I believe we can get to a place where we can let go of anger, fear and other negative emotions, where we are more like the Tibetan monk Matthieu Ricard writes about in Happiness then say, OJ. Simpson. The monk spent twenty-five years in Chinese labor camps where he was brought to the brink of death many times. Now free, he visited the Dalai Lama who was deeply moved by his serenity. He asked if the monk had ever been afraid during his long imprisonment and the monk answered, “I was often afraid of hating my torturer, for in doing so I would have destroyed myself.”

Gulp.

When I think about where I am far too often and where that monk is, I feel pretty friggin humble. What I do is whine too much. “Why is this happening to me?” flits through my mind far too often. I think it’s only me who has gas before her first improv class, a mouse who apparently climbed inside her fridge motor and did not live to tell the tale (oh the puns are coming now) and who wonders five times an hour what she’s doing with her life. This trait of mine is getting some love and relief by using this phrase from Radiant Mind by Peter Fenner: “I suffer, yes, but this doesn’t mean that anything is fundamentally wrong.”

When we think we are the only ones or that we are being picked on or why me, oh my gosh, we make it so much worse.

I’ll fart my way through improv tonight and maybe make a joke out of it.

More self-love resources I love:

This post from Havi from which I’m going to devise an exercise for my upcoming class in

Portland that is going to be really freeing and moving and useful, too.

For self-employed gals and guys I love Molly’s work.

And David’s is for everybody everywhere forever.

My sweetheart Bob who is so good at smiling at me when I rant and saying nothing.
Smart man.

Photo by Sookie via Flickr

Welcome to my long OVERDUE new website. The original Comfortqueen.com launched in May 2000 and although we made changes along the way, for the last three years, it was dated, riddled with broken links, and no longer reflected me. People would report broken links and ask where the e-cards went or that they missed the Daily Dollop and I’d say, “Soon. Soon I’ll know what to do.”

I kept telling myself it wasn’t the right time to do a redesign because I didn’t know what was next for me and I didn’t know what look I wanted for my “brand” and I didn’t know my target audience or my USP.

Then, one day, I realized I would never know if all I kept doing was thinking and mulling. I realized the only way I would ever know what I was doing next was to do something. To be in motion.

There are times when we get stuck because we have forgotten how to create. We believe we have to know exactly what we are doing before we can do anything — we have to know our brand mission, our ideal customer, have a snazzy logo; We have to know our big life vision, our soul purpose, have a cute tag line; We especially have to know where we will end up before we can begin.

When we notice that we are talking to ourselves in sentences that begin with “First I have to…” or “When the kids are…” or “When I know what I want to say then I will” before we sign up for the class or go for the interview or start the book, we’ve gone beyond listening and fruitful waiting and discernment and we’re stuck in a dead end story that is all about safety and fear and wanting guarantees in a life that never gives them.

The antidote? Action. Motion. Creation.

But not big long-term commitment kind of action. Not launching a company with fifty employees, not starting a book, not signing a year’s contract. Instead, start with something finite, easy, and yes, fun. Start with something that lights your heart up (or at least makes you faintly smile) and that has a clear beginning and ending. If you take a job after being home with the kids for ten years, take a job that you can leave easily but that interests you, challenges you or at least gets you into action. If you want to write, start an article or a blog post, not an historical epic. If you need to redo your website but you have no idea where your business is going next year, do something simple, with as few pages as possible and Word Press based so you can change it easily.

(Note: if you are somebody who gets into action easily but quits often, this advice is all wrong for you. You may need a big long hairy epic commitment. Or not. What do I know?)

Be in motion, build in change, and let it be easy.

Or think about it this way:

When the Shoe Fits
by Chuang Tzu
Translated by Thomas Merton
( a longish poem from: Roger Housden’s collection Risking Everything that ends:)

Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.

The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.

Welcome to my ever-changing motion-filled ease-inspired new website.

What is my suffering comes only when I push myself to know? When I strain. When I concretize, stuff in a box, try to write a tag line for my future?

You know what? I don’t know!