Every conceivable twist on goal planning, business planning and perfect life making - each one more EXCLAMATORY than the next – rolled into my head.

Instant ugh.

I turned off the computer (and reminded myself, once again, to edit who I get email and Tweets from)

Then I turned it back on and wrote:

Instead of my most kick-ass-best-ever-make-a-billion-have-rock-hard-abs-eat-raw-year, I’m going to have a being-me-good-enough year. Thank god.”

Here’s how Rachel, from my Comfort Cafe, put it:

I realized I just want to LIVE my LIFE in an (imperfect) gentle way.

Does your heart soften when you read that? Me, too.

But Wait, Aren’t You Doing a Whole New Thing?

Yes, I AM, and you’d think, given that I’m in the midst of launching my new thing, turning down clients and gigs and spokesperson work that no longer fit me (scary as hell), I’d be all frothy at the mouth with big plans.

Working those abs. Whitening those teeth.

No, ma’am. No, sir.

Of course, I’m tempted. I love a big inflated fantasy decked out in the disguise of a seven-step process to ever lasting peace and prosperity. Love love love those!

However, those kind of goal-fantasies-magic pills? They damage me. They hurt my heart. They lead me away from myself.

They are also utterly unsustainable.

And every time I make a plan that is unsustainable and not based in facts, I erode my trust in myself.

Every time I erode my trust in myself, I lose my ability to serve.

I also stop savoring being alive and I start to wonder what is the point?

Depression rolls in on the heels of those thoughts and, before January is over, I’m deep in the pit dug by my own kick-ass goals.

I’m Not Saying Don’t Want

Look, I talk endlessly about desire in The Life Organizer and at the Comfort Cafe. I love desire! I’m not saying don’t want things. We all to  want more – it seems built into our DNA.

But how we handle wanting more, how we scale it to our very human hearts, how we stay out of inflation and grandiosity and deadly comparisons (compare = despair) that’s the key, darling.

Our relationship to our desires. Our resistance to wanting.

What to do instead?

Track your influences. Who you are listening to? Who are you comparing yourself to? Tune into the literal voices in your head – who  is there? Then ask yourself, “Do I give this person the authority to influence me?” If so, “On what grounds?” Know WHY you are buying what others are selling.

Create some simple criteria for discerning why you give this person or company the authority to teach you. Look beyond the hype and magic pill salesmanship and red velvet rope manipulation (“I’ll be left out!”). Name the measurable outcomes you can reasonably hope to achieve before you invest in anything.

If you have made a big ding-dang-do plan for 2011, take it down a few notches. A big thing in the Satisfaction Finder is lowering your standards. Declaring you will do less than your maximum. Then you can stretch without pulling a hamstring.

Speaking of the Satisfaction Finder, name one high impact thing you can do today – that impact can be on your mood, your bank account, your relationship, your clutter – and then use COE’s to outline that one action. High impact is not the same as best or perfect, FYI.

How do you set COE’s? Read this post , and better yet, buy the product. But first, ask yourself, “What can I reasonably hope to achieve from buying this?”

Our theme right now at the Comfort Cafe is Imperfect Beginnings. I choose it so I would not get inflated and then depressed and exhausted. Desire, yes. Satisfaction, daily. Best year ever? Please.

How do you set goals and plans and intentions in your life? I’d love to hear!

I was SO grateful to be listening today – thank you

When time for questions came I put myself in the queue to ask this: how do we work with ineffable non-factual things like magic? Then you said you wanted more magic for the holidays, too!

The time for questions passed, but who knows, maybe you’ll blog about this sometime.

–Max

Thanks Max, I was asking myself the exact same question when I got your email – can COE’s help me experience more magic during the holidays?

My answer is… I’m not sure.

Don’t we all want magic and mystery + beauty and sweetness during this time of the year?

For our faith in ourselves and each other to be rekindled?

To sniff the greater mojo of the universe in the scent of a fir or a first kiss under mistletoe?

So the way I see it, wanting magic and mystery for the holidays is no different than wanting the muse to appear in my studio and bless me with a piece of fantastic writing -

I can create the conditions where upon the magic muse might show and that’s all I can do.

COE’S can be an invitation, a come hither look, for magic and mystery.

COE’s can be an elegant way to turn up the heat on what I want, to get some skin in the game.

So Max, here are my COE’s for magic and mystery. I’d love to hear yours and everybody else’s. It really helps to make them concrete and factual, with a time element, dependable only on you on an average day, and remember, when you are done, declare yourself satisfied.

• From December 18th until January 1st, I will be off email, and I’ll limit on-line time to 20 minutes a day (mostly forums at the Comfort Cafe).
• When I feel the urge “to be productive,” I will connect with my people, nature, or myself instead of doing.
• I will attend two events (concerts, etc.) that could be magical with people I love.
• When I want to eat something or drink something I know makes me not feel so magical (eggs, dairy, gluten and wine), I will stop and take a deep breath first.
• I’ll keep staying on my own side.

The irony is this list strikes me as very unmagical – dull even – yet every time I read it, I feel the space it creates for magic and mystery and rest to come into my life.

There will be awareness and room.

So Max, there you have it. Thanks for listening, reading and helping me.

P.S. I’m giving away a free month at the Cafe starting today. You must register by December 14th at midnight. So simply click here now FREE CAFE.

P.P.S. Cafe members are getting access to all kinds of good stuff this month including  a chance to win a pass to Marianne Elliott’s most wonderful 30 Days of Yoga. So be sure when you join the Cafe to comment in the forums under I Honored Myself Today by… for a chance to win a free hit of Marianne.

You know, one of those days in which you wonder, “What is it I do?” And you bemoan not becoming a nuclear physicist because at least they know how to split atoms.

One of those days in which all your plans, which just a moment ago were so shiny and promising, suddenly resemble false fronts on a movie set.

One of those days when you calculate how little money you can live on.

Otherwise known as a farm-fantasy day. Or move-to-the-ashram day. Or find-a-cozy-cave-in-Greece day.

You are going to give it all up for the simple life.

Give up the struggle, the effort, the bustle, the doing, whatever it is that feels so hard right now.

Yurts are always part of this fantasy. As well as spaciousness and time to do what you want. Shelling peas also shows up for me, not sure why.

There is a desire for wholeness and rest in the farm fantasy – you want to heed that.

There is also a desire to be rescued, to not have to be a grown up anymore – you don’t want to heed that.

Hold the desire for spaciousness, living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal in one hand and

in the other,

hold the exhilarating, humbling truth that choosing your life is damn hard work, putting yourself out there takes a huge amount of courage (whether selling your paintings or putting up a profile on Match.com), not to mention brain glucose, and being conscious,in general, is rewarding, sure, but also very, very taxing.

Farm fantasies are fun as long as you don’t confuse them with finally being safe. Finally being enough.

Watch a BBC period drama, read a historical novel, churn some butter and get back to putting one foot in front of the other. You aren’t doing anything wrong – it’s hard, it’s scary, and you are so not alone.

P.S. Non-farm fantasy retreat this weekend at Kripalu with me. You get to give up the struggle while staying awake. That’s good stuff.

P.P.S. Links: Living a hand-crafted life, retreats and renewal, enough.

I thought I might share some of what we’re learning with you, my most fabulous blog readers who, for some silly reason, are not all members of the Cafe. (You are fabulous. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

My favorite way to frame how you live in a story is to see yourself wearing a pair of glasses at all times.

These glasses are made up of your genes, your life experiences, your biochemistry, your wounds, your gender, education, travels, hopes, prejudices, cultural upbringing, the language you speak, and what you ate for breakfast. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff.

Almost all the time, your glasses are invisible to you. You forget you have them on.

Therefore, without knowing it, you forget that you are seeing life through glasses and believe that you are seeing the truth. You believe your interpretation of the facts seen through your glasses to be THE TRUTH.

Another better way to say this:

• Event happens
• You make up a story (not just in language, also inyour body and your mood but that’s another blog post.)
• You hold that story to be THE TRUTH
• You promptly forget you made up THE TRUTH.
• In the forgetting, there can be a whole lot of suffering.

Your life goal? To remember you are wearing glasses!

Important! Note! I did not say get rid of your glasses – that is impossible. Literally. Stories are how our brains work. We must make up stories to organize the information coming to us – there is simply too much information coming in for us to process. We drop most of it and then organize the rest into a linear story.

Here’s the truth: you and I are incapable of accurately perceiving reality.  So maybe there isn’t a truth? Holy Batman!

And who wants to live without stories? My dear friend and Master coach Ann Cheng said on our fantastic Comfort Cafe call on Saturday, “I was talking to my daughter about letting go of stories and she said, ‘But mom, that would be horrible.’ What she meant is our stories is how we make meaning.”

We treasure our stories because they organize reality and make meaning. YES! They make us human.

So my point is simply – simple but so very far from easy – to be aware you are making meaning.

What meaning do you want to make?

And every time you think you can’t choose what meaning to make?  That, my friend, is a story!

P.S. I’m doing links at the end of posts because it has always bugged me as a reader to feel like I’m missing something if I don’t click on the link so I do and then my reading experience gets all nattery and scattered goes my thinking.  Tell if you you like this or hate it, I’m curious.

Comfort Cafe, Ann Cheng (no link, she’s a closely guarded treasure who does not have a web site and she’s the kind of wise person I bring to the Cafe each month for rollicking learning conversation) and my favorite book on story making is The Trance of Scarcity.

Photo by Benimoto

First, a Finding the Good Wish

Wishing you

strength to love the curl of the question mark

around your heart

patience to wait for the stirring of your confusion to reveal

your next leap and

most of all,

the humility to listen to what wants to be heard.

And Now a Thought about Question Marks

We waited two decades for it. Clarrisa Pinkolas Estes, the esteemed author of the ground-breaking “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” is releasing her new work through a series of live classes offered by the amazing Sounds True.

Yes, it took almost twenty years for her next great work. And here is what she said about the gestation period:

What you’ve heard over the years about my having disappeared and gone underground to work and write is true,” says Dr. Estés. “When people ask where the heck I’ve been and why I so seldom come out when called by the “clattering world,” I often respond by saying that one can’t fulfill one’s calling by being called away. Rather one fulfills one’s calling by filling up… by studying, thinking, listening, looking at, living in the layers of life beyond the collective ones. Then . . . one can pour outwardly again.”

When I read Dr. Estes’ words, I started to wonder:

How do you discern between what Seth Godin calls “shipping” – getting the work out the door – and priceless diving-underground-time, away from the clattering world?

The need to fill up is built into the creative life, yet filling up time can so easily slip into not creating because you aren’t “ready.”

On the other hand, not taking time to fill up can leave you creatively bankrupt.

But how can you take time off? People around you are “shipping” everyday. They are creating so many cool partnerships and products and making millions.

And anyway, you need to post on your blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

So where would the time and space to fill up come from? You’ll be left behind!

So, is it time to ship or time to fill up? And how do you know?

What I do: If there is question mark curled around  my heart, I ask it if it wants to ship or go underground.

I turn to a community of honest peeps to help me see if I am hiding rather than filling up underground.

What about you? How do you know whether it’s time to retreat and rest, or if it’s time to ship? Please comment as this is dear to my question marked heart and I would really like your input, questions, and ideas.