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	<title>The Heart&#039;s Voice &#187; Habits &amp; Patterns</title>
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	<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com</link>
	<description>essential Guidance when What You&#039;ve Said Yes to is Bigger Than You</description>
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		<title>Breaking Out of the Stuck Zone &#8211; Free Teleclass July 26th</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/breaking-out-of-the-stuck-zone/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/breaking-out-of-the-stuck-zone/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:51:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Resistance & Sabotage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Resources]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/?p=1715</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ In 2004, I came across a book that changed my life . Looking back  now, I like to say that the book &#8220;outed me&#8221; in a way I&#8217;d never experienced before. While I was reading it I kept having the same thought, over and over, &#8220;How does he KNOW this about me?!&#8221; The book, Your [...]]]></description>
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<p> In 2004, I came across a book that changed my life .</p>
<p>Looking back  now, I like to say that the book &#8220;outed me&#8221; in a way I&#8217;d never experienced before. While I was reading it I kept having the same thought, over and over, &#8220;How does he KNOW this about me?!&#8221;</p>
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 105px">
	<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006098872X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=thhesvo-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399377&amp;creativeASIN=006098872X"><img style="border: 0pt none;" title="Your Own Worst Enemy, by Ken Christian" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&amp;Format=_SL160_&amp;ASIN=006098872X&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;WS=1&amp;tag=thhesvo-20&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822" alt="" width="105" height="160" border="0" /></a>
	<p class="wp-caption-text">Click the image to grab it from Amazon</p>
</div>
<p><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=thhesvo-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=006098872X&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399377" alt="" width="1" height="1" border="0" />The book,<strong> Your Own Worst Enemy &#8211; Breaking the Habit of Adult Under-Achievement</strong>, written by Dr. Ken Christian, thoroughly explores all the ways that we habitually limit ourselves and gradually create lives of settling for just a little, or sometimes a LOT less than we&#8217;re capable of. (And he delves fully into the way our school systems helps create this, too.)</p>
<p><strong>Ken coined the term SLHPP&#8217;s</strong> which stands for &#8220;Self-limiting High Potential Persons&#8221;, as his work and research showed him that its the brightest among us who tend to do the most self-limiting.</p>
<h3>This is where my inner cringing began.</h3>
<p>He then goes on to describe 12 very distinct self-limiting styles such as &#8220;stop-shorts&#8221;, &#8220;floater-coasters&#8221;, &#8220;self-doubters&#8221;, &#8220;rebels&#8221;, &#8220;checkmates&#8221;, &#8220;extreme non-risk-takers&#8221; and &#8220;extreme risk-takers&#8221;.</p>
<p>When I saw my exact self-limiting style described EXACTLY in his pages, I knew that my days of hiding were over. (I was a very clear &#8220;stop-short&#8221; with low-risking tendencies.)</p>
<p>At the time, I was already engaged in very deep training with my own teachers in growing my awareness and my ability to work with any pattern or &#8220;program&#8221; I encountered in myself. So I brought these same skills I&#8217;d learned to the patterns Ken was showing me in the book.</p>
<h3>In hindsight, this was the beginning of my work with, and deep study of resistance.</h3>
<p>By 2009, I had developed an effective process including a map of resistance and the biological mechanisms behind it, and distilled that down into a distinct series of steps that could be facilitated and taught to others.</p>
<p>Somewhere along the way, I think I said to myself &#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t it be cool if I could tell all this to Ken Christian?&#8221;</p>
<h3>Well my full circle moment has arrived!</h3>
<p>In a moment of complete serendipity, a good friend and former coaching client of Ken&#8217;s contacted him in early March of this year to point him to my website, where his book was being proudly promoted in my sidebar.</p>
<p>And, because of who Ken is, after he&#8217;d checked out the whole site, he decided to just pick up the phone and call the contact number he found and say &#8220;Hi, thanks for putting my book on your website&#8221;.</p>
<p>We talked for an hour and a half!</p>
<h3>Somewhere in the middle of that first call, we both had the thought &#8220;We should present something together one day.&#8221;</h3>
<p>And here it is:</p>
<p>On <strong>Tuesday, July 26th, at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern</strong>, Ken will be hosting me on a special teleclass for his MaxPotential community called <strong>&#8220;Breaking Out of the Stuck Zone&#8221;</strong>.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>We have a LOT to cover on this call, and we&#8217;ll be discussing:</p>
</div>
<ul>
<li>How the brain creates resistance</li>
<li>Why you can never &#8220;think&#8221; your way out of the Stuck Zone</li>
<li>What the latest research on brain plasticity can tell us<br />
about how to get the brain un-stuck</li>
<li>How you can end the battle with your resistance</li>
<li>How to eliminate the guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy<br />
that go with being stuck</li>
<li>Four words that can help you break any self-limiting pattern</li>
<li>Why breaking your old habits requires space not time</li>
<li>The missing ingredient in any action strategy</li>
<li>The 5 steps that I use to resolve the fears underneath resistance</li>
</ul>
<p>And I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll get into a bunch more stuff that I can&#8217;t even predict right now. That&#8217;s just how our discussions tend to go!</p>
<p>Plus, I&#8217;ll be sharing some research I&#8217;ve uncovered where a California doctor has developed<strong> the very same steps I&#8217;ve been using on resistance and is using them to treat OCD</strong> (obsessive-compulsive disorder) VERY successfully.</p>
<h3>I&#8217;ll be sharing why it works and the crucial 5th step that they&#8217;re missing.</h3>
<p>Even if you can&#8217;t be on the call with us live, register at the link below so you can get this recording:</p>
<p><strong><a title="Teleclass registration" href="http://bit.ly/rsqfDe" target="_blank">Breaking Out of the Stuck Zone Teleclass</a></strong></p>
<p>(If you&#8217;re reading this post in your email, you might have to go to the website to get a clickable link.)</p>
<p>I truly hope you can join us and &#8230;to the friend of Ken&#8217;s who had the thought to send him here&#8230;I am eternally grateful!!</p>
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		<title>How to Take a Holiday From Striving</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/how-to-take-a-holiday-from-striving/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/how-to-take-a-holiday-from-striving/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:01:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Motivation & Inspiration]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/?p=1690</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Many North Americans would say that striving is a good and noble thing. But even though it might be taking you places, striving is actually a never-ending cycle that keeps you from ever feeling good when you get there. If callings are the &#8221;have to&#8217;s&#8221; of the soul, then strivings are the &#8220;have to&#8217;s&#8221; of the ego. [...]]]></description>
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			<a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theheartsvoice.com%2Fhabits%2Fhow-to-take-a-holiday-from-striving%2F"><br />
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<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/grandvelasrivieramaya/3180227438/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1694" title="Grand Velas Riviera Maya" src="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/beach.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="161" /></a>Many North Americans would say that striving is a good and noble thing.</p>
<p>But even though it might be taking you places, striving is actually a never-ending cycle that keeps you from ever feeling good when you get there.</p>
<h3>If callings are the &#8221;have to&#8217;s&#8221; of the soul, then strivings are the &#8220;have to&#8217;s&#8221; of the ego.</h3>
<p> Striving mostly comes from a feeling of &#8220;not OK unless_______&#8221;, &#8220;not OK until______&#8221; or &#8220;not OK without _______&#8221;.</p>
<p>And most of these &#8220;not OK&#8221; messages are the same ones that gave rise to your <a title="Emotional Needs 101" href="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/emotional-needs-101-series/">emotional needs </a>and all the striving and strategies that go with getting those met.</p>
<p>The funny thing is&#8230; although this works for your ego, this is a source of motivation that your deeper self tends to resist.</p>
<p>Your heart and soul know that the &#8220;not OK&#8221; message is a lie.</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>You&#8217;ve always been OK. You&#8217;re completely OK right now, just as you are in this moment. And you always will be OK, even if you never do another thing in your life. Truly!</strong></p></blockquote>
<p> So any internal message that flies in the face of this knowing, however motivating it might seem, can leave you feeling resentful and resistant.</p>
<p>And even if you buy the lie and get motivated and accomplish something, it still leaves you with a &#8220;not OK&#8221; hole that needs filling. And so, the cycle continues&#8230;.</p>
<p>Now you may be thinking:</p>
<h3>&#8220;But if I stop striving, I&#8217;ll never get anything DONE!&#8221;</h3>
<p>To your ego, that always feels like the truth. But a while ago, I pulled down the veil around that &#8220;truth&#8221; and looked behind it and found something startling.</p>
<p>I did my first experiment with non-striving in the summer of &#8217;99.</p>
<p>A big part of me was convinced that if I just stopped altogether, I would lay around on the couch all day and never start anything again.</p>
<p>But in just a few days I noticed something that changed my mind for good:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Without putting any pressure on myself at all, I found myself naturally <span style="text-decoration: underline;">wanting</span> to move forward in a more engaged and authentic way than before.</strong></p></blockquote>
<p>Instead of languishing on the couch as my ego had predicted, stopping had actually created just enough space for the true desires of my heart to come to the surface.</p>
<h3>Your true motivation is often hiding just underneath your striving.</h3>
<p>And when I say &#8220;true&#8221; motivation, I mean the kind that isn&#8217;t based on the lie of &#8220;not OK&#8221;.</p>
<p>True motivation comes from a place in you that always, already knows you&#8217;re OK and yet still sees a greater possibility for you, your life and your world.</p>
<p>We could call this heart&#8217;s desire, longing, calling or purpose.</p>
<p>Whatever we call it, it&#8217;s the most long-burning, sustainable fuel you have and its well worth making space for it to surface.</p>
<h3>When you stop striving all the time, you open a space for joy to come in.</h3>
<p>Let&#8217;s face it, striving all the time can take the joy out of anything, even your truest desires and the things you used to enjoy.</p>
<p>It tends to be tinged with urgency and panic, because your ego really believes you won&#8217;t be OK if you don&#8217;t get there.</p>
<p>And you can be doing the very things your true desires are calling you to and yet miss out on all the joy in them because they&#8217;ve been buried under an urgent layer of striving.</p>
<p>Here are a few clues that your striving may have taken over:</p>
<ul>
<li>that &#8220;hampster wheel&#8221; feeling like you can never get off</li>
<li>growing resentment that you &#8220;have to&#8221; do anything at all</li>
<li>daydreams or fantasies of escape &#8211; whatever your particular version of &#8220;run away and join the circus&#8221; is</li>
<li>emptiness or lack of satisfaction when you complete something</li>
<li>difficulty winding down at night or on holidays</li>
<li>a constant feeling of internal pressure</li>
<li>a sense that you&#8217;ve forgotten WHY you&#8217;re doing the things you do</li>
</ul>
<p>When you start to see this pattern for what it is, you&#8217;ll start to realize that its completely OPTIONAL!</p>
<p>Then you can begin to challenge your ego&#8217;s list of &#8220;have to&#8217;s&#8221; so that your heart&#8217;s &#8220;want to&#8217;s&#8221; have some room to move again.</p>
<h3>Summer is a perfect time to take a holiday from your striving!</h3>
<p>Things are moving at a slower pace anyway. Many people are away and the rest are pretty forgiving if you let your email, or something else, slide for a few days.</p>
<h3>Here are a few ways to experiment with non-striving this summer:</h3>
<ol>
<li>Make a list of your &#8220;have to&#8217;s&#8221;. Question each one and what your underlying motivation for it is. Then see if you can let it go for a while, delegate it, outsource it or at least give yourself a break from it.</li>
<li>Give yourself anywhere from an hour to a day of non-striving and keep reminding yourself that you&#8217;re completely OK in this moment right now. Allow and notice any discomfort that arises and just breathe with it and reassure it that its OK.</li>
<li>Choose a period of time, like a few hours or days &#8211; maybe the holiday you already have scheduled &#8211; and do ONLY what you really WANT to do. This will call you to start asking yourself what you REALLY want, and that&#8217;s a wonderful habit to get into. You might even surprise yourself with your answers! (If nothing comes at first, just keep asking over several days and weeks and answers will come.)</li>
</ol>
<p>So even if you don&#8217;t get to have a month off this summer, you can still create the same kind of peace and relaxation by just letting some of your striving fall away.</p>
<p><strong>What&#8217;s your experience been with striving? How does taking a holiday from it sound to you? Hard? Easy? Let us know in the comments.</strong></p>
<p>Happy Holidays!</p>
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		<title>How Fast Can You Let Your Story Go?</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/let-your-story-go/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/let-your-story-go/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Nov 2010 22:45:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Presence, Practice & Awareness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Transformation & Evolution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/?p=1184</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s so easy to get caught up in our stories! The ones about who we are, how life is, how others treat us, how successful (or not) we are&#8230;and on and on. I can easily get triggered into one of my stories and lose a whole evening harrumphing around in it &#8211; like I did [...]]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/herwings/3809991796/in/photostream/"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1188" title="Let Go" src="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/letgo.jpg" alt="" width="240" height="231" /></a>It&#8217;s so easy to get caught up in our stories! The ones about who we are, how life is, how others treat us, how successful (or not) we are&#8230;and on and on.</p>
<p>I can easily get triggered into one of my stories and lose a whole evening harrumphing around in it &#8211; like I did last night.</p>
<p>But lately, I&#8217;m noticing a new kind of energy that seems intent on showing me my stories and helping me get over them already. And I&#8217;m seeing this show up in 2 different ways:</p>
<h3><strong>First, every state I&#8217;m in is slightly amplified.</strong></h3>
<p>So when I&#8217;m sad, it&#8217;s really obvious that I&#8217;m sad and when I&#8217;m distracted and not present with the people right in front of me, it&#8217;s so abundantly visible.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m describing it these days like &#8220;bat sonar&#8221; sending out my energies and emotional state and immediately sensing them &#8220;pinging&#8221; them back to me.</p>
<p>In this way,  I&#8217;m being shown the state I&#8217;m in and it&#8217;s effects on the world and the people around me very clearly.</p>
<p>It would be really easy to see this as a major downer if I was spending a lot of time judging everything that&#8217;s bouncing back to me.</p>
<p>But instead, I&#8217;m learning to unhook the moment of noticing from the immediate &#8220;cringe&#8221; that used to follow it. (Really I pretty much have to or I wouldn&#8217;t be getting out of bed!) And, hey&#8230;guess what? That cringing is TOTALLY optional! And now that it&#8217;s (almost) gone&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>I&#8217;m learning to embrace this as a grace</strong></p>
<p>I think of a grace as anything spontaneously given from Divine Love (we never EARN a grace &#8211; it just comes.)</p>
<p>And this is feeling like Spirit&#8217;s teaching tool because I can suddenly SEE my energy and emotions mirrored back to me so quickly and clearly. And once I can see them, I have the opportunity to make choices about them &#8211; and maybe even climb out of the ones I don&#8217;t like. Yay!</p>
<p>The second way this new energy is showing up is very curious indeed and I&#8217;m seeing it in more lives than just my own (which always makes me suspect that something more far reaching is afoot).</p>
<h3><strong>I&#8217;m calling it Divine Over-ride</strong></h3>
<p>It&#8217;s as though situations are coming up in our lives where we&#8217;re plunged into a set of circumstances that call us to get over things (like our stories) very, very fast.</p>
<p>WAY faster than we want to and way faster than we ever would on our own.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not exactly &#8220;change or die&#8221; &#8211; it&#8217;s more like &#8220;change or suffer enormous unnecessary angst&#8221;.</p>
<p>I have a beautiful situation playing out in my own life right now in the form of someone truly wonderful who has come to live with us.</p>
<p>And I&#8217;ve recently discovered that the way she sees me and fully appreciates all my qualities (in ways that I rarely do myself) is completely over-riding and crashing all my internal programming about who I am and how I see myself and my place in the world.</p>
<p><strong>And there&#8217;s just nothing to do in the face of this but let my story go!</strong></p>
<p>In fact, the situation makes it SO obvious that hanging on to the story, habit, attachment or belief is just insane. After all, her story about me is beautiful. Why on earth would I trade it for my less glowing one?</p>
<p>I&#8217;m watching a similar situation playing out in my husband&#8217;s life too. He&#8217;s just started a new business and for years he was having a terrible time finding anyone interested in even talking about his work (having moved from a big city to a much smaller center).</p>
<p>Now suddenly, the doors are all swinging open and people are so glad he&#8217;s calling when they answer the phone.</p>
<p><em>And his old programs just don&#8217;t know what to make of this!</em></p>
<p>He said to me one day recently after a very positive phone call that a part of him is so taken aback that he wants to say to the person &#8220;Wait, let me tell you some of my story and then you won&#8217;t be so positive about me&#8221;.</p>
<p>Isn&#8217;t that crazy?</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s how our stories try to hang on.</p>
<h3>This is our time to let go</h3>
<p>I wrote last time about what I&#8217;m calling &#8220;<a href="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/transformation/the-quickening/">The Quickening</a>&#8221; &#8211; something that seems to be turning up the volume on the call of our hearts and on the urgency behind them.</p>
<p>Now it feels like we have a great opportunity to let the old stories be shown to us and the old programs Divinely and lovingly &#8220;crashed&#8221; for the sake of who we&#8217;re becoming.</p>
<p><strong>Can you go with it?</strong></p>
<p>Can you believe that this energy and chaos is really loving you into a new place and a new Self?</p>
<p>Which of your stories are going to feel SO great to let go of? Maybe it&#8217;s time for a small ritual of &#8220;write-them-down-and-burn-them&#8221; or something more appealing to your soul.</p>
<p><strong>Leave them on the floor of the comment box, if that feels right. Let us know how this strikes you and/or how it&#8217;s playing out in your own life. I can&#8217;t wait to hear your thoughts below!</strong></p>
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		<title>Learning From Remorse Without Having a Self Pity Festival</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/learning-from-remorse/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/learning-from-remorse/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 03:22:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Attitudes, Beliefs & Emotions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judgment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/?p=490</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When we're dealing with regret and remorse it easy to let the feeling take over and lead us into hours of self-criticism, judgment and generally feeling crappy about it. But it's worth finding a much more empowering and constructive way of dealing with it, so we can be less afraid of situations where we might make mistakes.]]></description>
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<p>I&#8217;m writing from Portland, Oregon today, about as far away from my home in Nova Scotia as I can physically get in N. America. I&#8217;m here attending a Life Mission workshop with my teachers and fellow students from The Way of the Heart, and these weekends are always a great opportunity to take a look around my life and see if I&#8217;m doing what I really want to be doing and, if not, how can I do more of that.</p>
<p>Sometimes, looking at my life like this can bring up a moment or two of regret or remorse and this time it was a pretty deep one. So I&#8217;ve been reflecting on how any kind of evaluating that we do in our life can bring up moments of seeing something clearly, maybe for the first time, and wishing that it had been different. At these moments, it&#8217;s so very tempting to dive into hours of self-judgment, criticism, self-pity and just general moping and feeling crappy about it all. (Hours, heck, sometimes days or weeks!)</p>
<p><strong>And I&#8217;ve come to see that how we handle these moments makes the most enormous difference to the quality of our lives and to our ability to learn from our mistakes.<span id="more-490"></span></strong></p>
<p>These moments can be hard on us emotionally and they tend to bring up a bunch of old stuff relating to how our mistakes were handled by our parents and early caregivers. But it&#8217;s really, really worth learning a beautiful and empowering way of dealing with remorse and regret so we can approach our learning and growth in a gentle way. And that allows us to get excited about trying new things that we might make mistakes at.</p>
<p>My moment came in the Las Vegas airport, when I decided to download my email. I received a message from someone who had been expecting something from me and hadn&#8217;t received it, (as it turns out she actually did have it already but didn&#8217;t know it.) At that moment, I had a revealing look at a pattern in my life that was all about keeping me feeling &#8220;busy&#8221; and not allowing me to put my heart&#8217;s most important things first.</p>
<p>The realization was actually so quick and went so deep that I didn&#8217;t even read the whole message. And I definitely didn&#8217;t have the space I needed, sitting in the airport food court, to process it fully. I finished my meal and tried to find a space somewhere away from the Muzak to just breathe.</p>
<p><strong>It wasn&#8217;t until I was on the plane, with my face turned toward the window and nowhere else to go that I was finally able to just let myself feel the regret.</strong></p>
<p>As it washed over me, I realized that I actually wanted it. I wanted to feel it so that I would want to change the pattern that created it. And I realized that I wanted to stay focused on the other people that my pattern was affecting, those I wanted to serve  fully, more than I wanted it to be about me.</p>
<p><strong>And it was that caring that kept me out of the self-pity.</strong></p>
<p>Oh, not entirely, mind you. I&#8217;ll admit to a short wallow. But I didn&#8217;t stay there. And before long, I started moving out of the remorse and into thinking constructively about what was actually creating the pattern and what I might want to do about it.</p>
<p>And I&#8217;ve noticed that this is what naturally happens when we manage to stay focused on what&#8217;s most important to us, instead of letting the feeling just take over completely.</p>
<p><strong>So here are the steps that I use to deal with regret without getting stuck in it.</strong></p>
<p>1) Breathe, slowly and fully (this can be harder than it sounds at the moment of remorse!)</p>
<p>2) Allow yourself to actually feel it, to whatever degree you can.</p>
<p>3) Have gentle compassion for yourself &#8211; be as kind as you can. (it feels icky enough without us making it feel worse!)</p>
<p>4) Notice that your regret means that you really do care about this.</p>
<p>5) Recognize and feel your caring about it.</p>
<p>6) Remember WHY you care about it.</p>
<p>7) Try to catch yourself in any self-criticism or judgment and remind yourself that what happened is simply about what you did and doesn&#8217;t change who you really ARE.</p>
<p>8 ) Remind yourself that you have the power to change this.</p>
<p>9) Allow yourself the space and time to process your regret.</p>
<p>10) Get constructive about changing things as soon as you&#8217;re ready. (This step is a great antidote to the icky feeling!)</p>
<p>11) Resist the urge to totally overcompensate for feeling badly about it by telling yourself you have to make some kind of huge impossible changes. Take small do-able steps to address or change what happened.</p>
<p>12) Congratulate yourself for how well you handled it and how you learned from it and how you&#8217;ll be OK with the next big &#8220;learning&#8221; moment.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m looking forward to finding a new way myself this weekend and I hope this might offer you a new way to handle your moments of regret.</p>
<p>I&#8217;d love to hear your comments about this below. How have you handled regret in the past? What helps you with it? What do you find gets in the way?</p>
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		<title>The Curse of &#8220;You should know better&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/allowing-our-learning-curve/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/allowing-our-learning-curve/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:14:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Attitudes, Beliefs & Emotions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judgment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/?p=437</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For me, the childhood phrase "you should know better" created a world where there was no such thing as an enjoyable learning curve.]]></description>
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<p><a href="http://www.momlogic.com/2009/08/i_like_it_when_strangers_discipline_my_kid.php"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-439" title="scolding" src="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/scolding.jpg" alt="" width="216" height="216" /></a></p>
<p>First I have to say that this is on my Top 5 Most Hated Phrases list, so I&#8221;m not going to pull any punches about it.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s one of those phrases that we hear as children and by the time our parents have stopped saying it, we&#8217;ve usually internalized it and we take over saying it to ourselves.</p>
<p>I heard this phrase a lot growing up and, in hindsight, it created a dynamic in my life where <span id="more-437"></span><br />
there was NO such thing as an enjoyable learning curve.</p>
<p><strong>So, this is a phrase I try NEVER to use on myself or anyone else.</strong></p>
<p>I had a major insight about this pattern a few years back when I was planning an event and feeling a little out of my depth with it.</p>
<p>All of a sudden it hit me that I didn&#8217;t feel any permission to use the event as a way to learn. I realized that I was expecting myself to fully know how to do it already!</p>
<p><strong>But why should I already know it?</strong></p>
<p>I looked at how crazy it was to be expecting myself to already know how to do something I had never done before.</p>
<p>I started hunting for where this pattern of expectation came from and it wasn&#8217;t long before I heard this phrase ringing in my ears -<br />
&#8220;you should know better&#8221;.</p>
<p><strong>Now, in all fairness, I know my parents didn&#8217;t use this phrase with the intention of creating all this expectation in me.</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s usually used when a child is displaying a behaviour that they&#8217;ve already been told is not approved of.</p>
<p>But we hardly ever take something in fully the first time  &#8211; it usually takes repetition to really get it down pat. And the phrase is usually just an expression of the parent&#8217;s frustration in the moment with the behaviour itself &#8211; and not some statement about the child&#8217;s inadequate learning.</p>
<p><strong>But what it created in me was a world where there was no such thing as learning something &#8220;in the right time&#8221;. Everything was always learned too late, because &#8220;I should already know better&#8221;.</strong></p>
<p>So now that I&#8217;ve seen through this pattern in my world and where it came from, I&#8217;m really working on allowing myself the freedom and permission to not know things yet and to actually enjoy learning them!</p>
<p>What a concept!</p>
<p>And I&#8217;ve stopped using &#8220;you should know better&#8221; inside my own head as a way to torment myself for not being further along than I am right now.</p>
<p>(And this gets right to the heart of what Garrison Keillor was saying about <a href="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/the-myth-of-i-dont-feel-like-it-part-2/">too high expectations</a> in the last post.)</p>
<p>So if I could send my fully understanding &#8220;now-brain&#8221; back into the body of my 5 year old self, this is what I would say to &#8220;you should know better&#8221; :</p>
<p><strong>Actually, I shouldn&#8217;t know better. I haven&#8217;t totally learned this yet and I&#8217;m working on it and that&#8217;s OK with me. I&#8217;ll know more soon, thank you very much.</strong></p>
<p>I would love to see the look on any parent&#8217;s face, hearing that come out of a 5 year old child!</p>
<p>But for now, if this freaked-out-expectation comes upon me while I&#8217;m learning something new, I take the opportunity to make it a teaching moment for my 5 year-old self and I let her know all about our new way to learn.</p>
<p>Has this phrase or expectation played out in your life? I&#8217;d love to hear about how you took it. And if you never heard this as a child, I would love to hear from you what&#8217;s it like to grow up without that!</p>
<p>Leave your comments below. And to get fresh new content from The Heart&#8217;s Voice, just <strong><a title="Sign Up Here" href="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/subscribe-to-the-hearts-voice-blog/">sign up here</a>.</strong></p>
<p>You can also follow me on Twitter at:<br />
<strong><a href="http://www.twitter.com/susanjohnstone"><strong>http://www.twitter.com/susanjohnstone</strong></a></strong></p>
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		<title>The Myth of &#8220;I don&#8217;t feel like it&#8221; (Part I)</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/the-myth-of-i-dont-feel-like-it-part-i/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/the-myth-of-i-dont-feel-like-it-part-i/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:08:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Attitudes, Beliefs & Emotions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Resistance & Sabotage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/?p=351</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The state of "I don't feel like it" actually originates from a caring intention, but then our resistance grabs a hold of it, and look out.]]></description>
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<p><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-355" style="border: 5px solid black;" title="don't_feel_like_it" src="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/dont_feel_like_it-300x290.jpg" alt="" width="210" height="203" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been watching a particularly subtle but aggressive form of resistance in myself over the last week or so.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the dreaded &#8220;I don&#8217;t feel like it&#8221; fog. Do you ever get that?</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been studying it for a while now and I&#8217;ve come to the conclusion that it  starts at the crossroads of deep caring and emotional need.</p>
<p>Today we&#8217;re going to talk about the caring in Part I, and I&#8217;ll show you what I mean about the need in Part II.</p>
<p>So why would caring about something lead to not wanting to do it?<span id="more-351"></span></p>
<p><strong>When we care a lot about what we&#8217;re doing, we don&#8217;t want to put any negative energy or emotions into it. We don&#8217;t want to &#8220;mess it up&#8221;.<br />
</strong></p>
<p>I think more and more of us are understanding that the energy we put into things matters and that it actually is felt by others when our creations go out into the world.</p>
<p>And this applies just as much to stuff no one will ever see, like practicing our music at home. The key is &#8211; we want it to be GOOD.</p>
<p>So when I sit down at my computer to write a blog post, and I just had a snarky exchange with my husband, well, I don&#8217;t want to put any of THAT in my writing. I&#8217;m just sure you&#8217;ll all feel it!</p>
<p>So in order to put my best work out into the world and share the &#8220;right&#8221; kind of energy, I&#8217;ll be kind to everyone and keep my snarky energy to myself and wait until I&#8217;m feeling better to do this. (Which is probably why I didn&#8217;t post for 3 weeks!)</p>
<p><strong>So this is really a loving impulse&#8230;.until your resistance gets a hold of it!</strong></p>
<p>The minute you set up a standard around an action that says you only want to put &#8220;good&#8221; energy into it, and therefore you&#8217;ll do it only when you feel  &#8220;good&#8221;, you leave the door wide open for your resistance.</p>
<p>Because now, all it has to do to stop you from doing something, is make sure you don&#8217;t feel &#8220;good&#8221;.</p>
<p>And we have to remember that our unconscious safety brain, where our resistance comes from, has control of our thoughts and emotions first, before our conscious brain has anything to say about it. So if your resistance thinks your next action might take you a little out of your comfort zone, it just pulls up a little negative emotion and Voila &#8211; action thwarted!</p>
<p><strong>So how do we get around this?</strong></p>
<p>Have you ever watched a child change emotions in about 2 seconds? They can be in full out tantrum one second and then in total wonder over something that caught their eye in the next.</p>
<p>We all have the ability to do that. I was once given an assignment by my teacher to conjure up the states of joy, sadness, fear, anger, grief, anxiety &#8211; as many different ones as I could think of in just a few minutes. (She dared us to do it, actually, and I&#8217;m always spurred on by a good dare!) And it worked. I had WAY more conscious control over my emotional states than I ever imagined.</p>
<p>I remembered that exercise this past week, watching the &#8220;I don&#8217;t feel like it&#8221; fog roll in and out. So I made a big decision&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>I decided that from now on I&#8217;m going to choose the state that matches my task, instead of choosing the task that matches my state.</strong></p>
<p>Read that again.</p>
<p><strong>Choose the state that matches your task, instead of choosing the task that matches your state.</strong></p>
<p>When this dawned on me, I realized that I didn&#8217;t have to be held prisoner by whatever energy or emotion I happen to be in. So from now on, I choose what I feel like. Or at least that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m aiming for.</p>
<p>Want to try it with me?&#8230;.I dare you!</p>
<p>And leave a comment below to let me know how it goes or tell us how your states are affecting what you do in your day.</p>
<p>If you enjoyed this article, sign up to get new posts by email or in a feed reader here &#8211; <a title="Subscribe" href="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/subscribe-to-the-hearts-voice-blog/" target="_blank">Subscribe</a>.</p>
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		<title>What&#8217;s Colouring Your World?</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/whats-colouring-your-world/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/habits/whats-colouring-your-world/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:18:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Attitudes, Beliefs & Emotions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/?p=150</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[First of all, I want to thank all of you who are tuning in to these posts. I find it really makes a difference to be blogging to actual people and not just into anonymous cyberspace. And one of the side effects of this seems to be that I&#8217;m coming up with a LOT more [...]]]></description>
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<div id="attachment_151" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 300px">
	<a href="http://manicho.deviantart.com/art/Rainbowfest-wall-67367936"><img class="size-medium wp-image-151" title="fest_full" src="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fest_full-300x225.jpg" alt="Rainbowfest by Manicho" width="300" height="225" /></a>
	<p class="wp-caption-text">Rainbowfest by Manicho</p>
</div>
<p>First of all, I want to thank all of you who are tuning in to these posts.</p>
<p>I find it really makes a difference to be blogging to actual people and not just into anonymous cyberspace.</p>
<p>And one of the side effects of this seems to be that I&#8217;m coming up with a LOT more ideas of things to post about&#8230;ideas that will really expand the scope of this blog.</p>
<p>A part of me wants to worry about whether it will all fit together cohesively, whether I&#8217;ll have to change the tag line, whether it will all come across as just too weird. But I&#8217;ve also been inspired recently just<span id="more-150"></span> go ahead and be all of my &#8220;freaky self&#8221;, with the idea that the world isn&#8217;t going to be changed by those who &#8220;fit&#8221;, and that leaves the rest of us to do it.  = &gt;</p>
<p>So I&#8217;m going to explore all these expanding ideas and we&#8217;ll find out where it takes us.</p>
<p><strong>Now for the colours&#8230;</strong></p>
<p>(And by the way, you&#8217;ll notice the British spelling of &#8220;colours&#8221; above, which is because I&#8217;m in Canada and I&#8217;m rather fierce about our way of spelling, so I never change it even though every spell check on my computer says it&#8217;s wrong&#8230;.So there.)</p>
<p>In the past few days something tangible has shifted inside and I&#8221;m suddenly aware of certain ways I have of responding to the world that I had never seen quite so clearly before.</p>
<p>The other day my husband called from work, which is just up the road from our house, and asked me to swing by and put his golf clubs in the trunk of his car outside his workplace so he could go to the driving range after his shift.</p>
<p>Not a huge deal, since I was on my way out anyway. But I managed to respond with a fair degree of annoyance.</p>
<p>I watched myself curiously in this state and, in the few days since, I&#8217;ve seen myself respond this way over and over again. Sometimes it&#8217;s more obvious and sometimes I just hide it really well and sometimes it&#8217;s not as big a reaction because I&#8217;m telling the story that it&#8217;s not as big an annoyance.</p>
<p><strong>And then I realized that this way of responding is colouring my whole world!</strong></p>
<p>It&#8217;s as though I&#8217;m a fish and this annoyance is my &#8220;ocean&#8221; that I breathe and swim around in all day not even realizing that I&#8217;m in it.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s like I&#8217;m saying all the time to myself that life is a series of annoying intrusions into my &#8220;flow&#8221;, whatever that happens to be in the moment.</p>
<p>And I wonder what kind of effect that&#8217;s having on the possibility of attracting opportunities and other good things into my world?</p>
<p>If I&#8217;m skulking around, sighing and rolling my eyes over everything unexpected that shows up in my day, I&#8217;m not really imagining that good things are right around the corner or that I would even enjoy them when they got here!</p>
<p><strong>So I think it&#8217;s time to choose a different &#8220;colour&#8221; for my day.</strong></p>
<p>And I&#8217;m taking my inspiration here from my wonderful yoga teacher, <a title="Yogic Tranceformation" href="http://www.yogictranceformation.net" target="_blank">Maryse Thuot</a>, who keeps encouraging us to smile into every pose. That feels like a much more gentle and joyful response to life than annoyance at everything.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been trying this on in the last couple of days. Especially at home where, let&#8217;s face it, it&#8217;s pretty easy to get into a pattern of annoyance with the people we live with everyday.</p>
<p>And I have to say that it is making a definite difference. When I manage to catch myself and smile instead of cringe, I&#8217;ve noticed that my energy doesn&#8217;t get drained by the &#8220;ugh&#8221; feeling I used to have. And I&#8217;m moving from one activity to another more easily.</p>
<p>And now I&#8217;m starting to look around to see what other patterns might be a part of my &#8220;ocean&#8221; and question those too!</p>
<p>So what&#8217;s colouring your world?</p>
<p>What are the responses, emotions, and reactions that run through your day so constantly that you don&#8217;t even notice them anymore?</p>
<p>And what colour would you like it to be?</p>
<p>I&#8217;d love to hear your comments on this. Feel free to share them below.</p>
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		<title>Is Being a &#8216;Visionary&#8217; One of Your Resistance Strategies?</title>
		<link>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/is-being-a-visionary-one-of-your-resistance-strategies/</link>
		<comments>http://www.theheartsvoice.com/resistance/is-being-a-visionary-one-of-your-resistance-strategies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:33:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Susan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Habits & Patterns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Resistance & Sabotage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/?p=105</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A look at the way we can sabotage ourselves by letting our vision for the future get in the way of what we're working on right now.]]></description>
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<p><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-106 alignright" style="border: 1px solid black; margin: 3px;" title="visionary_opticians" src="http://www.theheartsvoice.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/visionary_opticians-150x136.jpg" alt="visionary_opticians" width="150" height="136" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been really focused on a couple of major writing projects these days. And maybe it&#8217;s just the fact that I&#8217;m at my computer all day, but I&#8217;ve also been doing a lot more reading online, clicking links and just generally exploring as I love to do.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve been watching how I&#8217;m walking the line between reading just enough stuff out there to keep me motivated for my own work vs letting the exploring cross the line into &#8220;avoiding writing&#8221; territory. A few avoidance moments, but not too many to throw me off track completely, so I&#8217;ll go with it.</p>
<p>And today, I got into some really cool and interesting stuff about designing online learning programs at &#8216;<a href="http://teachingsells.com/">Teaching Sells.com</a>&#8216;. Seemed more motivational than avoidance, and I was definitely getting pretty fired up about new possibilities for sharing with people.</p>
<p>I stopped to make lunch, my head starting to swirl with new visions,<span id="more-105"></span>product ideas, ways to create support &amp; community, and suddenly it struck me&#8230;</p>
<p><strong>I&#8217;ve done this before!</strong></p>
<p>I could immediately think of several times when I&#8217;ve been tightly focused on my website, or an e-book or improving something current, and I&#8217;ve been &#8220;exploring&#8221; and suddenly found myself in &#8216;Visionary&#8217; mode, all inspired and looking down the road at a future full of possibilities.</p>
<p>Now, I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve ever done <a href="http://www.strengthsfinder.com/113647/Homepage.aspx" target="_blank">Marcus Buckingham&#8217;s Strength&#8217;s Finder</a>, but one of my top strengths is &#8216;Ideation&#8217;, the process of coming up with new ideas.</p>
<p><strong>I LOVE this part!</strong></p>
<p>I get all excited, I grab a pen and paper, or open a new Word doc and start writing frantically, capturing as much as I can of the vision while I have it.</p>
<p>And, to my credit, a lot of my current stuff is coming from re-visiting writing I did years ago in just such a state. (Fortunately, I&#8217;ve kept absolutely everything!)</p>
<p>But what I can suddenly see with jolting clarity, is how many times I&#8217;ve turfed the current project I was tightly focused on for the excitement of the new idea and vision.</p>
<p>I&#8217;d say it&#8217;s been a crap shoot over time, a 50/50 chance, that I would actually get back to what I was working on and finish it completely.</p>
<p>And, when I REALLY look at this pattern (Yikes!) I realize that there were whole areas of expertise that I was ready to share that I threw out the window just before they were ready.</p>
<p><strong>OK, breathe. Now breathe compassion to the horrified part of me.</strong></p>
<p>I know that all the things I&#8217;ve ever worked on were stepping stones to what I&#8217;m doing now, and I still have all the writing I did on them, so all is not lost.</p>
<p>But what I think I really lost was the opportunity to experience success with each one of those. To bring them to fruition and know the sweetness of the completion and the harvest.</p>
<p>And I think I missed out on a way of seeing myself in the light of those successes that would have me in a different place in my life now.</p>
<p>And then, of course, with compassion, I know I&#8217;m in the exact right place right now, and I do have a deep feeling that couldn&#8217;t have claimed this new way of seeing myself any earlier that I have.</p>
<p><strong>We get it when we get it. And not a moment before.</strong></p>
<p>But now, please excuse me while I get back to my writing!</p>
<p>How about you? Does being a visionary every get in your way?<br />
Join in the dialogue below.</p>
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