don't want to face.

Take the discomfort as a good sign.

And stay with it.

Remember that there is a POWER in being able to face the hard stuff head on, including BEING WITH the feelings that it brings up.

This is the inner work.

It's in processing your feelings about the obstacles where you find the fuel that will help you get beyond the obstacle.

You find your power.

You find whole new ways of seeing the thing, which give you a plethora of new options for how to handle it. You tap into your INFINITE source of creativity which can generate INFINITE solutions.

Because everything you avoid has power over you. Everything you face strengthens you.

I think it's just obvious that your healing and growth tools should STRENGTHEN you.

Which means they won't necessarily make you feel better right in the moment.

Which is why the New Age/Wellness/Live Your Best Life Industry is so FULL of tools that rely on spiritual by-pass.

Which gets confusing.

This is how I handle it:

Inner Work is uncomfortable.

Working with your dream feels good. It's creative and hopeful and casts a bright light.

So the trick is to COMBINE this Inner Work with the Dream Work. And then combine both with the Outer Work of pursuing your creative projects and making changes in your life.

That way it's not just you and your discomfort - you're bringing in light and healing and magic and creativity and possibility to the process.

You are seeing - AND USING - the benefits of the Inner Work right away. This makes it easier to KEEP GOING.

This is the work that will grow your dreams, but it's also what will save us all.

(And yes - this is what I teach, and what we do together side-by-side, in Dream Book)

How to move beyond spiritual bypass and lean into your true power to heal and create – and why you want to. (With journal prompts!) Read More »

Love & Light as New Age Gaslighting

love and light as new age gaslighting

One of Peter Nygard's buildings burnt down, on the day of the full moon in October.

Peter Nygard, a well documented serial rapist and sex trafficker, who at the time of writing this was custody here in Winnipeg (he has since been moved to Toronto), had an apartment in this building which had been his home here for the last 40 years (though he also has homes elsewhere in the province and the world - most notably the private island in the Bahamas where he lured and trapped his victims).

That building is not too far from my home and I woke up to the smell of smoke that morning.

When I found out what the fire was about, it was satisfying to know his only home in my city was burning to the ground. It felt like just rewards but it also felt like "thank God that monster doesn't have a home here anymore" even though he is an old man and even with the most lenient sentencing, I don't believe he'll ever be out of jail.

So I shared the news article about this on my personal Facebook page.

Which always sparks discussion, especially here in Winnipeg where he was from. THIRTY YEARS AGO I was taking fashion tech classes and being warned about him by my teachers, because he is the biggest employer in this city in the fashion industry and as a young woman, if I was going to work for him I had to be careful.

Women have been warning other women about predators for so long.

Meanwhile, our culture nurtures them.

This man amassed a fortune that gave him the opportunity, resources and power to traffic women internationally for over thirty years.

This is insane.

We all know this.

It feels so hopeful to see the tides begin to turn, to see this man in custody.

And this reckoning is BIG. Much bigger than this one predator.

And it sparks A LOT.

It's totally normal to feel.... feelings. Grief or anger or joy that he is caught, or fear or terror.

It's also normal to go numb and not want to feel anything.

This is BIG and our feelings about it may also be BIG. They may feel like more than we can handle.

This is a healing process that is feels personal and collective at the same time.

And it's political. Like most healing is.

My business is the Creative Dream Incubator, my expertise is helping creative people navigate the inner and outer growth it takes to pursue a dream.

And this is a part of it.

Because we don't dream in a vacuum, we dream in this world. In this sick culture that allows horrific things to go on and on and on and on.

One part of working with our dreams is saying NO to the ways this culture wants to tell you who you are, and what you are capable of.

This is on a personal level like if your 3rd grade teacher said you're not that good at art and to this day your inner critic uses that as fuel to stop you from being the artist that you are.

And it's on a collective level like this agreement we seem to have that it's ok for women to not be fully safe in this world.

And then that collective also impacts you personally. And the ways it impacts you personally CAN cause you to uphold these sick agreements.

Like - they feed each other. In so many ways on so many levels.

One of the ways this happens in the New Age Community is where we gaslight each other with Love & Light.

So when I shared my post about Peter Nygard - and I wasn't even sharing GLEE about his home burning down, just that it felt right to me - an old friend from the new age community I used to be a part of (someone I hadn't seen in at least 11 years) came in to let me know that I shouldn't "stoop to his level" by sharing this, that I must be "spiritually disconnected" and that we need to "remain loving and trust those powers to be just."

This is really where the New Age goes with this Love & Light as gaslighting - the idea that sharing the news that this building burned down and feeling like this is his just rewards is somehow equal to over thirty years of international sex trafficking and serial rape.

I mean.

The New Age, in it's fear of human beings having human feelings, is DANGEROUS. This is exactly the attitude that ALLOWS sex trafficking to go on for over 30 years.

Also, to remain calm and loving in the face of abuse is more likely a trauma response than spiritual enlightenment.

The New Age Community never had the skills to handle human beings having human feelings because - as I have written about before here, here and here - it's all cherry-picked culturally appropriated practices taken entirely out of context.

We need to make space for our feelings. This is what helps us be fully human. This is what helps us BE as powerful as we actually ARE. Avoiding weakens us, facing strengthens us.

We need to not try to gaslight other people who are having feelings. We need to recognize that they are strong enough to deal with their feelings, work through then, and come out even stronger on the other side.

If you feel you can't handle your feelings - by all means get help. I know therapy is expensive, you can also seek out other forms of support, like a lot of women's centres and community centres have free support groups.  Or get some books from the library about trauma.  Don't trust everyone who calls themselves "trauma informed" to actually BE trauma informed, but get in there, start learning so you can face and heal your traumas that stop you from being able to handle your feelings.

Being "spiritually evolved" so you don't have to feel your feelings is NOT healthy. Not for you or for our culture. And it actually stifles your dreams.

One of the ways we change the culture is by doing our own work, by learning how to be our true selves out loud in the world.

This is the "big umbrella dream" that ALL other dreams fall under: Everything that calls you, everything you wish for, is a piece of this puzzle of what it means for you to truly be YOU - free of all the ways this world has tried to change you or cage you.

Being your true self out loud is complex and multi-facted but one part of it is definitely being a human being with human feelings.

This does NOT mean throwing them at other people or using your feelings as an excuse for poor behaviour or getting stuck or lost in your feelings.

Allowing your feelings means congruence. Honesty. WHOLENESS.

Of course you're angry sometimes.

Of course you're sad sometimes.

Of course you feel righteous sometimes.

These are human feelings and appropriate responses to the things we encounter in this world.

Love & Light as New Age Gaslighting Read More »

In a meditation last week, I saw how my own relationship with my inner power got thrown this last year and a half.

power meditation

In this meditation I saw how my inner relationship with my power could use some work, to bring it back into alignment.

I saw how this will make EVERYTHING easier: like meeting my business goals for this year and putting my new guided journals out there, but also just having a fun life outside of work too.

Our world is profoundly messed up when it comes to power.

It feels like our power gets taken from us by these huge systems we live in, like capitalism, white supremacy, the patriarchy, and also in smaller ways all the time.

Like we don't have the power to CHOOSE who and how we want to be.

And sometimes we really DON'T.

And sometimes we really DO, but we don't see it.

Calling your power back is about being more powerful in how you show up for yourself.

This makes it easier to live your outer life in alignment with your inner truth.

I originally did The Superpower Creative Journal Class in 2014, and in that meditation the other day I was given the message to do it again.

I was shown how I need this POWER-UP for myself so I can meet my goals for the rest of 2021.

So I decided to do it as a group thing, because I am sure I am not the only one who needs this right now.

The Superpower Journal Class is a deep-dive energy healing of your relationship with power. With creative play and glitter markers.

It's an energy-shifting healing circle, with a guided journal full of processes to help you HOLD ON to that shift, and bring it into how you life your life.

 

It's happening August 24 at 1:00 pm  Central, North America.

To find out what time this is in your time zone, use this link. Enter the above date + time and for location choose Canada: Manitoba: Winnipeg. Then, under place to convert to - put your location.

Included in the class: 90 minute live Zoom class + the recording, 28 page printable guided journal and mandala colouring book.

Here's what you'll need:

  • 90 minutes to listen the class or attend live (you may want more time to keep journaling afterwards, or you can come back to it another day)
  • Computer/phone/tablet with internet connection to listen the audio class
  • Printed copy of the Superpower Journal Playbook (or you can keep it on your computer/phone/tablet and do the journaling in your favourite journal)
  • TOTALLY OPTIONAL: Art supplies for getting creative with your journaling - use whatever you like, all you really need is a pen and paper.

The Superpower Creative Journal is only open to members of Dream Book.

You can join us for this class (which is worth way more than the monthly subscription cost of Dream Book) and totally ignore everything else - or you can use this as a change to check out Dream Book and see if it's right for you.

If you've got some dreams and goals to catch up on before the end of the year. Dream Book will help.

In a meditation last week, I saw how my own relationship with my inner power got thrown this last year and a half. Read More »

When you’ve been accused of cultural appropriation in your spiritual, wellness or coaching business

Photo by Content Pixie on Unsplash

You've been accused of cultural appropriation in your spiritual, wellness, or coaching business.

You have nothing but good intentions.

You don't know why people are being so mean about it.

Everything you try to do seems to make it worse.

And you're not sure what to do next.

Your reaction is normal.

Notice how you are feeling, notice where those feelings are in your body.

If you feel afraid, ashamed, angry, defensive, righteous....

If your skin feels hot.

If your blood pressure has risen.

If you are breathing fast and shallow.

Just notice everything that's happening in your body. Notice the thoughts that are repeating in your mind. Notice your reaction.

You need to give yourself space for this, or else you'll react from your reaction and that will make everything worse.

You're a wellness practitioner or a coach. You have tools. Use them.

What do you need to do, to soothe yourself and come back to center?

Do it now.

You need to be grounded, centred, and able to listen to perspectives that are vastly different than yours.

You need to open your heart wide enough to see the pain you've caused.

At this point, you probably still want to focus on explaining your good intentions.

I promise - this is NOT the time to explain your good intentions. Trying to do that WILL make this worse for you.

You have an opportunity here.

This situation can help you grow and learn how to become an ally to the people you respect enough to honour their traditions or practices in the way you are doing.

I understand - you had good intentions, you meant to honour, but people are saying you are NOT honouring, you are appropriating.

This is an opportunity for you to learn what it would look like to ACTUALLY honour, in a way that those you are honouring FEEL honoured.

The temptation for most healers/guides/coaches at this point is to go into spiritual bypass.

I promise you, your answer is here on earth. Stay with us.

DO NOT speak of "one race" or unity or anything along those lines.

The fact is, the people you have been accused of appropriating from have a VASTLY different life experience than you have because white people are treated differently in the world. Calls for unity erase these realities, erase the pain and suffering and oppression of racism.

Which means: ANYTHING you say calling for unity is actually violent. It's a dismissal of other people's pain. A refusal to acknowledge the reality of what systemic racism does to people.

And, to the people who experience that pain every day, it really makes you look like a clueless ass.

Do better.

This morning, I had an email from one of my students saying "Hey thanks for those new videos you posted yesterday, I am finding them helpful! But I think you uploaded the 7th one twice, so the 8th one is actually missing."

It's true. I made a mistake. I somehow ended up with 2 copies of the 7th video and named them 7 and 8, and then uploaded them that way, and now this person is watching the same video twice.

I said "Thanks for letting me know! You're right, video 8 IS just a copy of video 7! I have fixed it. You can watch the real video 8 now, here it is."

If this person had mentioned in their email that not being able to see video 8 right way had caused pain in any way, of course I would have added an apology and asked what I could do, besides uploading the correct video, to make amends.

We all mess up sometimes. Then we apologize and make amends.

It was easy for me to quickly make amends in the case of the missing 8th video because I didn't have any kind of emotional reaction to what I was accused of.

I didn't waste any time in "HOW FUCKING DARE YOU? I DID NOT UPLOAD THE SAME VIDEO TWICE!!!!!"

I didn't feel attacked, and then react from that feeling and set out to attack my accuser.

No drama was created.

When you've been accused of cultural appropriation online I know it FEELS like something different. It FEELS like being ganged up on and "cancelled".

But really, it's just people letting you know that you made a mistake and your actions are actually doing harm.

Continue to notice if you feel charged, and do your work to calm yourself.

White people respond is VERY similar ways to accusations of cultural appropriation and racism. (You can google it, it's called White Fragility and I promise, everything you want to say to your online accusers is covered there in the descriptions of white fragility responses.)

This is because our nervous systems get activated.

We're afraid.

We feel attacked.

And we attack back.

In the Live Your Best Life Industry, we tend to attack back with spiritual by-pass - all the unity talk and accusing your accusers of "being triggered" and "needing healing" and "I'll pray for you" while placing yourself on some kind of spiritual by-pass pedestal where actually you did nothing wrong.

Accept that you made a mistake.

Cultural appropriation contribues to systemic oppression.

This is because cultural appropriation is NOT just about you honouring or being inspired by a thing from another culture and then taking it and using it in your business.

Cultural appropriation happens within colonial systems that oppress the Indigenous population while supporting the non-Indigenous population.

For example, in Canada and the USA traditional Indigenous spiritual practices were made illegal, as a part of the process of colonization. Those who continued, had to do so at great cost to themselves. Even today, the path of a traditional medicine person is about a million times more difficult than the path of a white online coach or healer.

While those laws are no longer in effect, their effects are still very much in effect.

For non-Indigenous people to come along, and do nothing to help Indigenous people mitigate those effects, and just take the spiritual practices and sell them themselves...

Are you seeing it now?

There is no such thing as Cultural Appreciation. The opposite of cultural appropriation is COLLABORATION.

In this industry, most forms of cultural appropriation are about profiting from the theft and colonization of Indigenous practices.

This is particularly hurtful because the Indigenous groups where the practices come from are still living under the oppression of colonization.

Journal prompts for when you've been accused of cultural appropriation:

Continue to do your work to calm your nervous system, not get emotionally reactive, and consider each of these questions with an open mind:

What is your relationship with the culture you are taking this thing from?

How would it feel to speak, face to face, to a person from this culture, and explain why you are selling this thing? Do you believe that they have had the same privileges in life that would allow them to sell this thing as easily as you can? If they are not making money from this but you are, what would you tell them about why that is?

If this person historically lived on the lands that you now occupy, what do you know about how this land came to be yours? What do you know of how this has impacted the original inhabitants who are still here?

Do you understand the full history of the thing you've taken? How was it originally used? What was the culture around it? How is your culture different?

How are you participating in the healing, decolonization, empowerment, and liberation of the culture you are taking this thing from?

Does the way you are offering this thing contribute anything to the people that you took it from?

Continue to do your work to calm your nervous system and read everything that's been said to you. Where did you make a mistake? Of course you had good intentions, but as you read what's been said to you, are you truly understanding the IMPACT of your actions?

If you want to be spiritual about it: this situation IS happening for a reason.

That reason is to contribute to YOU waking up.

Instead of culturally appropriating - you could be COLLABORATING.

And using your good intentions to make amends and build bridges.

This is a part of the work that builds a better world.

I know you do the work you do because you believe in a better world.

And I hope you trust me when I say: the places where you are culturally appropriating are your blind spots and they're stopping you from being an effective helper in creating a better world.

As white people growing up in white supremacy, we're all hooked into it's power.

Un-hooking is the REAL waking up.

This accusation is your opportunity to begin. I hope you take it.

When you’ve been accused of cultural appropriation in your spiritual, wellness or coaching business Read More »

Resilience, Canada Day and Creating a World Where We Can All Pursue Our Creative Dreams

Revolution of the Heart art by Isaac Murdoch

Art by Isaac Murdoch

I was reading Micheal Redhead Champagne's blog post about The Resiliency Trap.

I love Micheal and have always seen him as a remarkably resilient person. And so this really hit me:

But the way resilience is often used in academics and media is so problematic, I warn that when we only focus on how strong people are, we ignore the many challenges they should never have had to overcome in the first place!

My automatic view is to see Micheal as remarkably resilient because I don't know what I would have been as strong or brave or upbeat as I see him being, if faced with the same circumstances.

I mean automatic as in - that's how I see it before I really sit with my thoughts. It's just my automatic way of seeing him.

We're not really to blame for our automatic ways of seeing things.

However, this response isn't helpful just like lots of our automatic responses are not helpful. So it's good to challenge ourselves, look deeper, and see where we can create new ways of seeing the world.

Resiliency has been on my mind a lot lately.

At one session with my therapist, she asked how I had been doing and I said "I'm just so disappointed by my lack of resilience"

And, in the emotional state I was in at the time, I thought she would say something like "Oh that's tough, let's look at how we can get you better resourced to be more resilient"

But instead, her face fell. She looked sad and said "Oh Andrea, it makes me so sad to hear that you don't think you are resilient."

She challenged my belief around how resilient I should be and offered a new perspective:

Everything has just been so fucking hard lately do I really need to make it harder by judging myself for not measuring up to my own standards?

I am crying a little as I write this as I hit that place in me that DOES judge me when I don't measure up.

I did NOT handle the pandemic in the way I had hoped I would.

I got depressed. I got lethargic. I was frustrated and snappy with my husband. I put things off. I ate a lot of chips. I watched a lot of Netflix.

At the same time: I kept my business running and helped so many people stay in touch with themselves and their dreams in a hard time, I offered healing + support to everyone in Dream Book, I made a whole free class on self care in the pandemic,I helped my step-son finish grade 9, I got AMAZING at making pizza from scratch, after being intimidated to try to bake with year I became really good at making bagels, baguettes and crispy artisan rolls, I worked on my dream project which is now almost finished - I did a lot.

I can see it that I wasn't very resilient or I can see it that I was super resilient.

But I'd rather move away from judging and measuring at all. And I want to bring it back to Micheal's post about The Resiliency Trap.

Because focusing on my level of resilience, measuring it in any way, IS the trap.

And this is why I've started writing so much more about politics in the last 4 years.

Because it's not right that we have so many obstacles to overcome in order to listen to our intuition and get our outer lives into alignment with our inner truths. And it's not right that different people have different levels of obstacles.

And ALL of the systems that make it hard for us to be true to ourselves need to be torn down.

Your dream is calling you towards your true self, it's asking you to live your truth and showing you the way to get there.

All of the internal obstacles you face - the fear and self doubt and the places where you hold back and don't believe in yourself - these were created because you live in a sick culture.

As Micheal said - these are challenges you never should have had to overcome in the first place.

Now he is speaking to the colonial systems that cause inter-generational harm.

And when I say that I want to live in a world where no one feels self doubt because we are properly nurtured and nourished that includes everything he is talking about.

And this is why I've been so frustrated by the Live Your Best Life Industry's "I don't want to get political" "I can't read mainstream media it's too negative" head-in-the-sand approach.

A guaranteed liveable income, safe affordable housing, free quality ACCESSIBLE mental and physical health care, a green economy and Indigenous sovereignty are the building blocks of creating a culture where we are all free to pursue our dreams.

Otherwise, you are leaving out everyone who doesn't have a certain amount of money and privilege in this white supremacist patriarchy colonization culture.

And you're leaving all of these harmful systems intact.

We are all connected.

Our dreams are all connected.

We need each other.

Our dreams need each other's dreams.

And it feels like most of the Live Your Best Life Industry just doesn't care enough about marginalized people to want to fight systemic injustice for their sake. Like it's not worth climbing down from their "high vibe".

They'd rather celebrate people like Micheal who overcame so much, in ways which cast aspersions on everyone who DIDN'T rise above debilitating system injustice.

So maybe they can consider that systemic injustice is hurting them, too? Maybe that would get them to care and get involved? Because our dreams need each other's dreams.

None of us are truly free until we are all free.

You know what I think is TRULY positive, powerful and empowering?

Facing the truth.

Calling things what they are.

Shining a light on where our culture does harm.

Looking for ways to support the people who are out there actively fighting systemic injustice to create a better world.

This is what's on my mind this Canada Day. I think Cancel Canada Day is SO NEEDED and so exciting.

Today my husband will be speaking at Effy Wild's Cancel KKKAnada Day event - an afternoon of reflective art-making and listening to Indigenous voices.

And then we're going to a march + sacred fire to honour the children whose bodies have been found, and those whose bodies have not yet been found.

This whole movement to bring awareness to the genocide that birthed our country and continues to this day, to cancel celebrations, to reflect and learn - this is how change happens.

We are doing it! We are 154 years too late but we are starting.

If you're in Canada and upset by all this news, I suggest:

  1. Read the reports from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: everything is in there. We've known for a long time that a lot of bodies would be found if we searched former residential schools and have, until now, chosen to ignore this fact. Canada would not exist today if not for the abusive genocidal residential schools. As Canadians, we have to be able to understand this before we can do better.
  2. Read the calls to action from the TRC and look for ways to apply them in your life.
  3. Understand the treaties that were signed to create this country - which will show you that Canada has never honoured the treaties. What does it mean that you, as a Canadian citizen, do not know what's in the treaties? How are the treaties being honoured if the citizens don't know what's in them?
  4. Research the Indian Act

Resilience, Canada Day and Creating a World Where We Can All Pursue Our Creative Dreams Read More »

I woke up this morning feeling DESPERATE to sit in a coffee shop and write. On Dreams and Privilege and Changing The World.

I woke up this morning feeling DESPERATE to sit in a coffee shop and write. On Dreams and Privilege and Changing The World.

I've been staying in bed and meditating for 30 minutes before getting up, which usually means I wake up feeling quite calm and centered and clear about what I want to do with my day...

Not today. Today, even post-meditation, I just can't shake that desperation of wanting a thing I can't have.

After two months of being North America's covid hotspot, Winnipeg's third wave has peaked. New cases are down which is a relief except our hospitals are still overflowing and there is such a backlog of medical issues, we are really not out of the woods.

Nevertheless, we are opening back up. Because our conservative government doesn't know how to do anything except put money ahead of people's health and wellbeing.

All this to say, I CAN go to a coffee shop as of Saturday. And next Tuesday is 2 weeks since my second vaccine shot.

But that's not feeling helpful to me, on Thursday morning.

So here I am, sitting at a picnic table in the park with my laptop, which is my attempt to give myself the next best thing.

I made a lavender iced latte, which melted in the heat on my bike ride here and now is just watery cold coffee. It's the time of year when the trees are dripping sap and everything is sticky. It feels like bugs are actually getting stuck on my legs.

A lot has changed for me in this last year, but I still believe in the magic and wisdom of DESIRE and MAKING WISHES and FOLLOWING OUR DREAMS WITH EVERYTHING WE HAVE.

That wish to drink iced coffee on a coffee shop patio is about:

treats
fueling
ease
stability
comfort
ritual
routine
space-making for my creative process

When I look at it that way, I can find other ways to get some of these things. And some of them are just inaccessible right now.

Stability is the thing that's been the hardest for me to call in over these last 15 months.

I mean, the world changed. It feels like it happened overnight, but I can remember watching the pandemic unfold in China and then Italy while knowing that our health system isn't better than theirs as that feeling of inevitability slowly swooped in. It's hard to call in the quality of stability when the world just fucking CHANGED and we can't just change it back.

Obviously, a lot has happened in my life as well. My husband isn't living with me anymore. Having the space and quiet of living alone IS what I need right now, AND it is incredibly disorienting the way my home has changed. Our relationship is actually stronger right now than it was, AND I miss him a lot of the time. AND we know for sure living together in the Dream Loft is not an option, so we are creating a new vision together.

I'm lucky that the Creative Dream Incubator hasn't really changed. I'm LOVING my work in Dream Book and am fueled by it all the time. I'm lucky and privileged that my income stayed steady even as I was distracted as fuck and nowhere near as productive as I used to be.

And that's what I wanted to write about: Privilege and dreams and changing the world.

Because what about the people who have NEVER had the kind of stability that I took for granted until the last year? The stability which is such a helpful ingredient for being brave and bold enough to pursue your dreams?

A world where the most privileged have the most access to their dreams looks like.... the world we live in today.

A world where white supremacy and the patriarchy rule.

A world of increasing wealth inequity. I mean how do we not collectively see how psychotic it is to have individuals hoarding more money than our brains can fathom while others starve in the streets?

A world where fighting for a liveable future for all is actually a fight. And we're loosing that fight.

A world where, here in Canada, we've now found over 1,200 children's bodies buried in unmarked graves at former residential school grounds and settler Canadians are in shock even though we've known since 2015 that the number is closer to 6,000.

A world where slavery exists.

A world where gangs really are the best option for a lot of kids.

A world where we joke about rape. And we judge women for "sleeping their way to the top" instead of jailing the men who abuse their power to force women to choose between sleeping with them or not moving up the ladder at all.

I could go on but you know what I mean.

Our culture is sick. And I believe our dreams can help us heal it.

Because working with your dream connects you more deeply to your true self.

Your dream will push you to heal your wounds that keep you stuck in the unhealthy coping mechanisms that contribute to more disharmony in your life and in the world around you.

Your dream will help you grow into your true gifts and power and we need EVERYBODY'S true gifts and power to heal our culture and create a better one.

A lot of us privileged folks in the Live Your Best Life Industry are looking at ways to do this and wondering.... How do we increase accessibility and inclusivity in our spaces?

These are well meaning questions but they are not going to lead to the kinds of answers that make a difference.

Accessibility and inclusivity are NOT how we build a world where we ALL have access to our dreams.

Since 2015 I have been struggling with the incredible amount of privilege in the Live Your Best Live industry, and my own participation and contribution to that. I have made changes in my work to make it more accessible - not just financially but energy and time wise by creating a deeper, sturdier container.

That's not enough. It's nowhere near enough.

It's still a form of inviting "others" to the table when what is needed is to tear the table apart and build something new that includes everyone, from the ground up.

I mean, anyone in the New Age world looking at ways to be more inclusive and accessible, myself included - and even with the understanding that we've all got good intentions -  is laughable.

This whole industry is built on cultural appropriation and theft. We are really going to now open the doors to be more inclusive and invite the people we stole from, to feel more comfortable to come in and buy back what we stole?

The audacity!

It's the same way Canadians are now pointing the fingers at the churches and employees of residential schools instead of looking at how we, ourselves, benefit from residential schools TODAY and how we can, RIGHT NOW TODAY, tear down this system, which continues to kill Indigenous children.

Your dream wants you to BE who are here to BE.

I know a part of who I am here to BE is a kind hearted person who won't stand for genocide. Not in my own country and not anywhere else in the world.

This includes facing a lot of uncomfortable truths.

Both about yourself, and the places where you hold back and follow your inner critic instead of your inner truth, and also about the outer world.

We can't change anything that we can't be with.

And once we can BE WITH the uncomfortable truths, change is not as far away as it feels right now.

So stay with it.

Personally, in our own lives and collectively, in the world. This is the work.

I woke up this morning feeling DESPERATE to sit in a coffee shop and write. On Dreams and Privilege and Changing The World. Read More »

Let your heart break

The Scream by Kent Monkman, from the Shame and Prejudice exhibit.

 

My heart is broken over the remains of 215 children found in a mass grave at a residential school in British Columbia.

Children who were taken from their families, and never came home.

Children who would only be a little older than me, if they had lived.

Children whose parents, siblings, relatives and neighbours could still be alive today.

And the knowing that most, if not all, of the residential schools in Canada also have these mass graves, besides the official cemeteries.

This isn't our past. It's the ground we're standing on.

Residential schools and all of the harm they caused were a deliberate component of the colonization of Canada and other countries.

It's part of how the colonizers created an environment where they could break the treaties and take whatever they wanted.

It's why my country is the way it is. It's why I've had such a nice life here in Canada.

We can never make a thing better without being able to really SEE it.

This is so much of the work I have done with my clients and students. CLARITY.

You have a dream, but the path that gets you there is all foggy.

And the process of being clear about how to create what you want in your life ends up being A LOT about looking in the dark shadowy places that you'd rather avoid.

I had to learn to stay present with my fears and inner critics before I could live with my dreams.

It's a package deal.

Clarity means CLARITY. Seeing all of it, not just the parts you want to see.

And that's also how we make the world better.

It's in learning to stay present with the pain and injustice of the world that we can begin to see a better way.

That's when you are your most powerful, when you can BE WITH both.

So that's my tip for the day.

Don't be a part of the "sending love and light and good vibes" spiritual bypass crew.

Let your heart break.

Be with the pain in the world.

That's the place where we'll heal, grow, and create a new world from - together.

Let your heart break Read More »

Creative dreaming while feeling broken hearted about the world

Image description: My hand holding a journaling printable from Dream Book with a handwritten journal prompt: Dear Dream, Together We Can: In the background is my open journal and journal supplies (watercolour paints, scissors, pen) on a white sheet, which I covered my dining table with to turn it into a giant art table.

I bring all of my feelings to my dream in our daily meetings.

This morning it was: heartbreak, confusion, frustration and anger.

Our ICU beds are full and new Covid cases keep increasing and the anti-maskers anti-vaxers are out in full force, planning rallies and riling people up to fight back against the health restrictions. They don't seem to understand that the only reason the streets outside our hospitals aren't lined in refrigerator trucks full of dead bodies is that most of our elderly are vaccinated. Or that the ICUs being full literally means there is no room for emergency patients.

We're in crisis. This third wave with the new variants is brutal in my city. And it hurts my heart to see so many privileged crying about civil liberties while not giving a shit about community care (or civil rights!). It hurts my heart the way the people who get the short end of every stick are getting the short end of this one.

This is the world I live in?

This is the world I dream in?

Fuck this.

My dream agrees. Fuck this garbage culture that allows atrocities to happen every day in the name of capitalism, colonialism and white supremacy.

But my dream doesn't feel heartbroken about it like I do.

My dream feels determined and says "Hey. This is why you dream. I'm here to help."

I've long dreamed of a world that supported EVERYONE in pursuing their creative dreams and unleashing their true potential.

A world where we all have a safe place to live and enough to eat. Where we grew up with love and nurturing and stability and encouragement.

A world where resources are used to support all life and the hoarding of resources is unheard of.

A world where you don't even need therapy and coaching and magic to heal and grow your way into your true self. It's just the way of life and the whole community supports it.

A world where you feel inspired and excited to do a thing - so you do it! You just DO your dream. You don't waste years tangled up in self doubt and inner critic voices and working at a draining job because without that money you would die on the streets.

Of course, doing the thing may take time and support, you may need to do lots of research and learning first - I'm not saying it would be easy. Dreams are not meant to be easy.

But the world around you wouldn't be actively making it harder. The world would cheer you on.

This morning my dream says:

Look at how you're creating pockets of this magic, right here in this shitty capitalist culture.

Looking at all of the other people doing the same.

Look at everyone trying to heal and grow.

Look at everyone waking up and learning and creating new models for how to create a better world.

Remember that we have to get angry and dissatisfied with the status quo in order to change it. We need more privileged people to stop focusing so much on pursuing their own dreams and protecting their own civil liberties and look at how to make the world better for everyone.

Because that's the way to ALL of our dreams.

And it's closer than we realise.

Creative dreaming while feeling broken hearted about the world Read More »

Brave moves don’t happen in a vacuum.

brave moves don't happen in a vaccum

I've been getting A LOT of messages about my current situation of living apart from my husband from people who are admiring my courage for making this brave move.

It didn't feel brave.

It felt necessary and also kind of scary.

That's what a lot of "brave moves" feel like from the inside.

We get to a point where doing nothing starts to cost more than taking the risk.

But we have to remember that courage is a PRACTICE.

I didn't roll out of bed one morning and just make this brave choice.

This is why I write EVERY DAY in my creative mastermind group, to share what I am working with in my practice.

The people in my group know I've been sitting with this stuck place around my living situation and working with it for the last year and a half. I was dreaming of a studio space just for me, but also not feeling right about renting a space nearby and actually not feeling right about ANY of the ideas that were coming to me about how to do this.

I wrestled with it a long time, until I worked through it and then I knew what to do.

Everyone is brave. There is no such thing as one person being braver than another.

It's just - how much have you worked through your internal resistance and self doubt? And how much have you learned about how to set your life up to bolster your courage? How much are you really showing up for yourself and your dreams? How much are you PRACTICING?

And yes of course - how much support do you have for the external obstacles you face? How well resourced are you? There ARE external factors that make brave moves easier for some people. (But that is not a measure of how much courage a person has, that's a measure of how much privilege a person has and what they choose to do with it.)

But we can all work on our courage. To show up as bravely as we can to face the things that we have to face.

And of course we have to recognize that "showing up bravely" is a thing we define for ourselves.

Like - for a person with chronic illness taking a nap is a lot braver than pretending to be ok and "powering through" because the people around you don't understand what your actual needs are.

We don't want to buy into the hustle culture or the patriarchy or capitalism and how they define courage and "brave moves'.

True courage is about honouring ourselves in how we show up for our lives.

When you feel that tug in your heart to be braver about something, that's an invitation to show up more deeply in your practice.

I don't mean to practice COURAGE itself necessarily.

What I did that precipitated this brave move of mine was to practice showing up for my DREAMS.

I believes it's our dreams where everything intersects - our potential and healing and wounds and fears and stuck places and creativity and magic and power and all the things we need to work through in order to be where we want to be. It's all right there.

So working with dreams is a way of working with all of this - your own growth and healing.

As I said - I've had a dream for the last year and a half to find a new living situation. But, when I just listened to my logical mind try to work it out - nothing made sense. Financially and practically and feelings-wise - this dream was just STUCK.

It was embarrassing to keep showing up in my mastermind, sharing how stuck I felt for so long.

But I know that this is the way through.

And my work is to live what I teach.

And one of our principles is that "it takes the time it takes"

In hindsight I can see that this particular solution really wasn't accessible any earlier. But I needed to keep showing up, keep making space for that desire, in order to be so aligned with my dream that I could see it when the opportunity came.

It didn't feel brave.

I don't think it looked brave, to the people in the mastermind who saw me continue to show up no matter how stuck I was. But I did get a lot of feedback that it felt HELPFUL to witness me wrestle with this dream because it helped them feel less alone with the dreams that they are wrestling with.

My point is: Courage is a thing we can grow.

We all have tremendous courage.

And we have all practiced our ways into NOT acting/being as brave as we ARE. This is just a side effect of growing up in this culture.

And we all face different obstacles to making our brave moves and comparing our outer expressions of courage to other people's is not helpful.

But. We can become braver. It's a natural side effect of practicing your way into a deeper connecting with your self. It's a natural side effect of working with your dreams. It's a natural side effect of healing and growing.

And each brave move you take opens up new possibilities for what your next brave move can be.

PS: Join me in Dream Book, my creative mastermind and EPIC support system for practicing your way into your next brave move.

*** If you join THIS WEEK you'll get an invitation to the Partnering With Your Soul of your Business live class, happening next Tuesday (April 13)

Brave moves don’t happen in a vacuum. Read More »