I’ve been doing Choose Your Life Monday posts for awhile now. I’m too lazy to go check for how long – a year? I like spending a bit of time on Sundays thinking about how I want to choose my life in the next week and discussing that with you.

Over the course of Choose Your Life Mondays, I’ve blogged about being aware of various patterns, I’ve shared Life Organizer questions, and today, I’m in the mood to do something a bit different.

I want to talk about old patterns and shame.

Specifically how when we see an old familiar pattern – yet again – we (or maybe this is just me) might say something to ourselves like:

I can’t do anything about this pattern because look how long it has been here! Nothing works. Nothing has ever worked. Works for other people but not me.  And I certainly can’t ask anybody for help with this again. Best thing for me to do? Stick my head in a vat of chocolate and forget about it.

Perhaps we could call this the I’m too Stuck to Ever Change pattern?

or the It’s Been Here Too Long to Ever Shift pattern?

or the I’m too Ashamed to Even Think About It pattern?

Or The ______ pattern (fill in your title of choice).

Except you know what?

Lots of the things you’ve done have worked – things have changed.

You have changed.

We – okay ME – too often throw the baby out with the bath water when we see an old pattern’s face at the door again.

We decide it means we are bad /screwed/an untouchable.

Or that meditation / eating more veggies / opening our hearts / doing yoga / journaling or whatever else we’ve been doing doesn’t work.

No.

It simply means we have more to learn.

And since learning is like the BEST thing about being alive then why oh why do we – okay ME – get so bummed when our familiar patterns show up?

Maybe because it means we’re human? Rather than Teflon coated uber super human?

Maybe because we need to give ourselves permission – yet again – to be who we are, experiencing what we experiencing, without adding a whole manure pile of judgment on top of our experience?

Maybe because we (mistakenly) thought we had arrived at that mythic done place where we were finally finished with this particular pattern. Forever. With a cherry on top!

If I’m going on like this you know an old pattern is yanking my door bell chain.

Thanks for asking.

It’s sticking with and finishing something difficult.

I have a life time pattern of giving up on difficult creative projects.

I did it in the 7th grade when I wrote, directed and produced A Rock-n-Roll Romeo and Juliet. I also wanted to star in it. But when it came time to audition myself, I freaked. And said, “Oh, no, I don’t really want to act in this.” I cast my best friend instead.

I did the same thing in film school when I wanted to direct and decided it was too hard. Why? Because I sucked at it. Or thought I did.

I did it as as screenwriter.

I’m sure there are other times too; I’m too tired to think of them all right now.

There is this hard, confused, frustrated, can’t-express-what-I-want-to-express place that I’ve reached over and over again in my creative life.

And often, when I’ve reached that places, I’ve quit (yes, even though I’ve written six books, those were easy or different somehow).

But now I’m at a stage in my life when I realize I don’t want to die without having made it through this place.

I want to slay the dragons of the gates of deeper work.

Or seduce them. Or hire them to help me.

I’m also seeing how this stopping when I get frustrated may be related to holding myself back, to hiding.

It’s very painful and so tender to see this pattern.

I am ashamed of it.

It’s so old.

And it’s a big fat lie that I haven’t shifted it – a little – over time.

I’ve earned lots of ways to be with it and work with it. I teach some of my favs at the Writer’s Retreat each year to great success.

It’s just that I now I am ready to work with this pattern in a deeper way.

So this week, I will be gently aware of how I stop myself during my deep creative work and I am going to practice being with that scared-stuck-painful place and not multi-tasking, or coming up with another, better, brilliant idea, or otherwise pinging off to avoid the discomfort.

I suspect this could be very difficult.

So wish me luck and perhaps, in the comments, tell me a little bit about one of your own old, familiar patterns.

It would be nice to feel less alone.

My jaw often drops as I read them -  how smart you are, how insightful, how aware.

Some of my friends with big famous blogs tell me they often get mean comments, and I always tilt my head in wonderment.

Huh? I don’t. My readers are thoughtful. Together, we are grappling with our stuff.

(And who has the time to write a mean comment?  Find them and send them over to my house, please. I’ll give them something better to do – how would you like to plan a 13-year-old boy’s birthday party? Or perhaps a pile of filing would be more to your liking?)

The kind of comment I do get is this kind: insightful, bracingly honest, dig deep, grapple with truth, like this one from Gena on my last post about being stupefied:

I thought it was ok to just “BE” and to “DO” nothing. Why are you worrying about everyone else’s good time? Maybe some people can just cruise for the sake of cruising…they do not need an agenda 0r plan …Believe it or not – some people live without expectations – I do like what you have to say most of the time but there seems to be some inner conflict going on – what you say vs. how u really feel & it comes across in these posts. I mean no harm, I am just sharing here.

Gena, thank you. This is exactly the kind of conversation I want to use this blog for – yeah!

First, let me say if I have ever appeared to have it all together or be the kind of woman who wears purple velvet capes and wafts everywhere, followed by a cloud of calming incense, smiling beatifically, I’m sorry.

Because I’m almost as much of an Angst Queen as a Comfort Queen.

Ever heard the phrase, “We teach what we most need to know?”

I teach comfort as foundation for expressing our creative voice because I need to learn it, over and over, again.

So yes, there is some inner conflict going on in me (just some). I am not always able to practice all the good ideas I write about.

I am a petri dish of inner questioning.

I’ve been this way – half wise, half eating my own tail, since I was little.

I believe the essential quest given to us all is to become fully ourselves.

Therefore, (albeit sometimes reluctantly) I cherish my questioning self, the part of me that wanders around a cruise ship asking questions like,

Are these people happy? Do they like playing bingo? Do they like lectures about shopping for jewelry in  port? Why do they want jewelry? Is that very cheery cruise director really that happy? Is it hard to be professionally happy day in and day out? What is it like to be on a ship for most of your life? Does everybody sleep with everybody else? Is it fun? Is it lonely? Why do people drink soda?

And so on.

I live in wide eyed wonder at this tender weirdness called being alive and, sometimes, I want to understand it far too much.

That’s me.

Inner conflict and all.

Thanks for asking!

This makes me cranky and frankly, angry.

Yes, I know, it’s our responsibility to not get snookered by marketing, but I want to call attention to a sneaky trend I see snaring even the brightest and most aware among us (myself included), which is:

Fear-based marketing in the guise of “spiritual marketing” or “authentic marketing” and, even more crazy-making, marketing that suggests you aren’t playing big if you don’t buy a particular program or product.

If you don’t buy, it’s because you don’t believe in yourself.

I call bullshit.

It’s one thing to watch a commercial for wrinkle cream on TV – you know your fear of aging is being marketed to, and you’re on to it. It’s laughable.

But with blogs and emails and Tweets, a kind of invisible intimate enclosure is created around you. The distance between you and the marketing messages is collapsed. Add to this the viral nature of social media – everybody’s buying so-and-so and it’s all happening so fast – it becomes very easy to be infected by the feeling that if you just buy X, you will finally be Y, and then all will be well.

Self-doubt and your worst fears do the buying, often without you even knowing it.

I have clients come to me who are almost paralyzed in their abilities to express themselves or to take concrete action in their lives. It’s like they are swimming in this very tiny fish bowl, and the bowl is made of the blogs they are reading, the products they are buying, and the story that if they just find the right product / course / teacher, they will finally unlock the golden door to…

…to nothing.

Because there is no golden door.

Because we don’t need one.

Get familiar with the feeling of being snookered

What are the signs you are getting hooked by fear-based marketing – or simply need to take a break from reading so many blogs and e-zines? (Yes, even mine!)

For me, the signs include a feeling of urgency – I must decide now! I must change my entire business/life/body now!

Red flag. Who says?

I start to have an internal conversation that runs something like, “Finally, this entrenched issue will be solved, once and for all. I’ll be saved from myself.”

Red flag. I do not need to be saved. I am innately good, no drowning soul here. What do I choose?

I begin to feel confused and compare myself to whomever is selling to me.

Red flag. Comparisons are always a sign I’m into fear-based self-improvement/business improvement of the worst kind.

I’m all for learning and growing, and I buy products and courses to do just that.

My point is, let’s each learn and grow (and buy) from the spacious truth that we are innately good, nothing to do or prove, and thus the idea that if we just buy X we will finally be Y, is a big fat lie.

And let’s not buy from anybody who tries to hook us that way.

What are the signs you are being snookered by fear-based marketing? Comment below. Your free prize includes my 2000000 CD marketing course on how to avoid ever being snookered again. Giggle.

Today’s Giveaways (For Real!)

Audios from Molly Gordon & Victoria Moran

To save the files to your computer, right-click or option (apple) click on the link, and choose “Safe File As…” or “Save Link As…”

A short audio from master coach and creator of the Self-Employment Tele-Summit, Molly Gordon, asking, “Why would you want to change?” (time: 2:41) What a blast of truth to strengthen your day.

Sparkling spiritual mentor and author Victoria Moran tells you that you are already magnificent and expression of the divine – no fear here (time: 6:25).

Victoria’s newest book is Living a Charmed Life.

Have you sent yourself or someone who needs an uplift a Freedom from Self-Improvement coupon yet? They are a delightful way to spread the love.

When you comment today, you’ll be entered to win a free pass to my January Virtual Retreat. I don’t even have a sales page up for it yet! It’s January 22nd-24th and even if you can’t attend live, you’ll get all the recordings and transcripts.

The giveaway is now closed… but your comments are still welcome!

Hurrah for yesterday’s giveaway winner!

• Tuesday’s Winner of a month’s membership to the Comfort Cafe: Char!
• Wednesday’s winner of the spot at the Delicious Aliveness Through Self-Kindness Mini-Retreat: Lea Howell!

Share in the comments: What are your signs that you’re being snookered by fear-based marketing?

I was on hold with my local clinic about my big toe – which stubbornly is not healing*—when I realized I was hearing a Dan Fogelberg song from my youth. In fact, the song coming over the phone had been the soundtrack for my 16th summer, a time when I was bursting with hopeful itchy angst, stuck between yearning for newness, for life, to be in life yet completely unsure what I wanted from life. As I listened to Dan croon (what a crush I had on him: the original sensitive man!) it struck me that how I felt my Pu16th summer was very similar to how I felt now, some 29 years later, and that Dan’s question was perfect for me – and maybe for you, too. Where do you go when you get to the end of your dreams? (I realize now the station was playing Dan because he died Monday of cancer at 56.)

I’ve run out of dreams. It’s very scary to admit that because in this microcosm culture of personal growth and coaching where I spend a lot of my time, it’s all about possibilities. Declaring, “Hey, I’m tired of growth. I don’t want to live my best life. I just want to curl up and do nothing,” feels so unrealized. It also smacks of the S word-selfish. “Dreams are the food of the soul. In our existence, we often see dreams come undone, yet it is necessary to go on dreaming, otherwise the soul dies and agape does not penetrate it” rhapsodizes novelist Paulo Coelho in his Ode magazine column (January/February 2008). Yes, I say to Paul yes but where does the letting go, cleaning out, dropping-into-nothingness-stage of dreaming fit? In our love affair with self-improvement and efficiency, have we forgotten this aspect? If you and I don’t attend to not dreaming, do we block the ability to conjure truly new dreams? If I lack the courage to peer at my dreams and ask hard questions like:

• What commitment am I willing to make?
• What price am I willing to pay?
• What courage is required of me right now?

(Questions courtesy of The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block)

What is the result? If I lack the stamina to be restfully fallow (say that three times really fast), do my dreams cease being dreams and become should-filled bland heavy nightmares? If I only dream, do my dreams become only delusions?

I believe many of us have gotten to the end of our dreams—I certainly think our American culture has reached the end of something. Partially this may be because we have relentlessly, brutally pushed ourselves. Faster, faster, grab the golden ring! Keep moving, keep buying, keep trying because if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. Our collective well has more than run dry; we’ve pushed clear through to China and out into empty space. Consider our political landscape, our national depression rate, and the number of horror movies leering from the New Movie wall at the video store* as proof positive. We want to dream radical raw dreams, we want to feel desire, we want to believe in new beginnings but we’re too tired from doing, from pushing, and those optimists among us, from dreaming.

Stay tuned for Part 2…

Which can be really really fun, if I am keep coming back to the place of “Nothing is required of me, there is nothing to do, nothing to complete, nowhere to get to.” (I learned “Nothing is required of me from Maryam Webster.) When I’m not in that place, that gluttony is far from fun–it’s desperate, grasping, and driven. And did I mention unattractive?

Building on my last post, the best way to get to this place of acceptance / nothing required is through the body. For me, that could mean screaming, shaking, rolling on the floor moaning: letting my body vent the frustration it feels at being pushed and shoved into proving or accomplishing, letting my mind clear itself, letting my energy settle.

Then I like to practice what spiritual teacher Adyshanti calls True Meditation: “In true meditation all objects are left to their natural functioning. This means that no effort should be made to manipulate or suppress any object of awareness. In true meditation the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself. Primordial awareness (consciousness) is the source in which all objects arise and subside.” SoundsTrue has two good introductions to his work.

It means being aware without changing or manipulating what you are experiencing (that would include judging yourself for having said experience or wishing it away or blaming it on someone else);

These days, it’s a very challenging practice for me because it means being aware of my intense hunger to DO. To be aware and not act on nor judge nor push away this desire is, at times, agonizing.

Can you relate? Are you a glutton, do you get trapped in doing? Do you find yourself going from one idiot task to the other (and feeling very virtuous while doing it–my favorites include folding the blankets in the living room, cleaning up art supplies, and cleaning up the kitchen). I’d love to hear about your doing…