the heart of the matter

Charleston.

Holy shit Charleston.

I wrote a piece that isn’t ready for the public eye, and may never be.  Because holy shit.

And now I’m writing this, because the debate has devolved in many quarters into the meta debate: what is this really about anyway?  Is it race or guns or the history of the Confederacy?

I think the biggest part, the thing that needs the attention, is race.  But whenever any thinking person starts to address it, we end up with a lot of other conversations and a lot of side conversations.  These are at root conversations about values, which is exactly what they need to be…but they’re also conversations about something else, something we’re not talking about.

so I sat down to figure it out, and here it is.

***

I can’t write about one thing without writing about the others anymore.

How do I talk about race without talking about gender?  How do I talk about privilege of any kind without talking about class?
I can’t.
It doesn’t work.
But when the story about Charleston broke, I tried.  I tried because the alternative feels impossible, overwhelming, absurd.
It’s like untangling a huge knot, made of about ten different kinds of yarn.  If you have to find all the ends and begin at all the places all at once, you’re never going to even get started.  Which is where the US has been, as a country, since….oh, Columbus and Vespucci or so.
So instead you pick ONE kind of yarn.  The purple one, say.  You start following all the purple threads, and let everything else blur out.  A little at a time, a little at a time…until you find what you think might be an end, the origin of the purple thread.  And then you start following it forward again, up and down and under and over, drawing an increasingly long and unwieldy tail behind you, slowing freeing pieces of the other yarn but ignoring them, remaining single-minded, following, following, following until you arrive at the OTHER end, and then you start over with a different color, with what is essentially a brand-new knot, dramatically changed by the removal of the purple yarn, destabilized but still definitely tangled.
Works great with yarn.
Sucks with people.
Because the whole knot relies on the whole knot.  And so the yarn, which is made of both people and their ideas, the yarn fights BACK.  It grips and tangles and grows thorns.  It shapeshifts and becomes a writhing mass of serpents and dragons, drawing blood at every turn.  The purple yarn, especially, becomes razor wire with a brain. It doesn’t want to be removed; it doesn’t want to be reduced to insignificance by being taken out of the equation.  The other yarns like it; they need it; they hold on and intertwine with it.  When you drop that loose end for a second it bends back and begins weaving itself into the knot again, more tightly than ever.
And because human brains are like this, when we are part of the yarn we do this without even realizing it.
So we SAY we are all for disentangling.  Meanwhile we are growing fangs and claws that we can’t see and using them in ways that we don’t understand.
This is change theory, this is systems theory, this is also not theory. It is the very real answer to the question, “Why haven’t we come farther in the years since Selma?”
Take the classic family systems scenario, which conveniently has absolutely nothing to do with race.
There’s a person who’s got a long and trying history of alcoholism.  He has spent years avoiding sobriety and his family has spent years complaining about his drinking.  it’s clear that his drinking has caused a whole bunch of problems.  The complaints are well-founded.
Then one day he figures it out.  Maybe it’s a visit from God, maybe it’s getting hauled in for DUI AGAIN, but whatever it is, he gets it, all the way into his bones.  He goes home, pours out all the alcohol in the house, goes to three AA meetings in his first day and 30 in his first month, and he starts getting sober.  Really, truly sober.  A month, two months, six months….still sober.  It’s working, whatever it is.  He’s a changed man.  The program starts impacting his attitudes, the way he moves through the world, his choices for social activities, his values.  Suddenly, one day, he comes home and there’s a bottle of vodka in the middle of the dining table.  He takes a deep breath, calls his sponsor, goes out for coffee, attends an extra AA meeting.  He asks his wife if she would please put the bottle away and she lashes out, has a list of a hundred and twenty seven things he did wrong when he was drinking and says she won’t have her fun curtailed by his faults.  Then she pours a drink right in front of him.  He takes a deep breath, calls his sponsor, and disappears for 24 hours.  He stays at a friend’s house, someone in the program.  He’s determined not to drink and is hurt and angry that his wife would make it so hard for him.
What’s happening here?  His wife complained bitterly when he was drinking.  What is this?
This is human systems at work.  The very short breakdown is that he changed.  He is connected to his wife.  When he changes, she has to change, too, because he is no longer playing his old role in her life.  She subconsciously doesn’t want to change.  So she starts acting out in ways that might draw him back into his old role, so she can go back to what she’s used to.  Human brains and human systems don’t like change. When we’re interconnected, our change affects everyone around us. The system we’re in is going to resist that change.  It’s adapted to who we were, not who we are trying to become.
This theory of human behavior has its origins as Family Systems Theory but in fact it could be called Any Humans Connected to Any Other Humans theory.  It has been reconfigured for use in religious organizations, in business situations, and even in internal family systems, which is more or less the set of voices you carry around in your head that comment on everything you do (the movie Inside Out makes this kind of thing visible).
So with regard to social change, the cultural and political system, along with our family and friend networks AND our internal systems, are all adapted to our various biases and prejudices.  We use them.  When we try and change them, we change the system, and the system fights back.
So we can’t untangle everything at once.  And when we try to untangle just one thing, we get stuck with yarn that bites.  Now what?
The answer is simple but not easy.  The answer is fear.  Fear of a lot of things, but it almost doesn’t matter.
Fear is what makes the yarn come to life and twist and twine and grow spikes.  Fear is what makes the wife bring home the vodka.  Fear is what drives stasis.  It might be uncomfortable to be the way we were, but we know what to expect.  As long as the discomfort is tolerable, we let fear run the show.
A year that starts with Ferguson and ends with Charleston is not tolerable, and that’s why things are starting to change.
BUT
When we address the need for change in a way that induces more fear than necessary, we make the pushback worse.
This goes to a bit of neurobiology that, vastly summarized, works like this: when you’re scared your brain shuts down all the higher-order thinking: creativity, complex reasoning, gray areas, sense of humor, gone.  Those parts of your brain get taken offline so you can’t get distracted from the central work of survival.  You become a very, very unsophisticated survival machine.  This happens to everyone.  Fear shuts down the useful parts of the brain.  You are left with breathing, running, fighting, and staying very, very still.  That’s fight-flight-freeze.
So if you’re arguing with someone and they get scared, the conversation is effectively over.  And the more often this reaction gets triggered by this conversation, the easier it is for the trigger to get tripped again.  The brain learns.  And if you’re arguing with someone and YOU get scared, the same thing happens.  No one is immune.
So we changemakers are walking this fine line between tolerating discomfort and putting the very people we want to have think creatively into an anti-creativity panic that’s biological and unavoidable.
And that’s where building relationships comes in.  If you know a person and you have a good relationship, the panic doesn’t kick in as readily.  When the panic doesn’t kick in, conversation, change, and compromise are possible.
[A word about where you come from: if you’re in one or more marginalized groups, you are accustomed to much higher levels of discomfort than the unmarginalized people around you.  You operate better under higher levels of dissonance and change, and you have learned to moderate your responses to specific kinds of stress, including prejudice.  You shouldn’t have to, but that’s the world we live in.  You may even have come to associate moderate levels of dissonance with healthy stretching-of-brain and growth.  When your standards are substantially different from the people you’re interacting with, the low threshold has to take precedence, because one panicked person means the whole conversation ends.  And just because you can tolerate high levels of stress on one topic doesn’t mean you are necessarily similarly equipped on other topics.  You may be used to talking about poverty but totally unprepared to talk about race, for example.  Also, your level of discomfort and therefore your willingness to tolerate it is almost certainly different from that of the people around you.]
When you can relax, the yarn relaxes.  The knot loosens.  Everything gets easier.  (Not usually EASY, just easier.)
That’s the third path.  Loosen the whole knot, gradually, unweave ends when they show up, and keep tugging gently, gently, gently.
They are all connected to each other, all held in place by fear of change.
Of course race and class and gun control and the history of the Confederacy and mental health are all connected.  Of course they are.
And of course, we will feel much better when we’ve untangled the whole messy thing.  But that’s going to take time.  Meanwhile, see what you can do about fear.  Your fear.  Find it, ferret it out, and unwind it.  That’s where this whole thing starts.

love the world

My alarm goes off at 9:30 every morning.

It’s not there to get me out of bed (my body pretty reliably does that).

It’s not there to tell me I’m late (every day is different).

It’s there to tell me to love the world.

I have an Android phone.  It lets me change things, including what my alarm says.  This one says, Love the fuck into the world, darlin’

That’s what the alarm is called.  It goes off three times a day: morning, noon, and night.  And right up on the screen, love the fuck into the world, darlin’.

It’s my personal call to prayer.

See, there’s this idea that goes around the world, about praying without ceasing, let every breath be a prayer.

There’s this idea that goes around about loving the world like you love yourself, about living your deepest and most truly held beliefs.  There’s this idea about living what you believe being the best thing you can do.

And in the end, the only thing you can do.

Church, religion, belief, morality, love isn’t set-it-and-forget-it.  It’s not something you do once and you’re done.  Love is a choice you make every day, every hour, every minute.  Doing what’s right is a decision and a habit and a practice.  It’s a Thing.

That’s why, if you dig into the old faith traditions, they’re embedded in daily life.  Pray in the morning, pray three times a day, pray before bed, give alms to the poor, fast, keep the sabbath, eat the right foods, meditate, get on your knees, stand and face the sun, whatever it is–whatever it is–it happens over and over and over.  It goes from one thing to another, from rule to practice to ritual, hand over hand, until each breath is a prayer.

Each breath is a prayer.

That’s how I want to live.  Each breath a prayer: of gratitude, of remembrance, of strength, of giving, of love.

But I don’t.

I live in this world laced with Facebook and car accidents and bills and tourists and HouseHunters International and sometimes, much as I would like to, I fail to see the opportunity for prayer.

Sometimes one is staring me in the face and I ignore it.

Sometimes I don’t even realize that the grace was there for me to offer, if I had just paid attention.

Sometimes, I forget that all of us, even me, are the hands of the Holy.

We are each the incarnation, the hopes of the world made flesh, given this skin and these bones to make heaven out of this belabored paradise.

In our highest work, we bring peace to the wounds of war, we bring love to the broken hearts of hate, we bring unity where we are divided, yes we are divided.  We are healing ourselves, we are sacred and profane, together–together in one complicated paradoxical body.

We are one.

So my alarm goes off to call me back to that.  Sometimes I succeed.  Sometimes I fail.  But I cannot–I dare not–fail to try.

blessed be.

and amen.

 

 

enough special butterflies

this is a loving ass-kicking for my fellow coaches.  if you’re not a coach, you’re welcome to read along

Dear Beloved Coaching Colleagues,

We have a problem.  Many of us need more clients.  But we’re going about it ALL WRONG.

We like to think of ourselves as special, we coaches.  After all, we didn’t become entrepreneurs because we like to fit in, follow along, and take directions.  We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we have something unique to offer the world.  We know it because we know EVERYONE has something unique to offer the world.  We spend our days working with people to get that unique, amazing, magical, SPECIAL quality out and available because we know the world is a better place when each person contributes their best special sauce to the mix.

Right?

Folks, we’ve taken it too far.

Think about this for a minute.  We have marketing professionals and other coaches telling us over and over that we need a USP (unique selling proposition), that we need a distinctive way of describing what we do, that we need to be exciting and scintillating and stand out from the crowd.

A lot of us say, “OH I’m not a coach.  I hate the word coach.”  Hating on ‘coach’ has become the fashionable thing to do, in fact.  People who DO use the word coach might well be BORING plus they CLEARLY haven’t learned enough about marketing because if they had they would KNOW they needed another word.

Right?

Right?

But.

Look around a bit.

Therapists and doctors and lawyers all call a spade a spade.

They are also unbelievably hard to book appointments with.  My doctor is booking two months out.  My therapist…I don’t think she’s even accepting new clients.  (Touch wood, I don’t need a lawyer at the moment.)

Coaches, we are not so hard to book appointments with.  We have a whole industry dedicated to helping us BECOME hard to book appointments with.  Meanwhile an awful lot of us are not working to capacity, even though we are damn fine coaches.

What’s going on?  I think we’ve overcomplicated the situation.  We’re young, and brash and enthusiastic, as an industry. We tend to like novelty.  We tend to want to find the next big thing.  We want to BE the next big thing.

We need to establish a common understanding of what we do.  This means that instead of being UNIQUE we need to be THE SAME.

Doctors: they help with physical health issues.  If I get sick, I go to see a doctor.  If I get injured, I go to see a doctor.  There are specialists and there are generalists.  Typically, you start with a generalist and work inward.

Therapists: they help with mental health issues.  If I’ve got a superfund site masquerading as my past, I go to see a therapist.  They purge the groundwater and clean up the heavy metals so something can grow again.  Lots of therapists specialize in depression and anxiety.  Some therapists specialize in eating disorders or trauma or what have you.  I find one that seems like they do what I need. If something happens that could BECOME a superfund site, I go see a therapist RIGHT AWAY if I can get an appointment.  The faster it’s cleaned up the easier it is.

Lawyers: if I need legal help, I go to see a lawyer.  I pick the lawyer based on the area of specialty–if I need help with real estate, I find a real estate lawyer.  If I need help with probate law, I find a probate lawyer.  If I need help in the criminal justice system, I find a criminal law specialist.

In all these cases, the general case is OBVIOUS.  EVERYONE KNOWS what causes people to go see a doctor.  Or a therapist.  Or a lawyer.

We need an OBVIOUS general case.  Let’s try it on:

Coaches: help people solve current problems.  If I need help with solving a current problem or changing my attitude and behavior, I go to see a coach.  I pick a coach based on the area of specialty.  If I need help with health, I go to a health coach.  If I need help with relationships, I go to a relationship coach.  Lots of coaches specialize in times of life transition…

see?

If this were a common understanding of this word “coach” then when I said, “I’m a coach,” most people would have a clear idea of what I meant.  They could ask relevant questions like, “what’s your area of specialty?” or, “My cousin is going through a career change, do you do career coaching?”  And I could say, “well, I can, but I know someone who specializes in that.  Let me give you her number…unless you think your cousin would be a great fit for me; I’d be happy to talk with them regardless.”

HOWEVER if I say, “I’m a life shift zapper master” because someone told me I needed a special name for what I do, then we get, “A what?  What’s that?”  “Well, I help people do xyz which allows them to get through periods of change in their lives and get pointed in the right direction.”  “Ummmm…..”

Believe me.  I’ve been working on this marketing thing for 5 years.  In that time, coaching has come from relative obscurity to That Thing That Everyone Does.

Are some people dismissive?  Sure.  Don’t take it personally.

And if the “Life Shift Zapper Master” is working for you, GREAT!  Don’t change a fucking thing!  Really!

But I do believe we are finally coming to the point where “coach” is identifiable as a career description and you have the option of, “I’m a coach!”  “What’s your specialty?”  “I’m a life shift zapper master!”  “So you specialize in life transitions?”  is a totally possible conversation.  We just need to get together on the broad definitions so we can spend more time figuring out how to convey our personalities.

Because ultimately, if you put fifty coaches or lawyers or doctors or therapists in front of me, what I’m looking for is a GOOD FIT.  That means personality and expertise.  My therapist is a trauma specialist who understands my science/woo blend and really appreciates it.  My doctor is a D.O. who understands my science/woo blend and really appreciates it.  They are smart.  They treat me like I’m smart, and an active participant in my care.  They are comfortable with email and text as communication when I have a quick question.  They are honest with me.  They are real people with me.

That’s what matters.  That’s how I pick.

But first, I have to know that they do the basic thing I need.  I knew I needed a therapist.  I knew I needed a doctor.

We need people to know they need a coach.  We can take it from there.

don’t give up

I shared this on my Facebook feed recently; it’s an article about how someone realized she was criticizing everything her partner did, in a way that was neither helpful nor respectful, and was probably damaging.

It’s Just Hamburger Meat

And then I was talking with my therapist, who said, “Don’t you work with couples?”

And I said, sure, I work with people in relationships, and no matter what the total configuration of the relationship, people usually notice conflict in pairs.  And she said, “do you talk about it?” And I said, “not much,” because I don’t.  She wanted to know why.

Partly, that’s because not everyone’s a great fit for my style.

Partly, that’s because I’ve had my share of both successes and failures in relationships, and I wish I had more successes and fewer failures.

On the other hand, I’ve had plenty of time and help in the postmortem, and damn have I got tools.

Lots of tools.

So anyway, at the encouragement of said therapist, and clients ranging from “spice up my marriage” to “how do we transition to polyamory gracefully”, I give you my first video about relationships.  I did it, kid you not, with my phone clipped to a maple sapling in my yard, and it cuts out at the end…but #doitanyway.  Want to work with me?  Head over to leelasinha.com or drop me an email.  Rates are $150/hour and typically you’ll work with me for 4-12 hours total in a few long (2-4 hour) sessions before you’re done.

what happens when you crack open?

I’ve been thinking, a lot, about the consequences of engagement.  (And this piece is definitely in dialogue with Christine Claire Reed over at christineclairereed.com and with Briana Saussy over at brianasaussy.com.  They are both brilliant.)

Which is to say, what happens when you really truly get both feet into a thing and do it like there’s no going back.  It’s commitment with a vector–a direction of movement.

What happens is that you crack open.  The energy of motion starts to tear away the protective tiles on your spaceship and you become exposed to the world and to the possibility that what you have known is not what is.

And you keep going and keep cracking open, and you discover that under all those tiles your skin and flesh and bones are exquisitely, intensely sensitive.  Anything can happen in there.  You can feel it all, feel it as sharply as the day you were born, feel lit like sunrise on the morning after, feel it like opportunity, like becoming, like the sharp slice of truth.

And you keep going.

Learning to orgasm is the art of learning not to stop even when the sensation is so big you might come apart at the seams.  It’s finding the ways to shift into pleasure and shift again and shift again, even as sensitive skin and nerves report in at blinding speeds and you can no longer think your way through anything.  Learning to go deep is the same way.

You don’t get to see the end of the tunnel.  You don’t get to watch the scenery.  You get to be present with feeling in a way that almost hurts it’s so rich.

And then you get to the core where it’s meltingly hot and you, in fact, melt and are reformed, cooled into a different kind of being than you ever have been before, impurities burned away.

This is what the old ones used crucibles for.

There’s a deep kind of meditation required to transform pain into something else, but it can be done; much of pain is a story we tell about a sensation we are having.  The rest of it is the sensation itself, about which we can usually tell a different story if we will.

It’s a commitment, then, a commitment to transformation, a commitment to re-encounter intensity, a commitment to allow intensity at all.

It’s a commitment to welcome something bigger and deeper than the everyday.

You will come apart.

And you will be reformed.

Have faith.

it changes the world

Why does pleasure matter, anyway?

I’ve got a whole website here, devoted to pleasure, which sounds shallow and materialistic and a whole host of other things, if you let it.

But I don’t let it.

Because that’s missing the point entirely.

Pleasure matters because it matters, because it’s part of the human experience, because it brings balance.  But it also matters because it matters, because it’s the first way we learn to tell up from down, good from bad.  It matters because it tells us where to go next.

It’s like everyone has this golden bowl of melted chocolate sitting right between their hips, and you have to get to it, through all the other layers, and then let it come up like a fountain…and when you have it running through your veins, you know what to do.

You know what job you should have, what foods you should eat, what clothes you should wear (or at least you recognize them when you see them). You know when you should exercise.

You know who you love.

Commitment is effortless.

And pleasure is everywhere.

and when you’re in that state, you can seduce the world to share what you’ve got.

because who doesn’t want that?

The world becomes a better place when everyone knows what pleasure feels like and can hear it whisper in their veins.

When I say, “you’ll know” it doesn’t mean “you’ll like it”

you might discover that your partner isn’t a good fit.

you might discover that you’re in the wrong job

you might discover that you shouldn’t be vegetarian or that you have to move to the coast.

(ask me how I know)

but you might discover how to be blissfully happy in yourself, without changing your job or your partner or anything else that matters to you.

Consider this:

if you had a brand new, smoking hot lover standing behind your chair kissing your neck, you probably wouldn’t stay on facebook very long, would you?

Nope

because the pleasure centers in your brain know they’ve got better odds by turning around

but the truth is your pleasure centers have better odds almost all the time

you’ve just numbed yourself to them

so you sit in front of the screen

trying to get the hit

just a little more
a little more
a little more pleasure

but when you drop into your body and really relearn what pleasure feels like and how to follow it (and not ignore it) then you get your ass out of the chair unless there’s a compelling reason to stay there.

because you feel discomfort

that’s the catch

when you learn what pleasure feels like you become aware of not-pleasure

and you notice, for example, that those impulses to fidget are actually a desire to move your body (exercise! shhhhh.)

so then you stop sitting in the chair because you want to move.
You get up and boogie for fifteen minutes. You WANT to exercise.

then you notice you’re having a sensation in your digestive tract.

but you take the time to notice that it’s not a desire for chocolate, it’s really that you want a glass of water. (boogieing is hard work)

so you drink water and notice how full you feel and how good it feels so you drink another glass.

Then you wiggle your toes because you notice the linoleum.

Just the other day I noticed (I’m always barefoot at home) how greasy the floor felt near the stove…for the first time. I’ve been living here for three years. There’s always more to notice.

That noticing made me want to clean the floor.

Let me repeat that: WANT TO clean the floor.

because I noticed the unpleasant sensation under my feet.

(I’m tactile, the visual doesn’t get me as much and besides, the grease was invisible.)

I bought some Sweet William at the nursery, know why? Because it SMELLED GOOD.

now I’m torn between putting it where i can see it and putting it where its scent will come in the windows

so now I’m planting flowers.  Because pleasure.

And meditation: could be boring, except when you’re present with the sensations, it’s anything but. Now it’s a total trip through what might be called being turned on, if only turned on weren’t restricted to sex. Because the energy buildup and flow…not just for sex anymore. Not just for anything. Because it’s everything.

So now: I want to meditate. I want to exercise. I want to eat carrots and salad.

Do I also eat ice cream? Hell yes. But it’s so intense that I only need a spoon or two of the good kind.
Close your eyes, pay attention, and your pleasure centers get such a hit they are happy right away. No need for a giant waffle cone.

the desire for food, sleep, water, and sex are all RIGHT next to each other in the brain.

So you think you’re hungry when you’re tired.
Or when you’re thirsty
Or when you need sex.

That “hungry look” in the eyes of your lover? Only kind of a metaphor.

And finally there’s this:

We do three things that turn that-which-is-not-us into that-which-is-us: eat, breathe, have sex.
Something outside of is is welcomed in and becomes part of us. (Folks of all genders, if this is not your experience of lovemaking, let’s talk. Quick no-strings fucks are a different story.)

I talk about this when I do communion services and boy howdy do I get some freaked out looks
then I ask people to serve communion to each other
UUs don’t do communion often
but that’s what it is
this is the most sacred of acts
taking something into our bodies is a holy moment
a breaching of boundaries
a union of something holy
it is a moment of transformation, of creation, of life.

Why does pleasure matter? Because with pleasure, everything else becomes crystal clear. Pleasure is an experience.

Pleasure is a lens.

Pleasure is a passage.

Pleasure is home.

And when you’ve found pleasure for yourself, you can draw it out in others.  And that makes the whole world better.

leapfrog and holocracy

I was just reading an article about Holocracy in Fast Company, and it seems to me that the “you can’t x until you y” formula comes straight out of the older thinking and leadership models and as such, may be becoming outdated.

We’ve all known (or heard about) kids who ran before they walked, or seem to have sprung from the womb already understanding calculus. We’ve seen brilliant people supported in unconventional ways do unbelievable things–only unbelievable because we decided it couldn’t be done. World records get broken first in the brain–then everyone can do it, because we know it has happened.

Even in the world of psychology and neurology we see the old models of “this has to take forever and be long and painful” dropping in favor of things like neurofeedback and EMDR. We are skipping the “convince the person” part and going right to “rewire the hardware”. And why not? There is no valor in misery, despite some of the teachings of some of the religions around here.

Which brings me to coaching. One of the reasons I chose CTI as my school is because they are explicit about their underlying belief in the people we work with: all clients are “naturally creative, resourceful, and whole”.

Put another way, YOU ARE NOT BROKEN. And neither am I.

And every time I see a coaching ad that says, “you’ve got to (love yourself, have a mission, get focused, etc whatever) before you can (be happy, be successful, stand on your head) a piece of me jolts, and now I think I understand why.

Because I’m too damn not-like-that.

I don’t put much stock in paying dues. And the older I get, and the more dues I’ve paid, the less stock I put in it. Seriously. I don’t see why we should be wasting time and talent on principle. I’m dynamic, creative, and often impatient. I grew up in the UU church, trying to find the balance between leadership and chaos. In the last 40 years I’ve learned a lot, and nothing I’ve learned says that putting in your time really gets you anything except acclimated to the old way of thinking. If you are deliberately trying to preserve a culture, go for it, that makes sense. If you are at all interested in innovation, you might want to rethink.

So no, you don’t have to x before you y. You can fall in love without loving yourself, and do it well. You can run before you walk. You can discover that speed helps you keep your balance. In the Intensive Extravaganza we had a big conversation about how we love to see people do what they’re brilliant at as soon as possible. Because we’re attracted to the energy, and that’s where it lives.

Sometimes, leapfrogging is the exception, sometimes the rule. Sometimes you can afford to skip practicing, sometimes you can’t. But creating a paradigm where everything has a prerequisite? Lends itself to an environment where it’s easily too late to start over. And in life, that is rarely, if ever, the case.

What you have to do is take the first step. Everything else may well be optional.

Step Up

One day (I was about ten) I found out that someone thought I was a snob.

I found out because they lashed out.

I had no idea. I was shy. We were in a photography class. I was trying a different hairstyle and it was a pain in the ass, so I was constantly pushing my ponytail back over my shoulder. She thought I was tossing my hair.

I was shocked. I was hurt. I couldn’t figure out how anyone could misunderstand me so profoundly.

Almost twenty years later, I found out again. I wasn’t paying attention for a while; the idea that people saw me like that was so far outside my daily experience that I couldn’t even absorb it.

But I was gifted that truth, in a place and time where I was much more able to hear it. And it hit me right in the gut:

When people look up to you, they are granting you power.

When you have power, you have responsibility. You can’t just hide your head in the sand and say, “I don’t believe in it, so I don’t have to act on it.” You have it. You affect people. You affect people whether you like it or not, whether you want to or not, whether you asked for it or not. Here you are.

Step the fuck up.

Owning that power was one of the best and scariest things I ever did.

I had to ask all kinds of hard questions:

What if everyone I thought was rejecting me thought I was rejecting them? What if they thought I was too beautiful or powerful or smart or capable to talk to them? What if they had handed me power, and I had handed them power, and so here we were with the power floating around like a loose cannon?

I was abdicating my responsibility, and giving up the chance to make someone’s day.

A woman named Marla had given me a taste of what it was like to be explicitly included just the day before. I knew what a difference it made to be invited.

So I started inviting people. I decided the power was awesome. It was the power to change the world, starting with people who thought they were being rejected when I had no intention of doing any such thing.

I started reaching out, assuming the best.

It changed me and my world forever.

Claiming your power is an act of joy, of love, of responsibility, of spiritual growth, and of service.

And it changes things. All the things. It changes everything.

PS:
If you’re free to come to Boston this weekend, join us at the (last minute! When the spirit say yes, say yes!) Love Your Power retreat Friday night and Saturday. Three seats only. And me. And power. Deets here: leelasinha.com/retreats

intensives: be perfect already!

So about being intense.  It means that I dive RIGHT IN to whatever I’m doing.  (This is kind of funny because I still have a fear of diving that prevents me from going headfirst into the water, pretty much ever.  Working on it.  Not there yet. Anyway…)

I dive in.  Both feet.  Sometimes I tell myself I’m going to Do This Forever, but that’s only true in rotation with the other hundred and fifty million or so things I’m interested in.  I never lose interest, I just keep adding things.  (Intense learner, yep, that’s me.)

I LOVE that I’m intense about learning.  But what gets in my way is when I decide that if I’m going to learn this, it’s going to be PERFECT.

I’m going to be the best.  I’m going to LEARN ALL THE THINGS.  And do them at a paraprofessional level, so help me heaven and earth.

All this does is make me SUPER STRESSED.  I’m used to high levels of adrenaline and cortisol for a bunch of unfortunate reasons.  And my body tends to lean in that direction anyway but there is no reason on earth that I have to do it to myself.

(Also, adrenaline and cortisol fuck with functions like short term memory, so if you’re stressed at a networking meeting or a birthday party you’re screwed.)

When I decide that I’m going to do it PERFECTLY that leads directly to…

Not Doing It At All.

That’s right.  Perfectionism leads to procrastination.  ARGH.  So I’ve  had to learn to be intensely laid back.

Um?

It works like this: I can do as much or as little of -this thing- as I want to.  I can do it badly.  I never have to show it to anyone if I don’t want to.  It totally helps. In creativity I’ve even designated a few things (painting and drawing) as things I am allowed to do badly.  I’m even SUPPOSED to do them badly.  If I do them well it’s a total accident.

As intensives, we need permission, support, and guidance about how to be less intense when it’s not working for us.  Perfectionism?  Not usually working for us.  When it works, it works.  But sometimes you just have to do it for sheer joy.  Do it for the pleasure of the feeling of the brush loaded with paint gliding across the paper.

We need to let ourselves play.  Let ourselves scribble.  Let ourselves be wrong.

We’re at our best when we move fast, fix fast, iterate, develop, edit, and move on.

To do that, we have to start.

your body knows. Listen.