photo by Wendi Kelly

When I was coming of age into my teen years, my oh-so-wise mother sat me down for THE Talk.

Only my mother didn’t want to talk about birds…or bees. She wanted to talk about jewelry. And value. And why some things were valued more than others.

She talked to me about things that were common. About how if they were in unlimited supply and anyone could have them, then…well…frankly, people lost interest in them and nobody wanted them. They were the things in our lives that stacked up in the corners, in the dark…like  trash.

She talked to me about the five-cent rings you can get from the bubble gum machine. How, when you first see them, they are all glittery and sparkly, but when you pay your nickel and take them out of the plastic bubble, they are never what you hoped for them to be. They bend and warp. They get dull. And the small little gem turns out to be nothing more than colored plastic.

Always, always disappointing. Always easily forgotten. Always  ultimately discarded.

Then We Spoke About Diamonds.

We talked about how rare they are, how long it takes for nature to create a natural diamond. How hard it is to excavate them. How difficult it is to “cut” them, a complicated process that requires specific training, skills, tools and talent. Not just anyone is worthy of the task.

We talked about their hardness and unsurpassed durability, how years of extreme pressure make them able to withstand trauma that would destroy other stones. The diamond didn’t become the most durable stone overnight. It received that title by its lifetime of painstaking creation.

We talked about value. About rarity. About how the diamond is desired BECAUSE it is set apart from the masses and because not everyone can have it. It is exclusive. It is special. It is unique.

My mother ended her talk by telling me that she thought of me as a diamond. And she wanted me to always think of myself as one too. She wanted me to make sure that I represented myself as a diamond to the world. Especially Boys. (It was…after all, the talk.)

My mother thought she was talking about boys.

But that day she taught me one of the most valuable lessons about life I’ve ever learned. If I want to be a Human Being of the Highest Value- in any area of my life- I have to decide what kind of gem I am.

I have to be honest. I haven’t always remembered to treat myself as a diamond. Sometimes I forget. I know in my heart that I am a diamond, but I have sometimes forgotten to treat myself like one. I have settled for treating myself like a five-cent bubble gum ring. I have sometimes said things in my self-talk like:

I don’t have time to take care of myself now, there is too much to get done.

I don’t deserve that, I’ll wait until…

I’ll get the cheaper one, I’ll just work around the parts that aren’t right for me, that’s okay…

Someday I’ll take the time to________ but right now I have to concentrate on other...

And what is sadder, I have allowed other people to treat me that way too.

I have had a mindset that I should settle for what is good enough (and appallingly, a few times it was downright awful!) rather than put in the time, energy and focus required to get what I needed to treat myself like the high-quality person that I am- and should be.

We live in a world where we have been trained to settle. Especially women. (Sorry guys.) Many of our mothers came from a culture where the men in their worlds were put first and foremost at all costs and their needs were put last or sadly never. This unspoken behavior, that we watched and modeled, permeated our spirits at a cellular level, creating a push-pull reaction in our soul anytime we have a need or desire of our own.

We don’t feel worthy of calling ourselves a diamond. Our minds reach out-immediately wondering what gem represents the serving stone- perhaps the one that everyone sits on. That feels more like the REAL us.

Sadly, we wait for someone else to declare us a diamond- or put one on our finger- to accept that self-worth for ourselves. Even then, the moment is fleeting.

Until we claim the power of the diamond for ourselves, until we are willing to accept nothing less than the absolute best for ourselves, until we are willing to become the Highest Quality Person we were born to be…we will continue to struggle with the five-cent version of ourselves.

The only person that can change that for ourselves is…

us.

I AM…a Diamond.

Are you?

Yeah right.

Who am I kidding?

For the last two years my once stunning garden has been an exercise in warfare between me and the weeds that have declared squatter’s rights in my front yard.  My once enjoyable hobby of puttering around the yard admiring the beauty is now an all out battle as I yank and throw, spray and dig, swear and threaten to murder and mayhem any weed that dares to return to my precious soil.

They don’t listen. I can almost hear them laughing as they plot their vicious return.

How did this happen to my once spectacular garden? That’s easy. Three years ago, I turned my back on it and concentrated on something else. I took a year off of gardening thinking that the garden could fend for itself because I was busy elsewhere. I skated by with the bare minimum, and for some mad, mad reason, expected the garden to still give me back its full glorious display. I planted no seeds, filled in no flowers, added nothing new to the garden and even worse…didn’t bother to pull out the handful of weeds that snuck in to fill in the empty spots. They weren’t that bad. Just a few here and there. Honestly…you could hardly notice them.

Now that small handful of weeds is a battle zone. When I walk past my garden these last two years, all I see is a guilt ridden chore that I have to get to, just another thing on a long list of shoulds that that I need to find the time and energy to fight and take down.

The Gardens of our lives.

I’d love to be able to tell you that my outside garden is an isolated place where this has happened in my life. But you would probably know I was lying.  I have a handful of weed gardens in my life. It happens with laundry, clutter, my car-which is magnetically attracted to stuff and dirt- and it happens with my office.  It has also happened with my weight. That is exactly like a garden as well.

I looked in the mirror one day to find an extra fifty pounds there that didn’t belong. Hard to believe that fifty pounds can sneak up on a person, but over the years and four kids later, that’s what life does. So then I mustered up the battle cry, went charging on to the dieting field and banished those pesky pounds right out of my life.  I declared they were never to return and I meant it too.  But if I turn my back on those sneaky little buggers, five of them will show up over night. If I don’t call a halt to their progress at the gate, they bring ten or fifteen of their best friends and I am back in the battle again.

The weight battle never ends. I have to stay alert. That is an ongoing war in my life. I have to constantly be putting in the healthy food, thoughts and exercise that my body needs or the weeds and pounds take over faster than I can blink and I have a huge problem on my hands. (And THOSE weeds aren’t as easy to pull out in a day)

The most important garden I have to tend to though, isn’t a place I can see. I can’t roll up my sleeves and start chucking out the weeds and clutter. The most important garden I have to tend to is that fertile place inside my head, my Mind Garden.

The Mind Garden

The Mind Garden is a tricky place. It’s hard to keep track of all the seeds and weeds that are blowing into that garden.

There are countless weeds coming at us all the time. Weeds that become bushes with thorns of anger and violence, weeds that grow into tangled bramble bushes of negativity, weeds of depression and inactivity are just a few that we are in constant battle with. Even the most diligent mind-gardener, careful to prepare the soil with fertile compost and wholesome nutrients is constantly bombarded with weed after weed in our daily lives.

How can we fight the bombardment of weeds on the mind?

It isn’t hopeless. There are things we can do.

Gardening Tricks for the Mind Garden

Overfill it with flowers. It’s a gardener’s secret that if the soil is full, then it is harder for the weeds to take. Be proactive in filling your mind with the Mindflowers of your choice. Plant your seeds close together so that the weeds can’t take hold. Flowers of positive, hopeful, passionate, inspiring mind and heart nourishing topics choke out the weeds and give them no room to take hold.

Create your own unique design. Peaceful, positive, challenging, enlightening, artistic, inventive, or whatever interests you. What would you like your mind-garden design to be? Create a plan. Put it in writing. Look at it. The brain is a malleable, fertile organ soaking up everything it is exposed to. You have an amazing amount of control over what goes into your brain. Choose to exercise that control and plant your garden the way you want it.

Pull the Weeds. Next, pull the existing weeds out. You might have to look closely to identify the weeds in your life. Some weeds look remarkably like flowers. Or they have been there for so long that we just haven’t paid any attention to them before. It might be that they are in everyone else’s garden so we thought they must be OK. Take a deep look. Once you have planned your garden design, there won’t be any more room for weeds that will take away from the plan you want. Be very selective. Pull them all! Weeds breed more weeds. Gardeners know that one weed has lots of friends.

Fill in the empty spaces with new flowers. While it takes effort and time to cultivate friendships and learning, it takes amazingly very little effort to cultivate weeds. You can do nothing but leave them in your life and they will grow and breed and take over. Once you have removed them don’t let them back in. It’s a battlefield in the garden and the weeds plan to win! Once you have removed them, fill that space up with new flowers. Make new friends that nourish your new goals. Listen and read positive information. Remember to water and fertilize and feed those new flowers. Take time and attention, carefully care for them and they will reward you with their beauty and fragrance.

Stay Alert. A gardener must always be alert and on the look-out for stealth weeds that sneak in looking like flowers, promising to be a good thing in your life, only to end up taking over the whole garden. Keep in mind, that many nice flowers, if left to over-breed can become weeds in the wrong situation. You must choose wisely with balance, and determine what are the most important flowers to fill your mind with and in what proportions.

Spend time. A  Master Gardener knows you should spend time on your garden every day. Take a walk through it, enjoy it, meditate in it.  Get inspiration from it. A beautiful garden will give back much more than you ever will have to put in to it, especially a beautiful mind-garden. Daily maintenance keeps the job from not getting overwhelming and keeps the weeds at bay.

You can’t escape having a mind-garden. It will be planted. What goes into that garden is up to you one way or another, by choice of doing something, or by choice of doing nothing.

It’s still a choice. Oh…and by the way, these tricks work on the other gardens of your life too.

How are your gardens doing these days? Where do you need to pull some weeds and plant some positive seeds and flowers?

At the Heart of Authenticity is the Courage to be Vulnerable

~ Brene Brown

I had never heard of Brene Brown until this past Monday when I saw a link to her TED talk on Facebook. I am a fan of TED talks, so I instantly clicked on the link and sat there, mesmerized, soaking up ever morsel of her funny, brilliant, engaging speech. (I promise, I’ll give you the link at the bottom… )

Three days later, I am still ruminating over the words that Brene spoke so eloquently.

She speaks about shame. She speaks about feeling unworthy. She speaks in the most heartfelt way about vulnerability and empathy, courage and compassion and our deep inborn need for human connection.

And she explains why and how we manage to muddle the process of keeping ourselves separated from that deep inner need by our inability to risk being open and vulnerable with each other. By our fear of sharing our truths with each other. By our deep societal fear of shame and judgement that we place on each other, and perhaps even worse…in fact, I believe, most decidedly worse, the shame and judgement we place on ourselves.

I don’t think there is a friend or foe on the planet that is crueler than we are to our own selves.

“It is Our Imperfection That Connects Us to Each Other.” – Brene Brown

When we judge ourselves and others for being less than perfect, or for not upholding these impossibly high standards that we have all come to expect from the media and from the chatter that we all perpetuate, we build the walls brick by brick that close us off to the connections that we crave.

When we pretend we are doing great,when our perfect curb appeal hides the demons that lurk within the doors,when we are too ashamed to cry out for help, to turn to our neighbors and friends- the very ones who are likely suffering in silence themselves- we dig the holes of desperation and loneliness to unbearable depths, convincing ourselves that it is only us…everyone else is doing great and we alone are the only ones who can’t keep the pace, stay on track or handle the rules that society demands.

I want to call a spade a spade. I don’t care who you are. I’m going to let the cat out of the bag. As a past successful Realtor, I’ve been in your houses, I know what lurks behind those perfect looking curbs. In all my busy years of selling of houses, some extremely expensive ones, there was never ONE SINGLE TIME that I walked into a house and decreed it to be PERFECT. There was always a checklist, always something to do, some things to fix up, some stuff they had never gotten around to, some things that had been on the list, bugging them for years. Sometimes the list was long, sometimes it was short, but there was always a list.

And that is just the way life is. It isn’t just our houses. It’s our lives. The more we can just understand that everyone has a list, the more we can relax, shrug our shoulders and say…oh well… so, I’ve got my list and you have yours. Big deal, so what who cares, let’s go out and get on with life and have some fun.

The Beauty Of Sharing Lists.

Our lists may be different. That’s ok. The stuff on my lifelist that I need to fix up and work on is different that yours.  But by comparing our lists instead of hiding them in the closet of shame, I may find out that you figured out a solution for something on my list ages ago. By tag teaming my issue, I might actually get ahead. And if not, just having someone to bounce ideas off of, and not feeling so hopeless and all alone does wonders for making my failure list not seem quite like the monster it did before.

Connections and community have been our number one survival tool since the cave days.  For us to isolate ourselves by pretending that we have it all figured out by our own lonely perfect selves is, in my mind, one definition of  society’s sad insanity.

So…are we willing to bare our naked imperfections together and get closer? I think I have blabbed every flaw I have across cyberspace…but if there is anything you all don’t know about me by now, just ask…I’m pretty much an open book…but…how can I help you?

Brene Brown TED Talk

Next week we have a very special project launching: The Narcissist: A User’s Guide. What makes this collaboration with Lori Hoeck and Betsy Wuebker so special is all of us have had past experiences with the narcissistic personality. This is a topic we all feel very strongly about and felt the need to share it with the world.

All of us shared common ground in that we never realized what was wrong with these relationships other than they were just wrong. The best example I can give is being in a relationship with a narcissist is like being in a cult; they’re charming, charismatic, they manipulate people in such subtle ways that you as an individual don’t know what hit you until the damage is done and it’s far too late.

The Phantom Menace

Before what I was going through had a name for me to hang on it I often saw many parallels between the relationship and the Star Wars series.  Anakin Skywalker (aka: Darth Vader) is a classic example of a narcissist. He had a traumatic experience early on in life that stunted his emotional growth and led him to be totally self-absorbed, even though he would never see it that way.

He would have power, he would have control, he would rule the Galaxy! It didn’t matter what he did to those who loved him, and whether or not he was actually capable of love himself is debatable.

Yoda and Obi Wan both warned young Anakin that fear lead to the dark side; that it would consume him if he wasn’t careful. Fear in any form will render a person helpless, no matter how strong they think they are.

I used to think I was a strong person.

I’ve recently discovered that the person I was never went anywhere. I’m still me. I’m still strong. But it was one night while I was watching Star Wars for the umpteenth time that I realized how much fear the Narci injected into my life.

And here we go referring back to the cult mindset. Cult leaders brainwash you into thinking you can’t do it on your own. They tear you down even though in their minds they fully believe they’re building you up. Every word out of their mouth is a carefully calculated knife meant to slice away every last shred of self-esteem and confidence you have. The cult leader wants his or her followers to be totally dependent on them – and so does the narcissist.

Attack of the Clones

Once I realized how much these fears had a hold on me, the battle was on. Leaving a narcissist isn’t easy, I will tell you that right now. Like Sith Lords they’re skilled in putting you in your place and keeping you there. Want some examples? Here is a sample straight from the Guide:

• “You are not living up to your vows”
• “You promised you would never leave”
• “Your leaving will hurt others at the company. Don’t you care?”
• “You know I have a huge job change upcoming. Why are you doing this to me?”

Oh yes, when you try to leave you may end up thinking it’s much easier to stay where you are rather than break free. You’re already at your lowest point, you’re vulnerable and chances are you no longer know which end is up.

Another side of the narcissist’s many-sided coin as you depart is a cold shoulder and withdrawal—if you are lucky. Part of them will be glad to be done with the ego-draining drama your newfound insight, confidence, and resolve are causing them.

They will always try for control and try to assume the former controls and dynamic, but part of them will realize it will only deplete them more.

Some would say that physical abuse is worse than mental or verbal abuse. In my opinion, the latter two are worse. They leave scars no surgeon can heal. And long after the physical scars are gone, chances are the mental ones will never go away.

Many of us here are writers, we understand the power of words. Words have the power to bring down whole civilizations faster than any nuclear bomb ever could. Just reduce that to a smaller individual scale and you can imagine the destruction involved.

Revenge of the Sith

What is the definition of a Sith Lord? Here’s what Wikipedia had to say:

Characterized by their single-minded pursuit of power and disdain for sentient life, they are an alliance of warrior mages who use the dark side of the Force and serve as counterparts to the Jedi Knights.

The Sith are portrayed in various Star Wars media as individuals who use the dark side to attain power at any cost. The Star Wars prequel films establish that they draw upon strong emotions, both negative and positive, as the source of their power, and care only about themselves. This is in contrast to the Jedi, who are portrayed as forsaking emotional attachment in order to serve others and the galaxy as a whole.

Starting to see the connection? Even after you’ve left your Narci it’s not over yet. Once they realize they don’t have any control over you, they’ll still try to find ways to worm back into your life.

Be prepared for a lot of massive mood swing attacks ranging from despair to all out rage. And guilt. Massive amounts of guilt. But what you have to realize through all this is – and this is very important:

It’s Not Your Fault.

Repeat this mantra over and over to yourself. Write it on a sticky note and tape it to your forehead. Carve it into stone. Whatever you do, remember it.

A New Hope

I could go on for several more pages with this, but I won’t. Not yet. Instead, I’m going to wait for you all to get this ebook in your hands on February 2nd and read for yourselves. Then when you come back, we’ll have the coffee and bagels ready.

 Beware the Drift.

That thought  returned to me repeatedly yesterday morning during my quiet time and refused to turn me loose the remainder of the day. It is not an original thought or one I haven’t dealt with before. I first heard it several years ago sitting in a seminar listening to the amazing Jim Rohn share his thoughts on the dangers of the Daily Drift and how it can  destroy our chances for success before we our even aware of it’s existence..

The drift is elusive. It is seductive. It sneaks up on you when you aren’t looking and steals your lunch. Then it takes your dinner. By the time you know it’s there, the cupboard is bare and you are in a full-fledged panic, wondering how in the world you could have let this happen.

The drift occurs in such tiny little increments that it is hard to see its movements. It isn’t particular, it can choose to sneak up into any area of your life that you stop paying attention to. It’s like the preverbal snake, slithering in when you least expect it, tempting you to relax, just this once, what can it hurt? Tomorrow is a brand new day…another chance…after all…everyone deserves a break now and then…don’t they?

And the boat slips softly farther from the shore, gently rocking on a peaceful wave, as you are lulled into blissful compliance. Yes…tomorrow is another day…another day to let goals slip farther and farther from your reach as time goes quickly ticking by.

The drift is always waiting. If it can get an edge in to your routine, …say, oh for example… the second day of a well-meaning plan and the third, or just home from vacation, or just getting over an illness, or remodeling the house, or any number of excuses we all have, then the anchors that held your boat to the shore start to weaken, the currant tugging on the line as The Drift starts to make progress against the shore. Within a few days and then tumbling into few weeks, you are nodding along, comfortably settling in to a new routine, bobbing about the waves, the anchors all but fallen away, resolutions and well meaning habits a fading memory, the path to success growing weeds on its trail from lack of use.

One day you look up and behold, you are adrift in a stormy sea on a boat without sail or paddle, no map to guide you, no earthly idea what treachery landed you in this precarious situation. A situation, no doubt, you likely have vowed never to be in and would have never willing gone.

Except you did. And you can hardly believe it. Stunned and angry with yourself for permitting such an offence, you begin the self-punishing behaviors and self-talk that we are all familiar with when looking in the mirror. Vile things that we would never say to another. Then, self-flagellation completed, we vow to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, armed with new goals, new maps and new enthusiasm to complete the task.

And the cycle begins again. Until the next time the sneaky snake of The Drift begins to whisper in our ear.

One day off won’t hurt… it’s just one day…there is so much to do and so little time….

If failure is the result of a few poor choices made daily over the course of time, then isn’t it reasonable to conclude that Success is the result of a few good choices made daily over the course of time?

Baby steps forward or lazy drifting backward. You choose.

Because nothing stands still. Ever.

Beware the drift.