Yes, I know.  Worser is not a word.

An evangelist I watch on Tuesday nights, used the word over and over in his sermon.  My daughter and I watch the show to see what flamboyant outfits he and his wife will be wearing.

They rarely disappoint.

This morning while I was thinking about something that my blogger pal,  Tex in the City, had written, Willie C’s question came to me.

What’s worser, Lisa?

When we live our lives worried about what others think, our fear is usually that we won’t be liked or accepted.

The aha moment:  If you are worried about *them* liking you, it most likely means that YOU  don’t like you.

Well, damn.

I guess tuning into “the prophet of God” did have some payoff.

Seriously, at the end of the journey, wouldn’t it be great to say “I lived a life I loved and I LOVED ME!” ?

I can’t imagine anything *worser* than checking out with self-hatred still on my lips.

It’s time to give up the bullshit, people.  I am not saying this is an easy process.  Fundamentally, we all want to “fit in”.  It’s how the tribe survived back in caveman days.

But we aren’t there anymore.  There are plenty (and I do mean, plenty) of people who will love you when you are true to yourself.  I have been convinced for years that the best gift you can give to anyone is the gift of YOU.

The real you.

ALL of you.

Good, bad, fat, ugly, skinny, broke, divorced, hormonal, angry, or whatever label you used to hid behind.

Accept that you are ALL of those things and so much more.

And start behaving like you are so much more.

‘Cause you are.

And you know it.

And *they* do too.

Besides( to quote Marianne Williamson), “Your playing small does not serve the world.”

And you deserve so much more.  You are indeed worthy of your own love.

So, what’s worser?

Knowing that you could unlock the door anytime yet still choose prison.

I invite you to make today, this moment, the moment you decide to become your biggest fan.  Today becomes the day you stop worrying about what *they* think and commit to honoring what you think and feel.

You can decide to continue to live in the prison of your limiting beliefs or commit to the freedom of loving who you are.

You have the key.

Lovin’ you,

Lisa

You gotta love it when you get a reminder that you’re unconscious.  In the last 24 hours, I got TWO.

After ranting about being in the moment, I found myself yesterday doing exactly what I wrote about in  “Using the Damn Brain God Gave You”.  No, I wasn’t on the cell phone and driving, but I was just as distracted.

I was on the phone with a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in several months.  We were looking at a website and trying to come up with a solution to a problem I was having with a client.  After we finished perusing, I *should* have turned my attention to our conversation.  But nooooooooooooooo.  I went back to my email.  And *ding* there was a comment on my blog.

Did I wait to read it?

Silly.  Of course not.

While I was still talking to my friend, I’m reading the comment.

Guess who wasn’t in the moment??

BUSTED.

Today, I was talking to my buddy, Coach Iyabo, when I start going on and on about this mastermind group I’m in.  Just like the brilliant coach she is, she asks, “Do you want to be in this group?”

(crickets)

Dang.

Guess who wasn’t “ownin’ her shit?”

BUSTED.

But the beauty of not always being who you say you want to be is that you get to choose again.

Gone is the need to pick up the proverbial club and beat myself.

And that my friends is GROWTH.

As long as we are breathing, we have the chance to choose to be all that we are.

Beautifully human and Perfectly Divine….

All at the same time.

Cool, isn’t it?

You bet’cha.

Rock on!

Lisa

I’ve had one of those mornings that I can’t stop crying because I am so in love with my life.  Another day of “owning my shit”.  I realize that I no longer want to focus my attention on making a million dollars, but  instead on making meaning in my life.  Today, I give up the life-long story that I am unlovable and the life-long pursuit of perfection and instead commit myself to loving my perfect imperfections.  Today I am saying yes to living my life as I see fit, doing whatever brings me joy in the moment, because this moment is all I have.

Today, I am saying YES to bold self-expression as if my life depended on it.  Because it does.

Will you join me?

Say YES to your life.

We look outside ourselves for acceptance and approval – “Soar” by Christina Aguilera

I am fascinated by people’s stories.  One of the reasons I believe that I draw people so easily is that I am a great listener and I love to hear about your experiences.  It gives me great insight into a human being because I often am blessed to hear the stories that they have never shared with anyone else.  I feel so honored each and every time someone is that vulnerable with me.

But I also notice how people use stories to justify things, mainly how they feel about something.  I’ve done a lot of training via teleclass and have had the opportunity to interact with people all over the world.  Most of the work I do usually requires some deep emotional upheaval and that makes people uncomfortable.  I have recently come to the realization that people will do anything…anything not to feel “difficult” or  unwanted emotions.

One of those ways around it is to mask our feelings in a story.

I have a real pet peeve when someone arrives to a teleclass late and instead of just saying, “I’m here, sorry I was late” they launch into all the reasons why.  I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.  You were late.  So what.  Move on.  But I can see now that the story makes them feel better because they have also told themselves a story about how awful (irresponsible, stupid, etc.) they are for being late.  Rather than just accept their feelings in the moment, they rationalize in all sorts of ways so that they don’t have to feel whatever it is that came up.

Many of my past spiritual mentors have told me that if you stay present with an emotion it will pass.   I can’t say that I have believed that until now because I have been gifted with an ability to feel at very deep levels.  I have hated someone enough to see myself killing them.  I have experienced depression so deep I tried to commit suicide believing it was the only way to stop the pain.  I have loved so passionately that I couldn’t tell where I ended and they began.

Where I have gotten stuck, however, is feeling something I felt I shouldn’t.  Believe me , the feeling of  hate was justified.  But to love someone who doesn’t love you back, who has hurt you in unimaginable ways, is just plain stupid, right?

So you keep telling yourself a story.  The story is better than feeling your truth:  I’m still in love with an asshole.

Just writing that makes me laugh out loud.  My coach, Jenny, once asked me, “Where does the love go?” (in this case we were discussing a relationship break-up).  I have always wondered that.  And now, I believe that it remains.  And because you don’t want to feel it and accept it, you tell the story of how they are this, that and the other thing and how they don’t deserve you and so on and so on.  Instead of just admitting that “yes, they treated me like shit and for some reason, I still love them.”

That’s way too hard and what kind of idiot are you for loving someone who is a complete ass?

An honest one.  A human one.  A perfect one.

After 1 week into Debbie Ford’s 21-day consciousness cleanse (check out Oprah.com), I was facing day 8, the gift of liberation, when I got stuck.  Leaving my past behind brought up all sorts of stories, but thankfully, rather than investing in them further, I dug in and committed to letting them all go.  No matter what.

I was overjoyed when I woke up from my nap with these words floating around from my Spirit.

“You don’t need anyone’s permission to feel what you feel.  Yes, you still love him.  You just do.  Enough said.”

I started laughing out loud.  In four short sentences, I experienced the powers of liberation, responsibility and acceptance.

Years of crap lifted from my consciousness.  It was nothing short of miraculous.

Lesson:

• You don’t need anyone’s permission to feel what you feel.
• Whatever you are feeling is just fine.  There is nothing wrong with you for having ANY emotional response.
• Own what you feel.  Just be in it.
• And when you do, you’ll find it no longer has a hold on you.

Enough said.

Your coaching inquiry should you accept it:

What feelings are you ashamed of having that you’d rather tell a story than shed light on them?  What could shift if you would allow yourself to feel what you feel with someone’s (including your own) approval?  What would become available to you if you stopped making yourself wrong for whatever?

Here’s to you dropping your stories!

Love & magic,

The Resident Diva

I heard about Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair,  several weeks back and have been looking forward to its release on October 9.  Besides being funny as hell, it provides women (not just black women) another opportunity to have the “hair discussion.”

Check out the trailer:

I spent most of my life fighting with my hair.  Early on, the message was clear that  a black girl’s hair in it’s natural state was “bad.”  I remember many a weekend sitting in the kitchen having my hair straightened by a metal comb that my mother heated up on the gas stove.  And many black women can tell you stories of burned ears, necks or foreheads.  I think putting a hot comb near a child would be considered abuse if we were thinking straight.

But we are not.  We only want GOOD HAIR.

“Good” hair means STRAIGHT hair.  Hair that we can flip like the white girls.  And we will pay lots of money and endure hours of discomfort to “fit in and be “acceptable.”

I could share lots of hair horror stories.  But I won’t.  See, I made the decision in 2004 to go “natural.”  After starting coaching school, I realized that if I were going to teach others about leading a more authentic life, I’d better take a closer look at the places I wasn’t.

I already knew that I was out of alignment with my job.  I planned on quitting after my 40th birthday in 2005 because I couldn’t imagine spending the 2nd half of my life in such misery.

But the hair thing surprised me.  I know now that straightening my hair represented a rejection of some part of me.  I was conditioned to believe it was unacceptable because it wasn’t like “theirs”.  Even with a beautiful braided style, I was once pulled aside at work by a white female manager who told me it was “unprofessional because it was too ethnic.”  (Think angry black woman with fist pumping in the air.  That’s what she saw.)

Hmmm…

Yes, even white folks are more comfortable when your hair is straight and more like theirs.  Fascinating.

But the time had come for me to accept it, so I went to work one morning with relaxed, shoulder-length hair and came back from lunch with a teenie-weenie afro.  I had about 1 inch of hair left on my head.

Talk about drastic.

Thinking about the looks I got still makes me laugh.  Some people were supportive, but most freaked out.  Oh, they tried to be “cool” but you could tell they were clearly uncomfortable.

You wanna know what was really cool to me?

The more uncomfortable people were, the more I knew I had done the right thing.  That felt GREAT.

As time went on, however, I would become increasingly dissatisfied with my hair.  Not because it was natural, but because my natural hair has 3 different textures and makes styling it more of a challenge.  I have done some really fun stuff with it, but for the most part, it’s been more work than I thought it would be.

So, I’m going to make a change.

I don’t know if I going to relax it again or go back to my teenie-weenie afro.  But what I do know is that I’m lazy and simply don’t want hair that I have to do much work for.  I am crystal clear that whatever I do, I am doing for ME.

Not for some man.

Not to make white people more comfortable.

Not to make black people more comfortable.

And not so I can feel better about myself because I “fixed” my so-called nappy hair.

At the end of the day, as my girl, India.Arie sings, “I am NOT my hair” ,”good” or otherwise…

And knowing that is absolutely priceless.

It feels good to be me.