Soulshine

“From an early age, Juanita’s mother would express disappointment when Juanita did something her mother disapproved of. Juanita’s fear of this disapproval kept her from sharing parts of herself that would disappoint her mother. As a result, her mother never really knew her.” Phil Stutz & Barry Michels , The Tools What do you hide from others, the world and yourself? A great many of us learned the same childhood lesson that Juanita did. We learned that if we said certain things, or acted in certain ways, it made our parents uncomfortable. And so we learned to hide parts of our true selves. Picture a five year old boy who innocently and sincerely says to his mother “When I grow up I’m going to marry a boy.” A deafening silence fills the room. Then Mom laughs nervously and exclaims “Boys don’t marry boys! Where did you get an idea like that?” After another sharp pause, Mom continues in a stern voice as she wags her finger in her son’s face: “Boys only marry girls! Wh...

“We’re tapped because of a universal human expectation that the world will treat us fairly. This is a cherished, childish assumption—‘If I’m good, the world will be good to me.’ We should know better.” Phil Stutz & Barry Michels, The Tools Granted, like Jimmy Seymour in Broadway Serenade , many of us mess-up our relationships because our self-love and self-esteem are poor. But many of us also mess-up relationships because we have an age-old bad belief stored in our subconscious minds. And that belief is that life should be fair. The belief that life (and thus relationships) should be fair is as irrational as an old belief that plague me for years: Everyone should like me. Both of these beliefs produce expectations that only serve to make our lives miserable. For many years I agonized whenever someone obviously didn’t like me. It left me feeling like a failure as a person. The belief that I should be liked by everyone kept me on constant guard. It meant everyt...

“Everyone is worth knowing.” O. Henry Most everyone compares themselves to other people. Sometimes we see ourselves as “less than” and sometimes we see ourselves as “more than” or “better than. “ As a result we categorize people. There are city slickers and there are country bumpkins. There are yuppies and there are rednecks. And who could forget hippies? Or preppies? Or nerds? Here in the desert, I categorize men based in their choice of footwear. To me, men who wear flip-flops are “cool” and men who wear sandals are “geeks.” Of course, men who wear socks with sandals are “super geeks.” Now stop and think for a moment about the ways in which you categorize and label people. The point of all of this is that by categorizing and labeling people, we determine in our own minds who is worth knowing and who is not worth knowing—before we ever have a chance to “know” them. In doing so, we eliminate many people from our lives by unfairly judging them as being “too cool” or ...

Let’s look a little deeper into the character of Jimmy Seymour from the film Broadway Serenade . Once Jimmy realizes that he never lost Mary Hale, his many attempts at self-sabotage unfold before his eyes. Jimmy is able to see clearly for the first time that it wasn’t Mary who had stopped loving him. It was Jimmy. He had stopped loving himself many years ago; he had abandoned himself, lost himself. He then acted-out in ways that forced Mary and others to abandon him as well. Jimmy had accused Mary of being unfaithful to him, when deep down he really knew that she was true to him. The real problem was that Jimmy was never true to Jimmy. And as a result, Jimmy was filled with self-loathing and many personal insecurities about himself. He couldn’t trust in Jimmy and so he couldn’t trust in Mary or anyone else. He was overly critical of himself and this had made him into a very angry young man. His anger then spilled over onto Mary and others, alienating them further from Jimmy. ...

“You never lost Mary Hale. You lost yourself.” Herman to Jimmy , Broadway Serenade Many of us think we know what it’s like to “lose” someone else from our lives. Someone stops calling us, or someone de-friends us on Facebook, or someone simply picks up and walks out of our lives. Then there are those situations where someone is simply tolerating us, and we know it. What we may not know, however, is that they are tolerating us despite ourselves. We never “lost” them, but we did a heck of a good job of alienating them and forcing them as far out of our lives as possible—much to our own regret. In the 1939 film Broadway Serenade , Jeanette MacDonald plays Mary Hale. She’s an up-and-coming singer who’s teamed with her piano playing/composer husband, Jimmy Seymour (played by Lew Ayres). Both are talented. Mary has a great voice and Jimmy has real song-writing skills. But Mary is on her way up because she believes in herself. She’s grounded in good self-love and appreciation,...

“The whole point of focusing on ‘the NOW ’ is to end the search for happiness.” Robert Holden, Happiness NOW   Going with the flow of our day means getting out of our heads as much as possible. Sure, we have to be in our heads some. But the average person probably spends 80 percent of their waking day living inside of their head, and they only bother to leave it when the bump into the reality of the outside world. For example, you can be at work, sitting at your desk, fully engaged inside your head until your phone rings or someone knock on your door. These perceived interruptions take you out of your head and lead you back into the real world. They place you back into the flow of life, and yet we are often crusty about the fact that the real world is disturbing our little inner-world. Think of it this way: Our little inner-world is filled with expectations, shoulds and other such happiness-zappers. When we are constantly caught-up in our little worlds of “th...

“In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.” Antonio Porchia There is great truth to Antonio Porchia’s observation. A full heart is a heart graced with love. It is a heart that has learned how to expand with each and every breath. It is constantly opening, growing and welcoming for its essence is layered with love. Love is ever expansive. There’s no containing love and so a loving heart must constantly breathe and open to all new opportunities to love. A full heart has enough love to stretch around the world; enough love to share with anyone who needs a smile or a hand to hold, even for just a little while. But an empty heart is a love-less, abandoned place. It’s filled with silent screams. It screamed each time love left and the echoes of those screams continually ring through its hollowness. It screamed when mom and dad’s love left, it screamed when God’s love seemingly left, and it screamed and wailed the loud...

Most everyone has a fear of naked intimacy. We are afraid to reveal our true selves to others. We are insecure as to whether or not we are good enough mentally, emotionally, spiritually or physically for others, especially someone we hope to engage in a lasting love relationship. In love relationships, our fear of intimacy begins with revealing small bits and pieces about our inner-selves. We’ll reveal a little, but for the most part we hold back waiting to see how the other reacts. If they like what we have revealed, then we’ll reveal another tidbit, but we rarely feel secure enough to reveal all there is to know even as we are getting more and more serious about this person. Time passes and we are enjoying each other’s company, seeing more and more of each other, and yet we still don’t feel safe enough to go any deeper than throwing out scraps or “pieces-parts” to each other. And these scraps are nothing more than whatever we have carefully screened and deemed will be a...

“Faith is the willingness to enter into the experience of the unknown with the full acceptance that whatever becomes known will be perfect for you and your journey of life.” Howard Falco, I AM I find that many people define faith as believing in a God who will do for them exactly what they want and demand. We pray that a job interview will go really well and that we’ll get the job. We have faith that God will see to it that all goes exactly the way we want . Then it doesn’t. Suddenly our faith dissolves into disappointment and anger, and we may find ourselves turning our backs on prayer and God for letting us down. If this experience sounds familiar to you in any way about anything you’ve ever prayed for and failed to receive, then you need a new definition of faith. Faith is not about getting what I want. Faith is about believing that God will always do what’s best or perfect for me and my life’s journey. Howard Falco’s definition of faith hits the nail on the head. ...