Morning Reflection: What’s Your Jam?

What’s Your Jam?

It’s that thing you do when you can do anything. Several years ago a very wise man posed a question to me that caught me by surprise. 

He asked me.. “Imagine you had won all the money that you could ever need, and you’d been everywhere you wanted to go, and bought everything you want to buy. How then would you spend your time?”

And I realized I didn’t have a great answer.

His wonderful question helped me realize that my time is a commodity that I get to spend every minute of the day, with the understanding that I can never get a refund. 

That alone made me more determined to live each minute with intention. But he wasn’t asking for an accounting of my temporal finances, rather he was asking me to decide how I would spend a lifetime if I could do anything I wanted.

Which is a greater, deeper and more thoughtful question than I’d ever been asked before.

So I put a LOT of thought into it. What really makes me happy, beyond anything else? In some ways the answer to that question has been different over the years, yet all those answers had the same core concept, the same basic meaning to me. Other than being with my family, both immediate and extended, there’s one thing that gets me excited like nothing else.

Helping people solve the problems inside their heads.

I know that sounds pretty boring, but for me…it’s the greatest thing in the world. Watching that moment where someone ‘gets’ it, watching the way they pull back for a moment, and their whole reality shifts into a different configuration that allows them to see things in a new light, through a new lens.
That, for me, is the greatest rush, the biggest thrill.

And boy if it isn’t seriously addictive.

So now I’m hooked on this thing of helping people. It’s hard sometimes, because despite my desire to help everyone I have to realize that it has to be what they want, on their timetable, within their comfort zone. 

The hardest moments are when I can see how things can be changed so easily… and I have to respect that that person isn’t ok with that level of engagement right now.

And giving other people the right to choose their life is the greatest way I can respect who they are.

Yet once you truly find your jam, once you figure out what it is that drives you like nothing else, you start to want to do that, and only that. It’s like everything else falls away, and the pathway opens up ahead of you. 

It might be long, it might be dark, and it might be full of twists and turns, but once you realize that nothing else is going to ever be enough…

You’ll use everything you have to get to where you want to be.

That’s how motivation is born, that’s how movements are 
started, that’s how lives are changed. You just have to figure out your jam, and become crystal clear on why it moves you.

And then, you start moving.

So now I’m curious… What’s your jam?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: That Which Justifies your Judgments

That Which Justifies your Judgments.

There’s an old saying that says that the best time to lie to someone is when they want to believe the lie, and unfortunately it’s true. We all have a tendency to believe words that align with that which we want to hear. 

But did you know that there is another layer, deeper and even harder to separate out? One that left unchecked and unexamined can become a detriment to ourselves and to those around us.

Because we love to hear something that justifies our judgments of ourselves and others.

The longer I coach people, helping them find peace through self awareness and self actualization, the more convinced I become that the truth of how we feel about ourselves can be found in the judgments that we make, and in our reactions to one another. 

Most of us to one degree or another determine our sense of worth, and our place in ‘the pack’ by the judgments we make when around other people.

And we love to have our opinions validated by information from the outside world.

So much so that we tend to turn off our ‘skeptic filters’ when it comes to information that we like. If you’ve spent any time on social media, you’ll see people posting poorly written and badly researched articles that prop up whatever position of belief they are feeling in the moment. 

I’ve seen this in friends who are normally rational, kind and caring people, but who in support of their opinions will abandon a sense of calm and consideration in favor of a truth that justifies their judgments in the world.

Even when that ‘truth’ is so obviously false.

Yet this human failing of ours seems to be strongest when it comes to our judgments of ourselves. For it seems that in no other arena is our ability to judge so strong, and our willingness to believe that which supports our self judgments so absolute. 
Especially if that which you are inclined to believe matches up with that which you have already decided about yourself. 

Which is why many of us stay stuck for so long.

Frequently as I help people, we come across limiting beliefs that they have about themselves that stop them from moving forward in a direction that they would like to go. First we try to understand where that belief came from (usually in their childhood) and then we look at all the data that they rely on to support that belief. 

And this is usually where the fun starts…

Because people will believe just about anything if it justifies them not facing their fears.

So we chip away at the foundations of their self judgments, and often there are tears of both laughter and pain as one more person finds that the truth about themselves is very different to what they were desperately holding on to. 

As each supporting belief is examined with new eyes, from a place of loving support and encouragement, old beliefs fall away, and a new and uplifting opinion replaces an often dark and unforgiving one.

And another soul takes flight on wings of self love, self appreciation, and self healing.

So today, I invite you to begin to question all the things you believe about yourself, and see if you too have been clinging desperately to a falsehood that did not serve the you who you are becoming. 

If you find there are beliefs that are uncomfortable to give up, then you can realize that these are the ones that require the greatest exploration.

For to know yourself, and find peace in yourself, you will have to find truth in yourself. 

The good news is that the truth you find is often far better than the old lie that you were believing.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: In Memorium

In Memorium

We shall never hear their words again, nor feel their heartbeats. Their presence is gone from our lives, leaving a hole that can never be filled. 

Their sacrifice echoes down through our history, at first individual but slowly coming together to form one great whole; a legacy of forsaken personal futures so that we who remained could experience what they never would.

We cannot comprehend their sacrifice, we can only live as to be worthy of it.

But what they have done we cannot understand, unless we have lived through the nightmares that would have accompanied them had they lived. I wonder what those who have given their lives would think of the way we choose to spend ours? 

Would they look upon us with a sense of sorrow as they see how small we sometimes think, or would they enjoy a sense of pride as we struggle to live up to the promise that they saw in us.

What would our fallen wish for us to know?

I’ve tried to think about that this weekend, and I hope you will forgive me any trespass if I try to phrase the words I think they would say to us. I think they would try to help us understand the precious gift we are given every morning, which they no longer enjoy; that of a new dawn full of countless opportunities. 

I believe they would tell us to live this day with courage and gratitude, balancing the two in a dance of deference and desire.

For the days they paid for should be spent in charity and caring.

I expect that they would tell us to hold our loved ones close, and the cherish every moment with them. Since they can no longer be there, I believe they would ask us to cherish their loved ones as well, and try to help in any way that we can. 

Not that we can ever make right what time, fate and the universe has made wrong, but in understanding that love and compassion can reduce their loss, and make their days just a little brighter in the midst of the darkness of all that has been taken from them.

Because for every soul that paid with the rest of their lives, there are those whose lives will never know rest because of that price which was paid.

And I think those who have gone on before us, before their time, would implore us to show a greater love and kindness for all those for whom they sacrificed. 

In the moment of their passing, as they moved on beyond humanity, I like to believe that they would champion the humanity of all who they were leaving behind, for their sacrifice and their service was given in the belief that we are worth fighting for
.
Surely a people who are worth dying for are worthy of being cared for and loved by the living.

On this Memorial Day, I wish to add my own small voice of gratitude to those whose names may never be known to me, yet whose lives have immeasurably enriched my own. We can never repay the debt to those who have fallen, and so we must pay it forward in our service to the living.

May we who remain be worthy of the sacrifice of those who have given the rest of their days for us.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Why I Can’t Just ‘Phone it In’

Why I Can’t Just ‘Phone it In’.

Do you ever get to that point where all you want to do is just sleep? I’m not talking about tired, I’m talking about that bone weary exhaustion that comes from constant pressure and far too little sleep. 

The difference for me is that if I’m just tired, I know that sleep will solve it. If I am weary however, I know that waking up tomorrow morning after a good night’s sleep will not change how I feel one bit.

That’s kind of how it’s been this week.

As I sit and write this, at 11:43 PM on the evening of Thursday, May 23, I’ve actually been trying to write for over two hours now. So many starts and stops, so many single paragraphs that burned so brightly in the moment but failed to transform into a post of any substance. Even though my body craves rest, my mind is determined to do what I have promised myself that I WILL do.

To dedicate myself to this work, to serving you.

Earlier this evening, as she was getting ready for bed, Holly took me by the hand and told me that I didn’t have to write anything profound, and that I should just write something simple and schedule it the morning. 

She sees how tired I am, she knows the hours I’m working and the pressures I feel to fulfill the many responsibilities that I have taken upon myself.

And while I understand and appreciate what she was trying to say, I couldn’t comply with her request.

So I took her other hand in mine, gazed lovingly into her beautiful eyes, and told her she was wrong. That’s not something I do very often, mainly because she’s right a lot more than I am, but on this thing, for this work, and in my desire to serve you, I don’t feel like I can ever “phone it in”. 

Sure, sometimes a piece of writing will stand out to me above all the rest, but in almost a year and a half of doing this, I can honestly tell you that I’ve never finished a piece of writing and put it up without feeling like it had something to offer to someone, somewhere.

And I’d like to explain to you why that is.

Simply put, it’s because you matter to me. I’ve probably never met you, and maybe never will. To me that’s irrelevant. You matter to me because you’re a person, a human being, and somebody who is important. 

In all of my years I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important. Some may have had more status or prestige, some may have been kinder and some were foolish, but that doesn’t elevate one above another, or lower one beneath another.

You all matter to me.

So today I want to leave you with that understanding. If for some reason you feel like you are not enough, or that you are lacking in something, and especially if you think the world be a better place without you in it, I am telling you with everything I have that you matter to me, that you are important and that you have worth and value.

How can you know what I say is true?

Because as I sit here at my desk in my office at home, with bags under my eyes, and a strong fervent desire to lay down and not get up for a week, I am still writing, still struggling to find a way to serve you better, to touch your heart and to let you know that you matter.

I don’t do that because it’s about me, I do it because it’s about you.

And it always will be. You deserve nothing less.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Go Be With You

Go Be With You.

Who would you most like to spend time with? Whenever I ask that question of someone, I’m usually fascinated by the answer. 

There are so many interesting, inspiring and impressive people in the world today that you could fill every remaining moment of your life in conversation with somebody amazing, and still not have touched the surface.

Yet there’s one person I’ve never heard mentioned.

In the midst of all the famous names, the learned and inspirational, the wealthy and courageous, there’s one person who ALWAYS get missed, and yet who should be the person who gets a significant portion of your time. 

Spending quality time with this individual will yield incredible changes in your life, bringing you closer to happiness and fulfillment than any other conversation could ever do.

I’m sure by now you’ve figured out who I’m talking about, but if not, I’m talking about you.

So many of us avoid ourselves these days. We live in a world full of things that demand our attention, and then we become so uncomfortable being alone with ourselves that we race to fill our time with meaningless distractions. 

Self awareness and self identity are smothered under the never ending pressure to fit in, keep up, be all that you can be, and be just like everybody else.

So much so that we lose a sense of our true selves, and find ourselves living a life that is not authentic to who we really are, resulting in sadness, confusion and a powerful longing for more. 

So today, I’m going to invite you to spend some more time with yourself, but I probably need to clarify what I actually mean by that. 

It doesn’t mean the absence of people around you, because you can be completely separated from people, and yet still completely out of touch with who you are. It doesn’t mean just sitting without distraction, although that’s a great place to start.

Spending time with yourself is really about coming to understand who you really are.

Which is way more difficult that it sounds, because so many of us have been conditioned to ignore our deeper instincts and desires, out of a fear that it’s ‘selfish’ or ‘wrong’, and so we bury them under a cacophony of media, or sensations, or smothering emotions. 

To really get to know who you are, you have to do two things that are becoming harder and harder to do, as we move further and further away from self awareness.

You have to sit quietly, and you have to examine your thoughts and feelings without judgment.

Because if you are constantly judging yourself, you’ll never truly be able to hear the truth of who you are inside. You’ll lie to yourself, and find something else to think about. Once you learn to observe without judgment, and without distraction, you’ll start to understand so much more about you than you ever imagined possible.

Who knows, you may even come to like yourself.

So if you’re ready to begin, just find a quiet place away from everyone, and most importantly, away from distractions. Sit down comfortably, and just try to be peaceful with yourself. 

With nothing to distract you, allow your soul to open itself unto you, revealing it’s innermost thoughts and feelings. With gratitude for yourself, begin to ask the questions you’ve always wanted answered.

And then be willing to hear what you have to say to yourself.

(If you’re interested, I’m thinking of doing an online ‘self awareness workshop’ in a couple of weeks. I don’t have a firm outline yet of what it will be, and space will be pretty limited, but it will be free, so the only thing it will cost you is an hour or so of your time.😀 

Feel free to message me if you’re interested, and we’ll see where it goes from there.)

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Love Overwhelming

Love Overwhelming.

There’s times when I look at Holly (my wife), and I still can’t believe that we are actually married. 

It’s been 22 and a half years, and her smile still stops me in my tracks, and makes me realize that I am very blessed to be with her. Her presence calms me, her strength astounds me, and her patience with my faults amazes me.

Why she chose me is still very much a mystery to me.

Such is the power of love. It’s mysterious, in that we cannot control it, and it’s dangerous, in that it can tear us apart if we let it. We sacrifice our time, our money, our sanity and sometimes our soul for it. 

Because once you feel it, and it takes you over, you’ll never be the same again. You can feel love in many different ways, but the very best way is to feel it at the same time you receive it.

Then it becomes overwhelming.

There’s something incredibly life affirming to have someone tell you that they love you. Be it romantic, familial, or just friendship; when someone tell you that they love you, there’s this small part of our soul that seems to light up in joy. 

It took me a while to figure out why that is, but I think I’ve come to something of an understanding.

Because when someone loves you, they are saying you are enough.

I think many of us struggle with the idea that we are deficient in some way. It often comes from our upbringing, or from a particularly difficult breakup of a romantic relationship that seemed to hold so much promise, until our dreams were shattered. However we got to that belief, it follows us through our everyday lives, overshadowing our joys and diluting our happiness.

Until that cloud is pierced by the light of love coming from another.

And when it’s matched by how you feel about them as well, we enter into a relationship of trust, of kindness, of affection, of support, and of esteem. 

Love is the catalyst for our greatest changes, our deepest emotions, our fondest hopes and often our darkest fears. Love gives us strength to keep going, when we feel like we can’t go on.

Love might not make the world go around, but it does make it worth living in.

Especially in moments like I had today, where I was able to sit for a couple of minutes and just quietly observe my wife when she wasn’t aware I was watching. 

I fell in love with her all over again, watching the sun highlight the colors in her hair, listening to that voice that grounds me and guides me, and seeing the goodness, kindness and honesty in her soul.

And once again, I was overwhelmed.

I hope you can feel that way today, even if just for a moment. I hope you can look at someone, be it a romantic partner, or a family member, or a friend, and just feel the joyous gratitude of love for their presence in your life, and the opportunity you have to be with them.

Holly always reminds me that love is verb, and that verbs are about doing not just feeling, so I hope today you can ‘do’ love by telling someone just how you feel about them.

There’s a great deal of power in those three little words.

May you share them and hear them, today and always.

(today's picture is for the other love in Holly's life - books 🙂 )

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: What Gives You the Right

What Gives You the Right?

I struggle a lot with what is known as “imposter syndrome”. If you haven’t heard of that, it’s a persistent feeling that you are not qualified, or adequate, to do a certain thing. 

If someone was to ask me what makes me think I can write this page and have something of value to share with the world, I would probably start by saying nothing, and then my natural instinct would be to shrivel up inside and withdraw from the conversation.

Because I feel like I am wholly unprepared to do this.

Yet if I were to allow my instinct of fear and my sense of not being enough to just pass on by, and answer from a place of deep conviction, I would explain to them that I felt it was my purpose to be of use on this earth, to help others, and that writing this page is a part of that purpose. 

Whether or not I have anything to share is between me and the person who reads it. Some might say it has value, others might say it has none.

But if it’s in alignment with my purpose, I should do it regardless.

And it’s been a long time trying to find out why I’m here. I read a quote one time that said that your purpose on this earth was to find out what your purpose was, and then to live it. 

Interestingly, it didn’t say you had to be good at your purpose, or have some astounding earth shattering truth to reveal. It just says that you have to live your purpose.

Which is what I try to do each time I sit down to write this page.

And finding your purpose is not necessarily easy, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who just know. I told a friend tonight that I am just beginning to understand what it is I am supposed to do with my life at the age of 48. 

She asked me what it was, and I falteringly managed to explain something about it, describing this page and the coaching work that I am honored and humbled to perform. 

Since her husband is a trained counselor who helps people, I expected her to ask something about how I was trained, or qualified, or certified to do this.

But she didn’t say any of those things. Instead she just asked more questions, and we had a wonderful conversation. The more we talked, the more I realized that the feelings of insecurity and of not being ‘enough’ to do this were only on my side of the conversation. 

She never questioned, never once gave a gesture or intimation that she thought I couldn’t do what it is I feel I am born to do.

And her belief helped to wash away some of mine.

So today, I come to you to tell you that my name is Alan, and my purpose is to help people. Through my writing, through my coaching, through speaking, and through caring. 

I have little to represent me other than a willing heart, years of experience listening and helping, and a fervent belief that this is why I am here, this is what I am born to do. 

I believe that the gifts I have received are mine to share with others, to help them find peace in a universe that seems to provide very little of that.

And I leave today with two questions…

What is your purpose, and how can I help you achieve it?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Be kind to others, and be right for yourself

Be kind to others, and be right for yourself.

One of my mentors taught me an incredibly valuable lesson. I was barely 5 years old when I first heard the teaching, which was too young to properly understand the profound nature of the proclamation that was shared with me. 

Over the years I’ve been amazed at how incredibly powerful that one statement was, and how it could change so many things about our world if it were followed with more diligence, applied with greater intensity.

Just five simple words. “Always keep an open mind”.

Because there are few things worse in this world than someone who believes they are right, and who is determined to never listen to another point of view. Marriages have broken up because of it, families are destroyed because of it. Societies are torn apart over it, and nations go to war because of it. 

For a species that really doesn’t know a lot about the universe and the world in which we live, we certainly seem to be very good at making it up to suit our wants and our needs.

But that is starting to change.

Because the rate at which we are learning new things is accelerating, and the only thing you can be ‘certain’ of is that the ground you are firmly planting your flag in today may not be so secure in the days to follow. 

Every time we think we have found something out, we learn later that we were mistaken in our understanding, lost in our desire to be certain more than we desire to be kind.

And kindness is something we seem to always be a little short on. I wish I could say the same about people who think they are right.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong intrinsically with being ‘right’, as long as the truth you cling to affects and applies only to yourself. We need to have things on which to believe, to plan our lives, and to chart our course by. 

If not, we become paralyzed and lost in a sea of never ending possibilities that leaves us unable to function. 

The problems start when we decide that somebody else should live our truth as their own.

Because I’ve found in my life that when I cling to a truth of mine so tightly, and judge others based on my truth, that I am essentially judging their value through a prism entirely of my own creation. 

Gone is an acknowledgement of their own nobility, their own divinity, and of their freedom to choose their life by the dictates of their own conscience.

As another mentor of mine once taught me, “Sin is when we start to treat people as objects”.

So I am trying to be more kind, both to those who I inadvertently judge, and those who would judge me. 

Because one of my ‘truths’ is that kindness is really about acknowledging the person I see as my equal, and treating them with the compassion that they deserve, even if they are not yet extending that to me. 

Just as our knowledge changes, so can the way we treat people, if we can just let go of our needs and see them for who they truly are.

And lead with kindness.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: No One Nowhere

No One Nowhere.

Who are you when all the labels are gone? When all the descriptions have flown, the labels and self affirmations have fallen away, and you are simply a consciousness, observing the flow of time and matter around you. 

Does the thought make you uncomfortable, the idea that you can lose everything that you rely on for an identity…

And yet still be yourself.

You’d be amazed at the pushback I get from some people when I introduce this concept to them. The idea of giving up their titles, their possessions and even a knowledge of where they are is so foreign to them that they experience an existential dread, as though the loss of identity is the death of their selves. 

I guess in a way it is, yet it is also the pathway to the highest level of yourself.

The one that serves without selfishness.

But what is more powerful, and ultimately much more healing, is that in giving up everything, you become the person who needs nothing. Imagine the clarity of your thoughts when you can act without need, without a desire to control the moment, simply willing to allow others to be themselves and to assist them in any way that you can.

There’s nothing more affirming than to allow someone to be themselves without having a desire for their behavior or their beliefs.

I’ve written before about how humility is not to think less of yourself, but to think less about yourself. When you can achieve the principle of “no one nowhere”, then nothing is really about you. Insults directed at you become a mere reflection of the pain from the one who issued it. 

Attempts to hurt you emotionally become clear as a cry for help from a soul who has not yet found the peace within that transforms into a desire for peace without.

When nothing is about you, you see with eyes unfiltered and a heart open to help.

Yet all of us, especially me, seem to struggle with letting go of who we think we need to be, and what we think we need to accomplish. We cling to the idea that our value is a direct correlation to our achievements or our attractiveness. 

In holding on, we bind ourselves to the lies that bring us sadness, unable to see the truth of who we are, and what we are worth.

The worth of the human soul is not a derivation of its assets, but rather a statement of its existence.

We all have different gifts, yet these do not define us. We all have strengths and weaknesses, yet these need not determine the purity of our soul. Our experiences shape us, but they need not describe our totality.

When you are no one nowhere, you can be the truest expression of yourself.

You can be love.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope.

Did you ever play with one of as a kid? Where you looked into a tube and all you saw were shifting patterns of light cascading in upon each other in a never ending, mind blowing, vista of beauty and color. 

If you did, you probably remember that it was really difficult to decide where one color started and where one ended.
They all just seem to blend together, twisted patterns without beginning or end.

And that’s often how we experience our emotions. 

Driven by increasingly complex patterns of thought, we sense and react to the world around us without being able to stop and see clearly everything that’s happening, or why we are feeling the way that we do. We just know that everything is turning, changing; weaving in and out and hiding from view.

Unless we are able to slow down the movement and really examine what is going on in our heart.

I have tried to do this recently with some of my more complex and painful emotions. Just today (Wednesday) I received some news that was difficult to hear, and yet as I reflected upon the feelings that arose, I found it hard to clearly, accurately and cogently identify why I was feeling a certain way. 

I could explain at a surface level how it felt, but as I tried to go deeper I struggled, because the emotions, fears and desires all blend together.

It’s like trying to pick apart a knot in a shoelace, when you can’t use your eyes to see what you’re doing.

But if like me you believe that self-awareness is not only the path to peace for us as individuals but as a society you’ll understand why I couldn’t stop trying to unravel the emotions I was feeling, and get to the bottom of the root cause. 

It’s a hard process, that demands the blistering self honesty along with a willingness to accept whatever truths you find, no matter what they say about you.

So I started looking. Quietly, calmly, honestly and painfully.

What I found wasn’t really a surprise, although it was a disappointment to recognize that something I thought I had worked through was again coming to the surface. 

As I realized that it was my significance need that was driving this emotion, I understood that it was really a fear of a loss of significance, which when you don’t necessarily have a great deal is a painful thing to endure.

And the primary emotion driving this Kaleidoscope of chaotic emotion was a feeling of not being enough.

I know most of us struggle with this in some way or another, so I wanted to share today in the spirit of honesty and truth so that you can see that your struggles are my struggles, and our struggles are universally human. 

Although we differ in our race, our creed and our societies, the problems that bind us together are very much the same.

So I return again to my meditation practice, struggling to find feelings of worth and peace, tempered with an understanding of the imbalances in my thought processes that were defined by my childhood. 

It’s a long slow process, but one which we all have to do if we are to find peace in this world.

Picking apart our emotions is never easy, but when you finally find that one true ray of light at the bottom of the Kaleidoscope of your soul, the clarity you feel is the beginning of your healing.

May we heal ourselves and our world.

Together.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Climb

Climb.

Has it ever looked like it’s too high to climb? That mountain, that vast landscape of pain and suffering in front of you, that journey that you know that you have to traverse alone. 

Have you ever for one moment sat there in the quiet stillness of your soul, and asked yourself in that gentle voice that you reserve for your darkest moments…

Can I do this?

Because sometimes the journey in front of you seems just too much. Like there is not enough energy in the world to carry over the peak and down onto the other side, and you wish, in one fleeting heartbeat that you could just stay here right now, and just be still forever. 

Not quitting, not succeeding, just stopping, and removing yourself from the flow of time so that you can truly, completely, and most of all quietly, rest.

And you can for a moment, but that moment never lasts.

Because someday soon, at some indefinable point on your journey, you’re going to have to do what you were always destined to do. 

Probably without a fanfare, and maybe even without a cheerleader or a coach to help, you’re going to stand up, take a deep breath, and point yourself in the direction that you know leads away from that which you are trying to avoid. With one foot slowly, falteringly in front of another, you begin the process that takes you out of the darkness.

You start to climb.

The journey upwards is never easy. Sometimes you walk, sometimes you are pushing yourself to take another step, to raise your foot for another movement. There are rocks underneath you, and boulders that block your way. 

Life, in its unceasing cruelty, demands your blood, sweat, tears and pain as the toll for journeying on this particular highway, and it will take every ounce of hope you can muster.

Because sometimes, you’re just climbing in the dark, alone, afraid and miserable.

But you keep climbing, because you know that there is no way that you will ever arrive where you need to be unless you keep going. You fix an image of your destination in your soul, and with every thought you breathe life and power into it. 

Each footstep, each trembling muscle, each river of sweat and drop of blood give that image another atom of reality, until it stands in your soul as both the beacon to guide your footsteps, and the energy to harness your soul.

So with another footstep, another trembling tear, you climb your mountain while building your destination in your heart.

And finally, one day, one blessed glorious moment that shines out into the darkness of our universe, you finish your climb, and arrive at the top of where you were always going to be. 

With a renewed sense of faith in yourself, you stand there in the actuality of your vision, and understand that the strength you needed was always inside of you, waiting for the day that you were to begin.

The climb was always possible, you just had to reach deep into your soul to turn on the light, begin the process, and move forward with determination and desire.

Your mountain is waiting, waiting for you to begin. Start today, start now, and take faith in the truth inside you. You are ready now, Just begin.

And climb.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Be Selfish

Be Selfish.

If we’ve messed up anything as a society, a species, or a people, it’s our attitude towards the idea of our selves. We hold up the ideal of the giver, the sacrifice, the inherent nobility of sharing, which are all true, yet we have gone too far in at least one aspect; namely that of giving away your opinion of yourself to the opinions and beliefs of others.

Which is something that you can never do, if you wish to find and then spread peace.

How many times have you been worried about someone else’s opinion of you? If you’re honest, it probably occurs way more frequently than you want to admit. 

I can tell you that as someone who spent many, many years being severely overweight, I spent far too much of my time and emotional energy focusing on what others thought of me, rather than how I could serve them.

And I allowed their imagined thoughts to color my opinion of myself.

Which is exhausting, yet most of us do this to one extent or another. Maybe it’s just about what you are wearing to go to the store, or the car you drive, the house you live in, or the clothes that you wear. 

For reason, we’ve outsourced our opinions without doing a job interview on the people who we are hiring to be the overseers of our self opinion.

Which is a recipe for sadness, as well as exhaustion, regret and isolation.

There’s a wonderful African proverb I heard one time that has stuck with me. It goes something like this: “If there’s no enemy within, then the enemy outside can do us no harm”. Isn’t that powerful! 

The greatest enemies to our happiness and our self esteem actually lie deep within our own hearts, buried under a mountain of time, trauma and tears.

I’m here to tell you that it’s time to get selfish about your self esteem, your self opinion. It’s time to stop listening to the voices inside your head that judge you, and leave you victim to the judgments of those who have not earned the right to play a part in your psyche. 

It’s time to start accepting yourself, and finding peace within, so that you can withstand the storms without. In short, it’s time to get selfish about the things you believe about yourself.

Now please understand, I’m not advocating narcissism here, quite the opposite. The narcissist is unable to examine themselves with any measure of objectivity. 

Nor am I advocating psycopathy, where you sever all connections with the emotions and opinions of others. 

What I am suggesting is that you take a journey inward into your soul, and become familiar with the truths that you don’t want see, but also the truths that you block out for fear of feeling good about yourself.

Let’s give you a different viewpoint on yourself, and see if we can change how you feel about yourself.

Because when you feel better about yourself, you’ll feel better about the world.

— Dr.Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Sanctity of Heroes

The Sanctity of Heroes.

We all have them. Even if we try not to, there’s always going to be someone in your life who you look up to, someone who makes you want to be a better person, a kinder friend, a more giving partner. 

We need to have these people in our lives, because we need an ideal to guide ourselves by, to show us the pathway through our own darkness, to light our way and lead us on.

And some days, heroes seem to be in short supply.

I’ve come to realize lately that the greatest heroes in my life are not the people who perform grandiose feats of courage or achievement, but those who in their quiet way fight against their weaknesses, and against the difficult cards life has dealt them. 

Those who get up day after day, fighting their own fight, and standing firm when they want to fall over and quit. They fight not against monsters or armies, but against time, against age, against loneliness, fear, despair and sadness.

Interestingly, the majority of my heroes are women.

My wife is the most obvious one, and her fight every day is putting up with me. Her patience with my weaknesses is legendary, and her ability to keep me focused when my creativity (or ADD, whatever you want to call it) goes into overdrive is nothing short of miraculous. 

She has stood by me for 23 years, while other people told her she was crazy. Maybe she is, but I’m glad she’s here. I would be nothing without her, and I knew I should marry her when I felt that I wanted to be a better person because of her influence in my life.

Another hero is my mother-in-law. 

Her quiet strength through years of difficulty has amazed and humbled me. Her conduct, her strength and her faith over the last 9 months has been inspiring and deeply moving as she has withstood events that would have crushed almost anyone else I know.

Her resilience is beyond understanding.

I have a sister-in-law who lives close to us, who is one of my very best friends. As a single mother, she works tirelessly for her children, pushing through time after time when called upon to battle difficult situations. She always leads with kindness, when other would become bitter and angry.

I’m so grateful to have her presence in my life.

And my children are my greatest heroes. I have been blessed with two boys (now young men) who constantly lead me by their quiet examples. 

Although they are incredibly different from each other, the goodness and strength they express every day moves me to wonder, and an incredible sense of gratitude that I get to learn from them, and to share time with them. The greatest privilege of my life has been being their father.

I am richly blessed with heroes to look up to, and be guided by.

And I wonder, who are your heroes?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: All the Broken Pieces

All the Broken Pieces.

Is it just me, or do you feel it too? That moment when you see someone, either in person or online, and all you see is their completeness, their success, their ever present happiness and their seeming perfection, and all you can do is look at yourself and feel like you are so much less than they are. 

I think most of us have felt that way at some point in our lives. We feel like we are in some way wanting, and always will be.

We see ourselves as an accumulation of so many broken pieces.

When I look at where I am in my life, compared to where I thought I would be, I shake my head in wonder. When I consider the kind of husband and father I have become against the ideal that I carry in my head, I want to shrink into a dark corner and stay there for eternity. 

When I measure my conduct in the role of son-in-law and brother-in-law, I find myself again wanting.

And I wish I could be ‘whole and complete’; able to show up in the world in the way that I would like to.

But in the quiet moments of my soul, when I leave behind me all the comparisons and judgments, I can see that I am actually doing better than I could have expected. 

If I go further, and examine the lives of those who seem to ‘have it all together’, I find a startling truth that leads me both into an attitude of humility, and yet an acceptance of the person I currently am.

Because the successful people are also just an accumulation of broken pieces.

I know a few millionaires, and I can see that their lives are broken in their own ways. I have friends in the fitness space who have incredible physiques, yet who struggle in their intimate relationships. 

I know people who seem to be powerful and connected on social media, and yet they struggle with insecurity, doubt and difficulty in the quiet gardens of their soul.

In truth, we are all broken in some way or another.

But that’s enough. The opening gateway on the road to peace begins with a desire to accept yourself for who you really are, and that means acknowledging and accepting that right now a part of you may be broken, insufficient and imperfect, and yet you are still of value.

One of my very favorite books, from which I have learnt so much wisdom, begins by explaining our nobility as a consciousness. 

It doesn’t tell us how we are imperfect, because you can still be noble without being ‘whole or perfect’. It then goes on to explain how we can progress towards ‘a less broken state’, while not condemning us for where we are, knowing that the status of being human is enough.

And it helps us to realize deep in our heart that the broken state of our emotions is not a factor of our birthright, nor a judgment of our value, but it is merely a result of travelling through this temporal sphere, where none are whole, and yet all have worth.

Your nobility, your worth, your value have always been the same, and always will be. 

( I chose this picture today because the raft you see this person using is nothing more than an accumulation of broken trees.)

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Sisterhood (plus one)

The Sisterhood (plus one)

Over the last month I’ve had the distinct blessing of being part of an online challenge hosted by a friend of mine. The purpose of the event was to help us become more visible on social media, allowing us to make a greater impact on the world around us. 

It was a wonderful experience, that at times pushed me to get clearer on what I’m doing with this work, and at other times gave me the joy of seeing new friends succeed and push past their own limiting beliefs into a greater clarity and sense of purpose.

Interestingly, I was the only guy in a group of amazing, talented and wonderful women.

Which I was think was as fascinating for them as it was for me. I’ll admit to being a little nervous as to how I was going to be received – this one Y chromosome in a sea of double XXs. 

I hoped my presence wouldn’t be disruptive to a sense of community with the group, which is vital for these kind of things as people need support and trust as they share their truths, and push past their fears.

What I found, to my joy, was quite the opposite.

Because during one Facebook live, the phrase was used ‘a sisterhood plus Alan’, and it was suddenly adopted into the lore of the team. It was kind of humbling for me to feel part of a group filled with people I really admired, and it made me reflect on how important connection and community is to our soul, and our wellbeing.

To quote from a favorite show, “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives”.

Being suddenly accepted and inducted into the Sisterhood gave me a sense of belonging, which in its own way denotes a connotation of acceptance, as though you have been judged and found worthy. 

But most of all it really added another testament to a belief I hold that although we may differ in gender, race, belief and desires, we are more alike than we are different.

And it is our similarities, not our differences, that bind us and allow us to grow together.

So as I learned from my new found ‘sisters’, and shared my thoughts and feelings with them, we each partook of the kindness and knowledge that was shared by all, and in doing so, we each received more that we gave. 

Despite what a Math professor may tell you, sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that is especially true when each person plays their part without ego, without fanfare and without selfishness. 

Just a wonderful group, with a courageous leader, working together for the good of all.

What we can do together is so much greater than what we accomplish alone, but it’s easy to allow our small differences to create division over harmony, and disagreement over hope. 

So today, I invite you to consider who you might be able to forgive in the cause of community, and reconcile and move forward with. If we desire a world of peace, we have to begin by reaching out to those from whom we feel separate, and bringing together our dreams and desires.

Because no one is an island, and we need each other to thrive.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Myth of Respect

The Myth of Respect.

It’s funny how people get so caught up in the search for something that doesn’t exist. I’ve seen people argue, families fractured and relationships ruined because one side or the other felt like they were being disrespected. 

These arguments over a myth can destroy the harmony of a home, or shatter constructive conversations between the old and the young.

All because someone felt they weren’t being respected.

So if I were to ask you to define respect, what would you say? A manner of speaking, a way of behaving, the proper showing of deference to another? I would ask you why this is necessary? I’ve done this before with people, and it always comes down to someone feeling like they are owed something. 

Sure, they might detour around the subject for a while with the argument that it ‘preserves civilization’ or that it ‘teaches the young to be controlled until they are ready’, but it’s never really about that.

It’s all about the lack that a person feels inside.

When you think about the really spiritual people who have walked the earth, they weren’t above another. They didn’t need to be fawned over, or ‘treated with respect’ by having people stand when they enter a room. 

The truly humble people, those who have done the work to balance their soul, are just grateful to be a part of whatever. They didn’t need to ‘preserve the order of things’, or to ‘teach another how to behave’.

They weren’t looking out for themselves, they were looking for an opportunity to serve.

In my life, the people who have ‘demanded respect’ have been those who had deviated from the path of love and service, and were instead extrapolating a sense of significance from the structure and order they seek to impose upon the world. 

They fear the dissolution of the organization that they mistakenly believe gives them a sense of ‘being in the right place’, when the ‘proper place’ is nowhere without and everywhere inside.

If it’s not ‘about’ you, you can never be disrespected.

If you seek to serve, and to uplift and edify others out of the absolute knowledge that it is right, taking no sense of personal value from the interaction, then you show up with a different energy. 

When the force of your love and compassion lead your interactions with another, you’ll find a very different energy in the interaction, and you’ll have no need or desire for ‘respect’, because you desire only to help another heal, another enjoy, another edify and another find peace.

Once you realize that ‘respect’ is a myth, you’ll show up with a different energy, and you’ll touch the lives that no one else could.

And in doing so, you may find that others treat you with ‘respect’… and you’ll realize why it was never necessary at all.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Time to Find You

Time to Find You.

Do you have a clear sense of who you are? That might sound strange, but as I work with people to bring them to an awareness of themselves, and find the directions in life that are most authentic for them, it’s becoming more and more evident that many of us don’t have a clear understanding of who we really are. 

Please understand, that’s not a judgment on you (or me), rather it’s an observation that we’ve become too caught up in the electronic cacophony that seems to rule our days and intrude into our nights. 

It began with radio and television, and has exploded with the growth of the internet, so that we lost the most necessary ingredient that is vital to the survival and blossoming of our soul.

Time, and the space to think quietly.

I read a statistic recently that a teenager now sees the same number of unique images in 1 month that a person living 100 years ago would see in their entire lifetime, and I suspect that even that number is out of date now. 

We’re bombarded with so many changing messages, idealized scenarios and perfectly manicured manifestations of everyone else’s lives that we feel like we are constantly trying to keep up with an impossible dream that moves away from us with every passing moment.

When was the last time you unplugged, sat in nature and just breathed?

We all need time to reflect on the things that have happened to us, and integrate them into the fabric of our mind, judging not only the event, but the meaning that we take from it, as determined by the filters we apply to our judgment, born out of the needs and traumas of our soul. So many of us react without ever understanding how or why we are thinking.

And the best way to see how we are thinking is to stop doing it for a while :)

Because too many people are living their lives in the constant chaotic confusion of a fractured sense of self. 

Not knowing who they really are, or what they really want, but desperately searching for some form of healing in their soul, so that they might once again find the peace that has eluded them for far too long. Yet they seek and search in vain without, not realizing that the answers are only within. 

But to hear them you need to listen quietly, and take time to hear the answers whispered in the silence.

The answers are there, I promise you. They can be hard to understand , especially if you are new to the art of self exploration and understanding. At first, they might not make any sense, or seem counter-intuitive, but once you begin to seek in silence, accepting the answers without judgment and without fear, the truths will come running out to meet you.

And in finding truth, you will find yourself.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Afraid of the Win

Afraid of the Win.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed by human nature. Every nuance, every gesture, every slight pause and hesitation with a dropped tone and a stuttered intonation masking a specific choice of words that tells me what you really meant to say. I watch body language, micro-gestures, true reactions versus staged ones. 

As you can guess, I’m a nightmare to be married to 🙂

But sometimes the biggest tell, the greatest cry echoing out of the broken mystery of the human soul, is the lack of something. 

The reaction that should have been there, but never was, or the words that should have been shouted from the rooftops that were instead choked off in a moment of fear and frustration. What you do tells me what you feel safe doing, but what you don’t tells me what you are afraid of.

And some of us, me included, seem to be most afraid of the win.

I think it’s because we’ve tasted defeat before. Maybe you haven’t, at which point you have my admiration and (sadly) a small measure of jealousy. We all know what defeat can do, how it hurts and burns and gnaws at our soul. 

We’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt. You know in your soul that you can survive most of the defeats coming in your life.

But we’re afraid of what success can do to us.

For me, I’m worried about what parts of my soul, my insecurities and inadequacies, will raise their ugly heads when things start to go right in a really big way. I say ‘when’ because I believe the words we use define and direct the universe, so I’m careful of the words I write and speak. 

I don’t believe that success changes you, I think it just allows those parts of you that you’ve kept controlled to break loose and find their way into the sunlight.

And some of those don’t look too pretty in the light of dawn.

So when things start to go right, I think we feel a little of that trepidation swirling around inside of our heads. I’ve written before that our light creates our shadow, and the brightest lights cut the darkest shadows in the room. If you’re in any aware of who you are, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what your shadows look like.

So you watch yourself, while watching everybody else.

But the funny thing about success, if you use it the right way, is that it also allows the better parts of your soul, the ones that give you hope and wonder, to shine forth as well. 

For every negative side, there is always a positive that can be discovered, polished, lifted up and shared with the world in a tribute of generosity, kindness and love.

The choice of which side of our nature gets to rule is one we can make moment by moment.

It is rarely the content of our soul that defines us in the long run, rather it’s the choices that we made along the road of life that leave our mark on the lives that we touch.

So today, choose success, and choose kindness, and let both of them bring you joy.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflections: Humanity Is Good.

Humanity Is Good.

Sometimes I want to stand on the rooftop with the largest megaphone and scream this at the world. I get so tired of all of the negativity that passes for content in the news media and on social media. 

I get that we are not always the smartest species, and sometimes I think that the elephants and the whales are looking at us with a perplexed and bemused look.

But most of the time, we do all right.

Because for every news story that leads because it bleeds, there are a thousand quiet actions every day, performed in silence rather than with fanfare, performed out of humility rather than hatred. 

Quiet caring people who give their time and their resources to try to improve the lives of those around them, and yet their names are never known, never made famous like they should be.

All of the traits of humanity, I believe one of our most enduring is kindness.

Yes we can be cruel to each other as individuals, and yes we can be hateful sometimes, but when you look back at how far we have come, especially in the last couple of hundred years, we have a lot to be grateful for. 

Both in scientific advances, and also in advances in the way we look after those around us who may not look like us, pray like us, love like us or vote like us.

We still have a ways to go, but we are so much farther along than we used to be.

But I truly believe that in order to take us to the next level as a civilization, we have to be willing to change how we exist within ourselves, so that we may be able to change how we function as a society.

If you don’t have a sense of kindness and compassion towards yourself, you’re never going to be able to share it with others around you, and ultimately change the world.

So why don’t we focus on ourselves as individuals?

Because there’s no money to made off that. In politics, in religion, in companies, in competing systems of thought and existence, there is a never ending clamor to section us into groups, and somehow derive our sense of identity from being part of a group, rather than being an independent consciousness of self. 

Loving yourself means you don’t need what someone else is selling – and that’s a danger to a system that relies on making you feel worthless to increase someone else’s net worth.

So today, I invite you to extend your compassion to humanity, because as a group we are worthy of love and respect. Yes, there are always going to be the few who will make life more difficult, because they have not yet arrived at a peace that requires not external validation, but they are a pathological minority. 

The vast majority of us are good, and worthy of each other’s love and empathy.

Love is a verb. Go do something.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflections: The You Who You Are Becoming

The You Who You Are Becoming.

Three years ago I began my transformation. On May 2nd, 2016 I weighed 330 pounds. 18 months later I would weigh-in at 185 pounds, having lost a total of 145 pounds in 18 months. 

No medication, no surgery, minimal exercise. It was a combination of diet and mindset that helped me become somebody who was unrecognizable to my former self. At the end, I naively thought I had arrived at my new self.

Which just goes to show how you can achieve something amazing, and still be woefully misinformed.

Now I find myself facing my next transformation, or maybe just the next phase. When I was losing the weight, I had a goal of how I wanted to look, and how I want to feel. 

I spent so much time visualizing myself at my goal weight, and imagining how wonderful it would feel to be able to buy clothes at a regular store, and wear something that I felt I actually looked good in.

And while I was right, it wasn’t enough.

Because if you want to make a real transformation, if you really want to change not just how you look but who you are, then you actually have to decide who you want to become. 

It sounds simple, but in my work as a coach helping people transform into the person who they are becoming, I found that so many of us determine our identity by the things we have, and less by the behaviors and the emotional states that we aspire to.

But that’s where our real power lies, in our sense of identity.

I can guarantee there are things in your world that you would never do. Actions that would be such a violation of your own psychological identity that the mere thought of them makes you uncomfortable, and the actual performance of the behavior would emotionally destroy you. 

The stronger your sense of identity, the more emotional energy you have to apply to any situation.

So if you want to transform, we have to understand and become the you who you aspire to be.

The more you strengthen your identity as to the person you want to be, the more you will find your actions and your emotions conforming to who that person is. If you desire more compassion, then the person you are becoming will understand how to act in a situation that requires compassion. 

Likewise if you want to become a peacemaker, the person who you are becoming will be a person of peace both in themselves and in the world.

To be other than who they are would be a violation of who they are.

So if you want to change something, become familiar with the person on the other side of that change. Explore their mind, feel their thoughts, and let their energy emanate from you. 

The more you identify as that person, the greater your power to make the changes in your life that that person has already made.

To hold yourself in the past is to remain the You who is trying to change. Being the You who is already changed, is to allow the future to pull you forwards beyond the now and into who you can become.

Don’t try, just be. 

You will be surprised at who you can become.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings