Morning Reflection: The Opinion Jump

The Opinion Jump
[#4 in an ongoing series, because who knows how many of these I will write :) ]

When did you surrender your right to own your opinion of yourself? I ask this seriously, because it’s one of the most devastating, destructive and divisive problems I have to deal with when I’m coaching clients, or just helping a friend navigate one of our human problems.

When you give up your right to your own opinion of yourself, you essentially give EVERYONE around you a say in who you are.

And that is the shortest road to madness you can ever take.

I’m not saying that you can’t take the opinions of others into account when you are deciding if you are a good person or not. People who don’t listen to anyone else’s opinions are narcissists, incapable of factoring someone else’s views or humanity above their own. A narcissist is a danger to everyone around them, so I’m not telling you to become one of them.

But I don’t want you to be at the other end of the spectrum either.

Because your self opinion is one of the essential foundations upon which your ability to function in this world is built upon. 

If you have a terrible opinion of yourself, you are then subject to the whims, thoughts and ideas of everyone around you, and you’ll never find peace living that way. Instead you’ll obsess over every decision, question every action, and find yourself in a prison of suffering where you experience pain because of everyone around you.

And you’ll never grow into the person you could become.

Instead you’ll wither and fade, hiding yourself away from everyone and everything that can cause you to feel pain. You’ll become bitter, angry, judgmental and spiteful. You’ll seek to avoid anything that causes you to question your own worth, until you shrink into a prison of your own nightmares, unable to step into who you really are.

It’s a terrible thing to see.

I have a client who has a difficult relationship with a parent because he has not yet learned to own his own self opinion. His parent is a well meaning older man who unfortunately has parented through guilt and focusing on his own emotional needs at the cost of his son’s needs. 

Now my client rarely calls his father, because the slightest disapproval from his father is still so painful to him. His father feels lonely and abandoned by his son, and the son wishes he could have a better relationship with his father, one that was not so painful.

In truth, both of them need to make a jump, but only one of them sees it.

So how do you make this jump? It’s a tough one, but first you have to go through the honesty jump, and the discomfort jump, because this jump requires you to be completely honest with yourself about who you are, and that can be really uncomfortable. 

Once you start getting real with yourself, you can begin to act in ways that support your opinion of you, and lessen the opinion of others.

It’s a hard jump to make, but you’ll never find peace without this leap.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Discomfort Jump

The Discomfort Jump.
(#3 in a series of 5 or 6, I’m still working that out…)

How comfortable are you? Very, a lot, a little, not at all? As someone who craves certainty, I can tell you that I usually interpret discomfort as a sign that I am failing at something. At the logical level I know that’s not true, in fact it’s the opposite of what’s really going on. 

However, at the emotional level, I’ve been conditioned that discomfort means I’m not doing something perfectly, which means I’m failing, and not worthy of being loved. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true for a lot of people.

And it’s holding us back, because your relationship with discomfort will determine your destiny.

When you look back at anything in your life that really took work, were you good at it when you started? I doubt it. Unless you are one of those incredibly gifted people who could just do something difficult immediately, you had to fail many times at something to obtain any level of competency, let alone mastery. 

Imagine if you were aware when you were trying to learn to walk. Would you have given up out of embarrassment?

Yet most of us walk. I think there’s a lesson in that.

Because in my life, there have been times when I have embraced the discomfort of doing something, and it’s turned out amazing. At 10,000 feet, a few minutes before I skydived out of a plane, I can tell you I was very uncomfortable. I was pretty much convinced I had lost my mind, yet that jump stands out as one of the most incredible experiences of my life. 

Because here’s the big secret…discomfort is the doorway to destiny.

As a writer, I can tell you that every time I sit down to write one of these pieces, I am uncomfortable. Only once in the last 11 months of writing these pieces can I say that the words just flowed from my fingers with ease and enjoyment. 

Most of the time I write in a state of frustration and feeling like I am trying to craft concepts from chaos, and find words in the wilderness. I obsess over content, context and syntax. 

It isn’t easy, it isn’t fun, and it certainly isn’t comfortable.

For each of us, there comes a point where we have to accept that we are going to be uncomfortable for a while, and then continue in the pathway we have chosen. This is especially true when it comes to changing ourselves through a determined process of personal improvement. 

Each step out of our comfort zone is by definition uncomfortable, but it can also be terrifying as we make changes to ourselves, our lives and our relationships.
For rarely are the changes that we really need to make easy, otherwise we would have made those changes already.

The hard stuff, the choices and changes that tear at your soul, and leave you concerned, nauseous and terrified are the ones that you probably need to make, but you’ll never do them if you cannot become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I have faith that you can make these changes, and shine brighter in your true nature and radiance.

I’m here to help in any way that I can.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Self Honesty Jump

The Self Honesty Jump.
(#2 in a series of either 5 or 6, who knows.)

Of all of the jumps I’ve made, or am trying to make, this one is the one that gets me every time. This is the one that forces me to question everything; not just my actions, but my reactions, my thoughts and my secret desires. 

This is the jump that calls me out when I can feel myself violating my standards of truth and honesty. Let me show you what that looks like.

Please forgive this little tour around the inside of my mind, but I hope this will be enlightening.

I grew up in a home where the reward for telling the truth could sometimes be violence. Where the difference of the inflection on a word, or the pause in a sentence could be misinterpreted as talking back, or lying to my father. 

I became adept at reading the micro-expressions of his face, the slur of his words, the emphasis on a single syllable. 

This skill, learned in desperation to avoid another blow, allows me to read other people.

My sweet wife will tell you that being married to me is hard, because I can interpret the slightest hesitation in her voice, the drop on a word, or the choice of a phrase over another. I know when she is frustrated, even if she is trying to hide it. It’s got to be exhausting for her some days.

I know it is for me.

Because that same skill that allows me to read you, also reads me. When I react to something, the part of my brain that questions myself will immediately start to process my reaction, and parse every feeling. Am I feeling threatened, or frustrated, hopeful or deceitful? 

If deceitful, why? Do I feel threatened, or is this another case of my experiences as a child casting a dark shadow over my adult life.

That happens a lot.

So the self honesty jump forces me to find the truth behind my actions, and my motivations. That sounds easy—until you try it. 

Then you’ll find that so many of your unconscious motivations are driven by thoughts and feelings that you are barely aware of; things that you have never questioned until the moment when you realize that they might not be serving you in the way that you anticipated. 

Then you have to dig deeper to understand where it all comes from.

Why do you dislike that person? What made you emotionally overreact to that statement? Why did you shade the truth when explaining yourself? A thousand questions lead to a thousand more, until you being to uncover the truth within your soul. 

That can be a difficult revelation, forcing you to change and act in a way that you know is right, even when you so desperately want to act another way.

It’s tough, living this way. Making the honest, honorable choice. Self deceit is so much easier in the short term.

But making the jump to self honesty will always pay off in the long game.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: A Sequence of Jumps

A Sequence of Jumps.

(This week I’m going to be writing a series about the jumps we all need to make to find peace in our lives. I hope this will be of help to you.)

The Responsibility Jump.

Who are you responsible to? It’s a tough question, because there are so many possible answers. Maybe it’s your higher power, or the universe as an entity, or your spouse, your children, the world, or only the people you want to be responsible for. 

Sometimes it’s a blend of these and many others, and sometimes it’s just one of them. But to my mind, there is one responsibility that overshadows all the rest.

You are responsible primarily to yourself. 

So many people misunderstand this concept, and some who do understand it cower from it, because it contains the hardest burdens to bear. 

Being responsible to and for yourself means that you accept the need to bring your conduct into alignment with the highest truths and ideals that you hold. That also includes how you treat yourself, as well as others.

It means that you have to do what is right for you, even when you want to take solace in what feels good to you, and those can often be very different from each other. 

Doing what is right for you often gets confused with selfishness, and so people shy away from it out of fear of feeling like they are too focused on themselves, or because it means that the feelings of someone else will be ‘hurt’. 

Instead you would rather accept a wound you inflict upon yourself unnecessarily than wound another who had no right to expect something of you. I see this time after time.

Good people who fail in their duty to care for themselves, and put their own needs first out of a fear that they will be judged by another. 

In case that’s you, let me lay out for you what I see as your responsibility to yourself, so that you might think about this more deeply.

You are responsible to yourself for your beliefs, and to make sure that they are yours by thought, by discussion and by a deep, abiding deliberation in your soul, and not the dogma of others, or a belief that you have adopted to placate or avoid the disappointment of another.

You are responsible to yourself for your actions; by learning to understand your deepest motivations, and ensuring that they come from a place of truth, not fettered and directed by petty jealousies or feelings of inadequacy.

You are responsible to yourself for your health, not your appearance. If you wish to have peace, you must do what you can to rid yourself of pain, so that your mind may be clear and able to resonate with truth. This is hard. 

You are responsible for your thoughts; to make sure that you allow no weeds to grow in the gardens of your soul. Monitoring your own thoughts is hard, because it often means that you need to sacrifice a personal want for a truth you know to be right. Make that sacrifice as often as you can, and you will grow in respect for yourself.

Finally, you are responsible to yourself for your desires, for these will control your destiny if you let them. Trying to understand why you truly desire a thing will lead you further down the path of wisdom than you ever felt possible, but it will also bring you peace and joy.

May you make the jump of responsibility, and find yourself anew.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The secret truth of parenting

The secret truth of parenting.

I don’t think it’s possible to be a perfect parent. At least, I’ve never seen it. All of us have some kind of emotional hang-ups as a result of our upbringing. 

Maybe it’s from parents who didn’t care, and left you to your own mind at a young age, with the predictable mishaps, or it’s a parent who rigidly controlled your life, so that you reach middle age and realize that you have lived someone else’s version of you.

We all have our trauma, and we all have to work through it.
I worked recently with a wonderful client, who struggles with self identity after growing up in a home where her obedience was mandatory. 

Although her parents were good people doing what they thought was right, my client was left with deep feelings of inferiority and a nagging fear of making decisions, afraid that she would be ‘wrong’. This has plagued her for a long time, and has significantly limited her life.

And she was seeking a way to break free of the chains of her conditioning.

As we talked, she was able to move into a greater awareness of how her thoughts and emotions were based in fear, and a desire to avoid conflict. Little by little we worked on a strategy that will help her move beyond her current mind-set, and into a new paradigm that will allow her the freedom to live as she wants, and yes, make mistakes.

She is going to parent herself.

I know that sounds crazy, but we have started her on a process of changing the voices inside of her head from those she learned growing up, into those that she uses on her own child. 

Blessed with an adorable young daughter, my friend (client always sounds so formal) has been parenting very differently to the way that she was parented. And now, she gets to take all the love, understanding and acceptance and share it with a whole new person.

Herself.

Anytime she recognizes herself falling back onto her conditioned emotional reflexes, she is instead going to imagine that she was talking to her daughter, and see how she would encourage and empower her daughter through that situation. 

While it feels awkward at first, over time my friend will find a new balance in her soul, as loving kindness filters through the pressures and restrictions that she feels now.

It’s going to be fun to watch her grow.

And the best part of the equation is the one that she never expected. As she is able to ascend herself beyond where she is currently at, she will find some of her struggles and challenges with her parents will melt away, allowing her to feel closer to them, and accept them in her life without so many difficult emotions standing in her way. 

And lest you think you are immune, let me share this with you. I can already see 3 ways that I have given my kids emotional hang-ups, and I can assure you they were not intentional. 

The truth of parenting is that you ARE going to make mistakes, but you hope that your children are resilient enough to be able to bounce back. If you have given them resilience, you will have given them the gift that keep giving forever.

So go hug your children, and love them as hard as you can. That will get them through.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Divine Storm

The Divine Storm.

If you’ve ever been through one, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s when the entire world seems to hate you, and everything goes wrong. 

Maybe you lose a partner, or your life insurance at the same time that both of your cars are broken, or a million other impossible moments where everything that can go wrong will, and nothing you do seems to make it better. 

You get to the point that every move seems to create more chaos, and you wonder how the world will ever be right again.

And the fear grips your very heart.

Stumbling, almost blind to everything but your fears, you desperately try to make sense of what seems insensible. When the very universe seems determined to bring you down, and you are afraid to make a move for fear of what greater darkness will find you. 

Alone, lost, adrift and abandoned, you encounter the moment of the question that can change everything.

Is it falling together, or falling apart?

I went through a divine storm 2 years ago. I can’t tell you all the details of how things fell down, because it sounds insane when I write it out. So many things went wrong, that I remember at one point sitting quietly in the corner of my office at home, and weeping. 

I couldn’t understand how so much could happen to one person. 

I realize now that it could have been a lot worse, but when you haven’t slept properly for weeks, and have reached your point of exhaustion, things have a way of weighing you down. One of the truths that I live by is that anyone can be broken, and I felt very broken in the midst of my storm.

Yet from amidst the terrible circumstances of my storm, things somehow got better. The denial of life insurance, and the terrible feelings of failing my family translated into the weight loss that changed my world. 

The eventual removal of myself from a toxic work environment has translated into an emotional freedom that has allowed me to serve others in ways that I never could have before. This work is a part of that change.

But most of all, the greatest change to come from the storm occurred in my soul. Forced to confront the truths that I had for so long denied, I began a very painful, yet ultimately worthwhile process of change. 

The awareness that I had for so long avoided became the only pathway out of the storm, and so I walked, and still walk, that pathway.

And it’s still not easy, but it is the right path.

If you find yourself in the middle of a storm right now, I beg you to keep going. I know how lost you can feel, how truly alone, scared you can find yourself, but if you keep going, you will find answers, and direction, and the strength to take one more step, again and again.

The storm can serve you, if you are willing to confront the truths of yourself and allow it to forge a new you, on an anvil that will forever change your soul.

Keep going my friend. You can do this.

I am here to help.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: It’s all in your head

It’s all in your head.

There’s this one place in your universe. One place that is solitarily yours, and you are responsible for everything that happens there. All of your dreams, all of your fears, all of your motivation and all of your anchors share the same geographical location. 

They fight for resources, they fight for time, but in the end they are all found in the place where you dare not go.

The inside of your mind.

It’s what you believe, and what you fear. That’s what’s defining your reality or destroying your destiny. Because there are so many things that are possible, so many interesting experiences out there for you and yet you hold yourself back because you can’t see past what you take for granted that may not be so.

All of the guilt that you carry is a result of the way you have been programmed by life, your parents, your spouse and the various things that you believe. 

All of them weigh on you, forcing you to believe that there is a “way” that you have to be. Here’s a newsflash for you.

Be you. Be 100% authentically you. 

Don’t listen to the people who tell you what you should be because chances are they have an agenda of their own and you are just a bit player in it.

Decide who you are, and then be that person.

Are you going to make mistakes? Absolutely. But guess what, they’ll be mistakes that mean something because you were trying to be yourself. You learn what you’re made of, you’ll learn where your weaknesses are. 

But when you show up to life 100% authentically, you will attract the people who will give you your mistakes because they understand your heart. We all screw up, that’s part of being human. It’s probably the most defining trait that we have.

But not doing anything, because you’re so afraid of every single possible avenue of failure is the ultimate screw up. It’s paralysis of the soul at the behest of someone else’s judgments. I can’t think of anything more abhorrent. 

I’ve seen coaching clients scared to make a single decision; begging for somebody else’s approval, admonishment or agreement. If that’s you, stop it. You were never going to enjoy your life living that way. You make everybody else happy at the cost of your misery and they won’t EVER thank you for it.

You have to be you.

So get inside your head and decide that now is the time to actually make a full inventory of who you are. You have strengths, you have weaknesses. You have Angels and Demons. Put a rope around both of them, drag them up close and tell them who is in charge. 

Because the only way that you are actually going to leave this life with a sense of satisfaction is when you have been you.

That doesn’t mean you get to treat other people like they aren’t important. It means that if you are going to respect your consciousness then you really have to respect theirs as well. It’s a hard thing to balance, and it’s a constant management of me versus them.

But when you understand that to truly serve people you have to be everything that you are, you finally make the jump about not worrying what people think, and instead focus on what you know to be true.

You.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Broken Ego on Check-Stand Number 2

Broken Ego on Check-Stand Number 2.

I don’t know if she did it deliberately. Maybe it’s store policy, maybe it was her way of taking a shot at me. I don’t know. All I remember was being very happy that I managed to hold my tongue, and not make an uncomfortable situation worse.

Yet her question has provoked some interesting emotions in me this evening, so I thought I would share it with you.

“Senior discount, 55 years or older” she asked?

And I froze for a second, and was almost speechless. A sudden rush of questions ran through my head. Do I look that tired? Does the slightly loose skin on my face from my weight loss make me look old?

Is it the gray in my beard? Is she annoyed because I’m in her store? Is she having a bad night, or is she just messing with me because I’m a man?

“No thank you” was all I managed. In hindsight I could have used one of my many accents, been charming, or even a little flirtatious, just to make the situation less painful, but I didn’t. I was too busy trying to analyze the emotions that were overtaking me at that moment.

Why was I reacting so strongly to something that was in all reality no big deal?

I felt for a moment somehow less ‘whole’. Like a door to the young me of the past had just been closed behind me, never again to open and allow me to step through it one more time.

I felt as if I suddenly had less time to achieve whatever it is I want to achieve; less time to share my thoughts and ideas with others; less opportunities to do and see all that the world has to offer.

But most of all, I felt like I was ‘less attractive’, which is ridiculous because as a 48-year-old guy who has been happily married for 22+ years, being ‘attractive’ should be really low on my list of concerns. But for some egotistical reason, that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.

So, I went deeper, to understand the truth behind my feelings. I do that a lot, in case you hadn’t noticed. :)

And to my surprise, I realized that even though I look so much better after losing 140lbs, there is still a part of me that feels like I am still that 330lb, 5'9'' guy, who hated people looking at him, because of the way that he saw himself.

I realized that I had placed a lot of my personal ‘value’ in looking better than I used to, and that no matter how hard I try, time will eventually rob me of my hard won improvements to my appearance.

All I can do is fight a desperate rearguard action, and try to tell myself that I’m not being a fool for wanting to look ‘strong, powerful, attractive’.

Between you and me, I think the male ego is sometimes a ridiculous thing.

Today, I acknowledge my frailties, my vanities and my weaknesses. We all have them, and I hope by sharing mine with you, you will come to just a little greater knowledge of yourself, as I did today.

Because after all, according to the lady behind check-stand number 2, I’m old, so I think I should be wise.

May we all grow to a grand old age, and use that discount as many times as we can.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Covenant of Compassion

The Covenant of Compassion

Are you compassionate? I know, it’s a loaded question, because it goes right to the heart of your opinion of yourself. If you say yes, then you can relax in the belief that you are a good person, and if you say no, then you identify yourself as ‘a monster’, and who wants to do that? 

So most of us reside somewhere in the middle, believing ourselves to be compassionate, while admitting privately in the dark corner of our soul that we could probably be more so.

But what about compassion for yourself?

This is where things get really difficult, because for so many, the concept of self-compassion strays dangerously close to the land of self pity, with its notions of weakness, laziness and self indulgence in our least empowering emotions. 

Rather than ride the separation between self compassion and self pity, we find ourselves striving to ignore our own needs, telling ourselves to ‘deal with it’ and get on with things.

And we treat ourselves the way we would rarely treat another.

In denying ourselves the compassion we hope to give others, we force ourselves to suppress the emotions that we really should take time to examine, experience and expunge. Then, when we have worked through the emotional in its fullness, we can move forwards. 

Instead of this, we bury our feelings deep, and distract ourselves with all the world, the internet, or the pantry has to offer.

We sow the seeds of a suppressed and saddened future when we fail to experience our emotions of today.

So I ask you to enter into a covenant with yourself. This will probably be harder than you would like to admit, but I feel it is so incredibly important. If you can master this one action, you can begin a process of changing your life in ways that you cannot imagine.

You begin by finding a quiet place for yourself, and bringing yourself into a state of compassion. How you do this may be very personal, but try to imagine the emotion of compassion flowing through you. Take a few deep breaths, and see yourself in your mind’s eye. Flood that image with compassion, kindness and understanding. 

Then, when you feel love for the person who you see, bring to mind a painful emotion that you have experienced, usually something that is still hard to accept. It may be the breakup of a deeply intimate relationship, or the passing of a loved one, or a moment in your past that still hurts deeply today.

Now, while holding the image in your head, allow yourself to feel the emotion that hurts you in a place of safety, compassion and security. Allow the feelings to flow through you, and accept yourself within the compassion that you have exercised. Give space for the pain that you feel, without suppressing or stifling it. 

Have compassion for yourself as you allow the passage of the painful emotion through you, that it may pass beyond you and free you from your burden.

This is a simple exercise to learn, yet a difficult one to master, and you may have to revisit an event or a memory many times in order to cleanse the wound, and clear your memory. 

The more you practice the Covenant of Compassion, you will find your heart becoming more joyful as you lay to rest the difficulties that you carry, and allow yourself to become lighter, and full of light.

May you carry yourself in a covenant of compassion, and share what you have found.

May we enlighten the world together, and may your find peace on your journey.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Naming the un-nameable

Naming the un-nameable

In the old magics, way back in the dawn of our beliefs, it was believed that knowing a true name would give you power over a demon. Once you knew its name you could discern its weaknesses, and have dominion over it. This idea, of knowing a name, goes back through fairy tales, through literature, and through our common history.

And there is some truth to it, but not in the way the storytellers would have you believe.

I have found that the true power of a name comes when we name our fears, and speak them openly. When fears reside only in the dark recesses of our mind, they have power to silently and surreptitiously influence our thoughts and actions, directing our desires from the darkness, and controlling our conduct in the light. 

Fears, it seems, are most powerful when you don’t quite understand them, but listen to them anyway.

And we all have them.

For many years, for far too long, I have let the fears of my childhood live with me as an adult, and it has caused so much misery and heartache. Each morning as I awaken, in my very first moments, they whisper to me, telling me that I cannot succeed, that I will never be ‘good enough’, that I will always let people down. 

And I struggle to face these fears, because they strike at the very heart of my soul. Embedded there for so long, they are a product of a childhood that taught me that I can never be good enough. 

The child that was left alone, and never helped to form a strong, positive self image, grew into a man who is so afraid of the censure of others that he avoids conflict and the risk of being disliked. 

His fear is that the opinions of others will overwhelm him, and return him to that state of a young child who is alone, feeling unloved and unwanted. Even though he realizes at a conscious/logical level that this will not kill him, at an subconscious/emotional level, it feels like they will.

And so I realize, that the thing which holds me back, and prevents me from doing more, is the fear that someone, somewhere, will think badly of me. 

I am afraid both of the risk of failure, and also the risk of feeling the emotions that I try to bury and ignore, and the ultimate fear that I will end alone, lost, and abandoned because I have no true value to give.

And while acknowledging this, and realizing the truth of it does not change how I feel right now, it at least allows me to understand what is really happening in the depths of my mind, in the core of my soul. 

These fears, which have influenced every choice, and directed every decision, are the ones I must face every day.

Bringing my fears out of the darkness and into the light, and naming them, explaining them, allows me to see what they really are, and in that knowledge, I am able to see them clearly, and hopefully find a way to allay them, and work through them.

Naming your fear, acknowledging it and accepting it are the first steps on the road to overcoming it.

So I name my fear ‘abandoned’, for that is truly what I fear most.

And I wonder, what name would you give to your fears?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Fail, Repeat, Succeed

Fail, repeat, succeed.

Let’s be honest, I’m going to fail. In starting a new journey today, I am anticipating and accepting that I am going to make many, many mistakes. Some of those mistakes will be small, and some of them are going to sound terrible. 

Those around me may beg me to stop, and there will be days when I am going to work on this journey despite more pressing matters. Times when I ignore everything else, and lose myself in the unbridled joy, frustration and insanity that is learning a stringed instrument.

I just became the owner of a new cello.

Which is a ridiculous thing, in that I have very little musical talent, and even less musical experience. I might sing in the car (when I’m by myself) but that doesn’t mean I’m any good at it. Yet for reasons that are not quite clear to me yet, I am possessed of a dream to master the cello. 

So I’m going to move forward, secure in the knowledge that I am going to sound terrible for a long, long time.

And I’m ok with that.

In the past, the inadequacies that I bring to this journey would have stopped me cold, and dissuaded me from ever embarking on such a foolhardy endeavor. Yet now I am able to accept those inadequacies, and welcome them along on the journey. 

While they may prove an inconvenience for a time, I am choosing to believe that eventually they will either fall away or dwindle in despair as I outgrow them, layering skill upon talent with hours and hours of practice.

Or, they may succeed, and I might give up. Who knows.

What I do know is that I will be ok with whatever happens, because I am invested in the experience, and not in the outcome. I have no idea if this is something that I will come to love, or just to experiment with, or eventually to lay aside and move onto something else.

And I can tell you that there is incredible power in allowing myself the freedom to do whatever feels right. If I am practicing, and it sounds bad, who cares. This is for me, not for anyone else. If I succeed, and become proficient, it’s still only for me. 

I’m never going to perform in public, so I can play for myself and enjoy the process, rather than the performance. And if I decide that I am going to give it up, well, it will have been an adventure, and a journey of discovery.

By accepting whatever comes, I free myself from the pressure and the pain of an expectation. If I sound bad, that’s ok. If I sound great, well that’s ok too. 

The only way I can lose out is if I allow myself to become so concerned about how anyone feels about this journey that it impacts my freedom to feel however I feel about it.

Because in the end, I alone am responsible to myself for this experience.

Just as you are responsible for yours.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The shield that becomes a shroud

The shield that becomes a shroud.

Many years ago, I discovered a very powerful weapon. It could protect me from so many threats, so many hurtful and painful things. I stumbled across it quite accidentally at a very young age, but once I used it for the first time, it became a part of me. 

It was mighty, and it was swift to the fight, and easy to handle. Since that time I have carried it with me forever, and it has sheltered me from so many things that were hard to bear.

Like self awareness, self honesty, and growth.

It also shielded me from change, and from admitting I was wrong, and making amends. All those tiresome and troublesome activities that never seemed to be what I wanted to do, even when I knew it was what I should do. 

This weapon, this shield, was my ultimate escape, my refuge from reality and my hideaway from honesty.

A shield made of self pity is the most devastating weapon I have ever carried, for it has hurt me like no other.

Let’s face it, self pity feels good. There’s nothing like feeling sorry for yourself to give you a sense of significance. 

If the world, or all its people, or God or the universe or whomever, whatever, whenever and wherever are all being unkind to you, well then you, my friend, must be someone important, someone who matters, someone special. Not only that, but you are a victim, who has been treated badly and who is due some recompense by everyone and everything.

That’s what makes self pity so addictive, and like most addictive things, it will kill you if you let it.

I wasted years of my life feeling sorry for myself. Yes things were hard, but others had come through harder. Yes it could be viewed as unfair, if I scrunched my eyes up so much that all I could see was my own sad little life.

Yes, there were people in my life who were not treating me as well as they could have done, but none of that matters one bit.

Because the universe doesn’t care. It doesn’t give out handouts or freebies or do-overs. Life is here, now. Brutal, beautiful, fierce, funny, hellish, honorable, terrifying, timeless.

And life is what you are wasting when you hoist a shield of self pity. 

I’ll take one thing back. The universe does give you one thing. It’s called today, this life, this moment. 

Unfortunately, that opportunity also looks a lot like hard work, with a chance to fail on the side. 

But since that looks a lot like something hard and difficult, we just raise that shield one more time, and block out the chances to feel better, to live longer, to find joy in our journey and to give to those around us.

The real danger of this shield is that eventually, if you keep using it every day, it will become the shroud that they bury you in. 

Because a shield of self pity cannot protect you from death, it can only protect you from life.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Peace has a price

Peace has a price.

What does peace mean to you? Is it just silence or the absence of noise? What if I told you that you can have peace in the middle of the loudest room, or the noisiest child? 

Would you believe me, or think I was crazy. It all comes down to what your definition of peace really is.

And what you are prepared to pay for it.

I met a man a couple of years ago who so deeply impressed me. He was older than I am, yet he seemed more vital, and more alive than I felt. His hair was thinning, and he had no particular form that was outstanding. 

You could pass him on the street and never know that you were in the presence of someone wonderful, someone compassionate, someone who could change your life.

Yet he left an impression on me that was riveting, and to this day I still regard him as one of the greatest people I have ever met.

There was a calmness about him, a humility and an overall peace that seemed to flow from him. In his presence it was hard to be angry, because you never felt threatened. 

It was easy to feel heard, because he truly wanted to know about your life. It was painless to take his advice, because it truly felt like he was sharing the gift of his experience, his knowledge and his wisdom out of a true desire to serve, to help and to heal.

It was easy to be at peace with him, because he was at peace with himself.

Ever since meeting him, I have tried to emulate his goodness and strength. In talking with him, I found that he has studied for many years, learning his wisdom line upon line, precept upon precept. 

Never hiding away from the truths that required him to pass through difficult times, and always being willing to pass on what he had learned with others.

In talking to him, I sensed that this was not something that had come easily to him, and he had experienced his share of pain, of sadness and of struggle. Yet he had allowed them to remove the rough edges from his soul, rather than harden him into a person he didn’t want to be.

And the person who was left has helped so many people.

I learned from him that peace is possible, if we are willing to do the work. It’s hard, sometimes so much harder than we thought possible, especially in the times when it seems so counter-intuitive. 

But this man has come to know himself, and make peace with himself, in a way that I am trying to emulate every day.

This work, which has become more than I could have ever imagined, is a part of that emulation. Through it, I seek to understand myself, and at the same time try to help others. 

It’s what he would do.

Through it, may we all find a greater peace, and a greater love.

Together.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Your struggle does not define you

Morning Reflection: Out of Alignment

Out of Alignment.

Do you ever feel lost? Like somehow you’ve detoured from the path you are supposed to be taking, but you can’t work out how to get back, or even what the path is supposed to look like when you are on it. 

You only know that there is this feeling, this nagging awareness, that you are not following the best way to get to where you want to be.

If you even know where that is.

Over the last 2 years I’ve been trying to find a new pathway. The journey began during a very stressful time in my life, where it felt like everything was changing (or was it falling apart, because that was certainly what it felt like). 

In a moment of desperation, or inspiration (hard to tell the difference sometimes) I mapped out some ideas on a post-it note. I even added graphics, which if you’ve ever seen my attempts at drawing, well, you’d understand why that doesn’t happen too often.

I still have that post it note, and I can’t tell if it’s inspired, or insane.

In the middle of my fear, I was searching the future, trying to find the thread that would lead me into where I wanted to be, which honestly at the time was almost anywhere other than where I was. 

For the last 2 years (or maybe a lot, lot longer than that) I’ve been living with these feelings of not being in alignment with my purpose, or my skills, or however you want to describe it. It just doesn’t feel right, and I can't even tell what right would feel like anymore. 

It feels like I’m traversing deep valleys, where the mountains are so high that it blocks my view of everything.

Occasionally, there is a moment where a single ray of light shines through, and I can hope that I am moving forwards. Even more rarely, a flash of lightning lights up the sky, and I can see a possible pathway that I try then to follow.

But honestly, most of the time, I feel like I’m floundering; wading through the world without a clear understanding of where I am, or why I am here. Secretly terrified that I am missing the point of my purpose, or honestly, if I even have one.

My hope is that somewhere out there is a moment where things make sense. When all of the past comes into focus, and I realize why I am here. I feel a deep, fervent desire to make a difference, to help, and to inspire, yet I struggle understanding how to apply whatever gifts I have been given. 

It seems that when I am helping others make profound changes, that my purpose resonates within me, begging me to go forwards.

But more often than not I stumble, out of a fear that another pathway will turn out to lead me nowhere better, or that my own personal demons will stop me on the way.

I have come to believe that the answers are deep inside of me, buried under years of despair, sadness and frustration. I have to seek for them, often digging on my knees with bloodied knuckles and tears.

The universe, it seems, does not give up its secrets willingly.

I write this today in the hopes of helping someone understand that we all struggle. If you feel like the battle you are fighting is your own, you may be right, but I would hope that you would understand that we all have our struggles, our challenges, our fears.

It’s like that for us all. Struggling doesn’t make you wrong. It means you are human.

You are one of us.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: “Til this moment, I never knew myself."

“Til this moment, I never knew myself”.

The world shifts. That moment, that amazing moment, where the mental clouds part, the light shines, and you suddenly burst into a new understanding about yourself and your place in the universe. 

It can be either exhilarating, or terrifying. I’ve been there when people have either erupted in a sudden smile of pure joy, or lowered their heads and wept profusely.

It can be that powerful, or that painful.

The title of today’s work comes from the novel Pride and Prejudice. The protagonist, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, arrives at a difficult moment of self awareness, where she realizes that both her judgment and her conduct have been subject to the whims and waves of her ego, and not from a place of balance, honesty and truth.

Finding out how blind you have been can be a devastating experience. 

As one who prided herself on her good judgment, discovering that she was as fallible and easily misled as any other person was a hard truth for Elizabeth to bear. 

Once she had accepted it through, she was able to change both her thoughts and her behavior, and ultimately experience greater joy and happiness. I realize it’s only a novel, so the ending is going to be ok, but I have seen this happen time and time again with people who I have helped.

It just takes a moment of awareness, and the humility to make changes.

All of us are, in some way, blind to ourselves and our actions. Unless we train ourselves, and practice diligently, most of us operate on a level that is basically automatic; not questioning our motives or discovering our unconscious desires. 

People who have arrived at an advanced self awareness usually do so as a result of a painful situation that forces them to examine themselves at a deeper level.

But you don’t have to wait for a bad day (or week, or month, or year) to start on your journey.

You can begin by watching how you react to any situation, and asking yourself if your emotions and your behavior were proportional to the stimulus. 

Find yourself yelling at the person who cut you off…that’s a clue. Discover that you are incredibly nervous in a social situation that has no potential for harm…that’s a clue. Realize that you are angry with someone who really doesn’t deserve it…there’s a clue. 

Now ask yourself the powerful question – what’s the damage?

Every disproportionate reaction, every imagined slight and unnecessary anxiety come because in some way you perceive something, someone or some situation as a threat. 

Understanding why you see it that way can help you to realize the underlying wounds in your soul, and then you can begin a journey of healing towards who you were meant to become.

It’s all waiting for you, if you will only just begin.

And if you aren’t beginning, maybe you need to ask yourself why not. ;)

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The shackle of should

The shackle of should.

Oh my gosh – it’s like an epidemic. I can’t tell you how many times I have worked with someone, or even just been talking to someone, and had to help them through the insanity that is the word ‘should’. 

I think without exception, EVERY person I have ever coached has suffered from this. It robs them of joy, of perspective, of happiness and even of the kindness that they desperately try to give back into the world.

The power of that one single word, ‘should’, is terrifying.

Because no matter how well your day is going, if you think it ‘should’ be better, or it ‘should’ be different, then you will remain unhappy, despite all that is going on around you. 

Or maybe it’s that you’ve done a great job, but you feel it ‘should’ be better, then you’ll lose all self respect in a desperate desire to match up to some imaginary guideline.

It just never stops.

A good friend of mine suffers from this. Blessed with three amazing daughters, who are all strong, independent and wonderful women, she nevertheless struggles because she thinks they ‘should’ love each other better. 

Like any siblings they have their issues and complications in their relationships with each other, but my friend loses out on the wonder of her daughters, because they are not as close as she thinks they ‘should’ be.

So I would ask her – who sets the rules.

Because most of the time, I find that ‘should’ is really a cover for a something different. Maybe it’s really a desire to obtain respect or admiration from someone who struggles to be kind with others. 

Or maybe it’s because someone feels a need to live up to a sibling or some imagined standard set by a figure in their life. 

At worst, ‘should’ is the desperate prison for someone who has been hurt so much in their life that they feel like they have no worth, and ‘should’ have no worth, so they set themselves impossible standards that they are never going to achieve, so that they can fail, like they deserve.

As one of my favorite authors once wrote – “you don’t need whips in your hands when they have chains in their heads’.

That’s what ‘should’ really is – a chain that keeps you from peace and fulfillment. If you struggle with this, and most people do, I would challenge you to dig deeper and try to understand what it is that you are really trying to achieve. 

Almost anytime I have to help someone overcome a ‘should’, it’s because they are really seeking for the significance that comes from meeting a standard not set by them, and often not one they would set for someone else.

Please, unchain yourself from the shackle of should, and instead find gratitude and appreciation for every day in your life that can be filled with joy and happiness, if only you can learn to see if that way.

If you learn to live without ‘should’, you’ll be amazed at what you can see.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Falling Leaf Perspective

The Falling Leaf Perspective.

A single leaf is all it takes. That first leaf, tumbling and twisting downwards, warning not only of many more to come, but of the changing of the season from summer into fall. 

As the sun retreats, and the winter signals its approach, the leaves fall like rain. The stronger the wind, the faster they descend in multi-colored splendor that decorates the ground in a crisp, crinkling blanket of color, warmth and comfort.

And a reminder, that another season has changed.

As I watch the leaves this year, I feel like each one is a reminder of a year gone by, a chance not taken, an experienced missed, a moment of life than can never be returned. 

As the leaves settle on the earth, I see a pattern of life discarded and forgotten, as the tree has moved on from the leaves it grew with such abandon.

So often do we do the same with the days for which we have waited.

How long have you planned, fought, saved and struggled for a day in the future that may be as brief as the passage of the falling leaf? If we are not careful, we spend our days struggling to reach a tomorrow that we may never achieve, or find that it is over all too quickly. 

The falling leaf teaches me that life is short, and I should take the time each day to find joy, gratitude and forgiveness.

But the lessons of the leaf are far from over.

For each leaf is also a testament to the beauty and majesty of nature’s creation. While the leaves may differ in color, in size, and in shape, they are all perfect in their own way. 

And so I realize that each person, like each leaf, has value beyond measure, and is perfect in their sphere. Maybe, like the leaf, they are one of many, yet I can notice the individual and find value and perfection in the person, despite their tendency to disappear into the crowd.

A single leaf, like a single life, is a revelation, and a reminder.

As you approach this season change, I invite you to spend a few minutes outdoors, and if you can, find a pile of leaves to walk through. Allow the sound, smell and sensation to carry you back to a childhood memory, and once again view the world with wonder and awe.

For each leaf is an emblem, an epiphany, and an epitaph.

The emblem of the seasons changing, the epiphany of the magnitude of your life, and the epitaph of all that has gone before, never to return. If you allow it, a single leaf can fill your soul with gratitude, and allow you to see anew all that surrounds you in its glory.

A single leaf, a single life.

Make of it what you desire.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The State of Your Choice

The State of Your Choice.

How many states have you been in? Whenever I ask people this question, they inevitably start listing off how many of the different states in the United States of America they have visited. 

I understand the reasoning, but it’s the wrong answer. Then I ask them what state do they live in, they usually answer with one or two words. Again wrong, but I can see how they got to that answer.

Because most people think of states in terms of geography, not emotion.

Yet it turns out that there are a lot of similarities between the two. As there are many states of land, there are also many states of emotion. I read one time of a list that mentions 131 different emotional states. 

Exhausting thought isn’t it. 

While some geographical states are similar to others, there are also those states with whom they appear to have little in common. The same is true of emotional states, where there are both similarities and differences.

But it’s also true that visiting, or taking up residence in a state is a choice. A voluntary choice.

Ok, put down your pitchforks. I know that my last statement tends to make some people very angry, so I would ask you to read the emotions that you felt when I told you that it was voluntary. 

Did you feel a quiet acceptance, or a sudden anger? Did you immediately jump to telling me why I was wrong? If so, you might find the next statement kind of hard to take as well.

We choose our emotional states based on what we get out of them.

Please hear me clearly, because this is a difficult thing to understand. I am not talking about people who suffer from depression, that is a totally different matter. But in the case of someone who routinely, habitually chooses to be in a certain emotional state, they invariably do so because they are getting something out of it. 

It is a reaction for them, born out of pain, and confusion and sorrow, and it is often so ingrained that they are completely unaware that there is a choice.

And there never will be, unless they decide to increase their awareness, and find out why they choose the way that they do.

Please understand that I am not judging them. I was one of those people for so long, and the first time I heard this truth I reacted against it pretty nastily, because believing that I didn’t have a choice about my emotional state freed me from the responsibility of managing it. 

Also, consistently feeling like the victim (hard to admit but true) gave me a sense of significance, and certainty, and connection.

I was choosing my emotional state based on what I got out of it, not what I could get out of it.

Your emotional state IS a choice, and one that allows you to either stagnate or grow; find anger or find peace. When you truly understand this, you will have started the journey to becoming a person who chooses their emotions out of awareness rather than out of fear. 

You will find a different person staring back at you than you ever thought possible.

And who knows, you might just find some joy along the way :)

—Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Who looks at you in the mirror?

Who looks at you in the mirror?

Who are you? I don’t mean your name, because that can be changed. I don’t mean where you came from, because that is just history. What you do – that’s either your passion, your pain, your prison or your predicament. 

What I’m asking today goes so much deeper than that. I’m talking about the consciousness inside of you that watches you.

And always has.

When I was 17, I was a pretty troubled kid. I had a lot of anger inside of me, and also fear, confusion, sadness, loneliness and doubt. I acted out in stupid ways. Skipping school, angry outbursts. 

I even remember one day sitting alone in my bedroom, repeatedly plunging a knife into my mattress. No, I wasn’t imagining anyone. I honestly wasn’t really thinking at all. I was just finding some way to relieve the pain I was feeling.

That’s when I really became familiar with the consciousness. 

I became aware of myself watching myself. Or should I say the other self… I’m still not sure? But I realized that the me that was watching me was concerned. It was if I could hear the other me saying gently “Alan, I’m not entirely sure why you are doing this, but this is not normal, and you have to figure this out”.

Although it was me, it was also not me, in that this was not the me who was in pain, and struggling to find answers.

This was a different me. Wiser, older, detached from the emotions that were causing so much pain, and able to see what I could not, because I was in the middle of the storm.

Whereas he was beyond all that.

Since then I have come to realize that my consciousness is not always me. I know that sounds crazy, it does as I’m writing this, but there have been times when I see myself while I am myself. 

It happens more and more now, this continual analysis, this watchfulness, this continual education from someone who seems to know me better than I know myself.

As he has come to know me better, and I have come to listen closer, and trust more deeply in him, I find myself growing older, hopefully wiser, and more at peace with myself and the universe that I find myself in.

Now as I look in the mirror, I can almost see both of us at the same time. Me, and the me who watches me. Yet the more distinct we become in the mirror, the less distinct we become inside my soul. Maybe that’s a good sign, or maybe it’s not, I can’t be sure.

But I sense that the more I allow my consciousness to blend with me, I am finding greater peace, clearer purpose, compounding passion, and a greater sense of my power.

Not in a rule the world sense, but more of an ability to help, to heal, to comfort, console and guide.

As we/me merge together, we are both losing ourselves in the service of others, and I can’t help but think that’s a good thing.

So I would ask you today, who is watching you, and are you listening to them?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings