Category Archives: Life Coach

LESSONS LEARNED FROM POP CULTURE- LOVE ACTUALLY

Buddhism, Compassion, Film, Forgiveness, Joy, Karma, Life, Life Coach, Love, Peace, Power, , , , , , , , , ,

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.”  Prime Minister, Love Actually

Whenever I feel depressed or downtrodden myself in regards to life, I love to put on a film that will help me gain perspective and turn things around.  It’s like that moment in the movie Reality Bites when Wynona Ryder’s character feels herself sinking as the elevator is going down. She realizes that all the roads she is attempting to take for her employment are going nowhere and she is beginning to fail miserably in her quest to validate her hope in the world she had created in graduating from college.  “Love Actually” is one of those films that always helps me gain perspective, especially when I hear the opening quote by the Prime Minister.  Just watching the scenes from the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport I begin to tear up.

And now, whenever I’m actually at the airport I have the same experience!  I think the most catching part for me was when the quote goes into the planes hitting the Twin Towers.  The writer gives insight into the beauty of our human connection and our purpose as human beings- to express love and learn from it.

“When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love.”

When I heard that piece of the quote for the first time, it was like someone opening the curtains and letting the sunlight in my heart.  Whenever I hear the quote now- I have the same experience.  My experience never changes no matter how many times the television comes clean with the same statement about messages of love.  If you knew you were about to die and you had a chance to call someone- who would you contact to convey a message of love?  Who would you forgive as well as apologize to?  I know it may sound cliché, but life is short and we could very well die tomorrow.  The person you want to apologize to could die tomorrow as well.  There is a temporal aspect to our experience and we have to embrace every opportunity we have to clean up all the regrets and resentments we carry around in our hearts, our minds.

When I was training as a life coach, we were given a great assignment- to go through all that baggage and clean it up already.  Every person I had wanted to so desperately apologize to for something I thought I had done to them- I had the opportunity now to write it all down in a big list and purify it all with love.  Facebook became the greatest invention on earth for me!  I was able to contact so many people and just say, “I’m sorry.”  It was one of the most liberating experiences in my life.  I felt so light, free- so filled with gratefulness for the opportunity to just simply let it all go.  All of us have that opportunity and it is up to us to do the work, let go of our stubbornness and desire to point the finger in someone’s face.

We have a great opportunity and I recommend that everyone do it at least once in your life!  One of the most interesting insights I learned through the whole process was how much weight I had placed onto my experiences all by my lonesome self with shame and regret- when the other person did not even have a clue nor did they even think I had really hurt them.  We feel shameful and embarrassed for behaving certain ways in our ignorance or incorrect state of mind and don’t realize how much this baggage really affects us.  When you grab your past by the reigns and really plunge into the future with full-on releasement you free yourself from the grasping of the mind that perpetuates karma.  You give to yourself, as well as that other person, a great opportunity of freedom and joy.  And, it is beautiful.

If you feel scared in your attempt to nullify an uncomfortable situation, simply remember, “…love actually is all around.”

COMPASSION FOR OUR DARKEST MOMENTS

Attachment, Awareness, Buddhism, Carl Jung, Charter for Compassion, Compassion, Debbie Ford, Ego, Forgiveness, Joy, Life, Life Coach, Peace, Psychology, self-help, , , , , , , , , , , ,
From Charter for Compassion, Article by Rita Hibbard, Relying on the Kindness of Strangers

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It’s always darkest before the dawn

And I’ve been a fool and I’ve been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I’m always dragging that horse around
And our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I’m gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues drawn
But it’s always darkest before the dawn

Florence and the Machine, “Shake It Out”

In my own journey, I have learned a great deal about compassion.  Not only for others, but compassion for myself and all my foibles in this life.  As most of you know, and at the risk of sounding utterly cliché at this moment, without our life’s foibles we would never grow- that is, if we have the wisdom to see our foibles as growing experiences rather than things “happening to us”.  If compassion does not begin within ourselves, then it is very difficult to have compassion for other people.  In fact, those that are very hard on others are most likely even harder on themselves.  Our outer is a reflection of our inner no matter how we deal the cards.

A long time ago at a retreat for my coaching work, my teacher Debbie Ford came on stage holding a baby doll.  She brought to everyone’s attention how cute and sweet this innocent little child was.  Then, she started yelling and criticizing the baby doll and hitting it against the chair.  Afterwards, she noted that this is how most of us treat our own selves emotionally every day through constant criticism and fear.  We usually treat others better than we treat our perceived self because no one can hear how verbally abusive we can truly be when we are talking to our selves.  Sadly, not all stick to just verbal abuse with themselves.  There are many in this world that physically abuse themselves as well.  I am confessing in this moment that I was once one of those people.

What most don’t realize is that there is an aspect within ourselves that really is genuinely receiving this criticism and begging for love.  It is usually the piece of us that made that very mistake when he or she was a little child, and shamed for making that very mistake.  In taking on WordPress’s “daily prompt”, I googled the word “kindness”.  In that “googling” I was presented with the above image as the 11th.  It was a graphic on the article “Relying on the Kindness of Strangers” by Rita Hibbard for the Charter for Compassion website.  I love this graphic!  It was perfect, and brought me to one of my favorite topics- compassion!  All of a sudden the song “Shake It Out” by Florence and the Machine came on my Pandora station- and the lyrics (listed above) met me at the fork in the road concerning this inspiring graphic and word.  In the song Florence states that it is “always darkest before the dawn” and I could not agree more.

How many of you have been dragging a dead horse around so to speak on your back and you just can’t let it go because it gives you an opportunity to continue to criticize yourself?  What does this opportunity afford you?  Many people believe that attachment has to do with those things we love in this life- but this is not true.  We are also attached to the opportunities that allow for our inner demons to control our life.  Face the inner demon.  It will only get better from there, I promise.  I say that as testimony to my own darkness and how facing it changed me forever.  It gave me new opportunities to love and embrace the joy that I rejected because I didn’t think I deserved it.  The only way I could face it was through compassion.  I was enabled to see that little girl in me suffering and give her the love she needed to move on and own her light.

To express our light takes great courage, and I invite you to express your light and have compassion for yourself.  Let those foibles go and you will be of greater service to this world through the expression of genuine compassion for others suffering.  I promise.

My Inner Charlie Brown

Change, Life, Life Coach, Perception, Psychology, Reflection, Self Perception, self-help, transformation

My Inner Charlie Brown
By: Jessica Burnham

How many of you grew up watching the famous holiday cartoon- Charlie Brown’s Christmas? Or, reading the loveable character’s foibles in the comic page of your newspaper? Charlie Brown always felt depressed- and usually his depression came from his commonly chattered statement “I can’t do anything right!” Just recently as I trudged through my own inner turmoil regarding my life’s ups and downs, I heard myself saying just that. Tears streaming down my eyes, fear and frustration curling over me like a heavy blanket, I roiled “I can’t do anything right!”

I took a deep breath as I observed myself engaged in this belief system. I realized that I had to embrace this part of me, my inner Charlie Brown. And the tears came tumbling down at light speed! What can I say? In the daily work we all engage in called life, we have this perception of ourselves. We know we are working hard and trying to deliver what we envision as our greatest self- so why is it that when something doesn’t go as we expect it to go, it is so easy to spontaneously combust over our self judgments? It is so easy to attach to what someone says about us and then to take the flag running into our self inflicted fire.

I have probably watched Charlie Brown fall apart over his disappointing Christmas tree a couple hundred times. Yet every time I watch it I feel great compassion for his character. How many times does Charlie have to stumble upon his belief that he can’t do anything right? How many times do I need to stumble over this same belief system about myself? I sometimes find myself wishing (foolishly!) that I also had an inner tape recorder that released a statement to my mind like a red alert every time I start to go into this story- “Jessica, please take a look at yourself- do you really believe you can’t do anything right?” And the answer would be “YES” from my mind’s point of view. But it is just that, a point of view. And just like all points of view, they can easily be adjusted to create a journey that is more empowering and in line with what you ultimately deserve in this life.

I have full confidence that since I have chosen to accept the part of me that truly believes and lives this belief system every day, “I can’t do anything right,” I will be able to choose something that aligns with my heart. I have lived this work deeply over the past two years, so I know I can trust this process. I now have the choice to feel compassion for the Charlie Brown that lives within me instead of judging him like Lucy or any other of his harsh critics. Life is difficult enough as it is, juggling everyone else’s belief systems and projections. How much easier could my life be if I opened up to what is available from the universe that sees me for who I truly am? Rather than always seeing myself through filters and lenses that are attached to points of view?

Nietzsche has been quoted as saying “There are no facts only interpretations.” Interpretations, opinions, points of view- are they not all the same? My dear friend’s grandfather taught her growing up that one of the most important ways of being in life was silence, to not open your mouth. This is something I look at with the deepest awe. To not respond with an opinion, an interpretation about our behavior, as well as others, gives us the space we need to experience the emotions of being human without sacrificing the truth of who we are. And the truth of who we are is not an interpretation or a limit- it just simply is- bound by nothing, open to the possibilities of the universe.

The Weight of Attachment

Attachment, Change, Life Coach, self-help

The Weight of Attachment
By: Jessica Burnham

Every time I go to the ocean, I feel this strong attachment and melancholy when I leave. It is almost as if I am leaving a part of myself behind, and I know it deep within my soul. There is a part of me that wishes I could control it and not have that feeling. Emotionally, it is an aching feeling. As the sun sets, I will sometimes remember singing Taps in the girl scouts- Day is done, Gone the sun, From the hills the lakes to the sky- all is well, safely rest- God is nigh. And with it I tune into the rhythm of the land. My heart goes into another way of being and with that brings a feeling of change.

Change is one of those things that either opens us up to new possibilities or gives rise to a shut down within like a top spinning out of control. When change comes upon us, we have a choice. We are being led to a cross roads where the universe is giving us an opportunity to grow and feel out what it means psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. No one’s cross roads is any more life shattering than the next- it is all a matter of perspective and openness. Have you ever watched a child try to control a top’s direction as it spins and whirls across the floor? The outcome is usually a crash and burn situation. What does that mean?

When we try to control a situation rather than allow it to simply deliver what it is there to deliver- we usually make it very negative. I was watching a father and his son at the beach, and the young boy was attempting to go into the ocean with his father to body surf on his boogie board for the first time. Every time the father got the boy to a certain part of the waves, he would turn and run away back to the beach laughing and yelling “No!” His father was getting frustrated and kept trying to persuade him to come back into the surf. Finally the father just gave up and went on to do his own thing, while the boy continued to play on the shore. The boy was not ready to take that risk yet of going further out into the waves. But as adults, we sometimes do the same thing regarding certain levels of emotional engagement, or with our career.

An opportunity comes up, and there is someone like this father persuading us to come out and test the waters. But we half attempt it and then decide to turn around and run back to the shore. Our free will gives us the opportunity to either choose growth or run away from it. The uncomfortable feelings that come with stepping out of our comfort zone into change usually pass. We just need to be with those feelings- engage and experience them without resistance. The more we flow with the way life delivers us these opportunities for growth, the less anxiety we will feel as we step into the ocean of waves around us.

Resistance is the road block to growth. And growth is essentially the purpose of our life. Yet we engage in resistance over and over again. What does it feel like when we resist? We usually feel stress within our body, indecision can mask as resistance- instead of making a choice we pretend we really don’t know what we want or what our intuition is telling us. What other red flags are there? Anger, resentment, a feeling like the world is passing us by and we’re not getting a piece of the pie- all of these feelings are important for us to pay attention to. They are there for a reason and it is up to us to determine what that reason is. This requires deep honesty with yourself. If you can’t be honest with yourself in regards to what your feelings mean then you will always feel a sense of anxiety and nothing will take it away. The mind will tell us that our temporary fixes will diminish this stress- but we all know that the relief lasts a very short period of time and eventually a bomb will go off inside of us.

Life yields so many gifts. Yet we tend to see what we are ‘missing out on’ more than opening up to what we are experiencing and being given in the present moment. As I left the beach today- I did feel a deep sense of sadness within myself. But I also knew, through grace and awareness, that it would dissolve rather quickly the less power I gave to that feeling. Rather than make it mean something, I just chose to experience it for what it was. And you know what? It did pass rather quickly. Without attachment and expectations- we get through the times that feel like weights are attached to our heart. Letting that heaviness go can be life changing. Sharing this with you, every month, is life changing for me. I thank you for sharing in this journey with me, and I hope that the next time you feel that weight of change- it becomes a little lighter because the attachment is not weighing you down.

Because I’m a Pisces!

Change, Life, Life Coach, Psychology, self-help, transformation

Because I’m a Pisces!
By: Jessica Burnham

Recently, I was helping my step daughter in her ballet lessons from home. With her competitive nature, comes the desire to always find a way to blame her teacher for bringing her down whenever the going gets tough. I noticed this occur when she first took karate, and now, even with the sport she loves the most, she still does it. In her frustration with a teacher who told her she had not been paying attention, I asked her this question- why aren’t you paying attention? You would think I had just set off a bomb within her mind. Her response was lots of tears and an excuse that I loved- “but I’m a Pisces!”

I was so surprised by her responses! But why should I be surprised? Children are amazing mirrors for us, and they innocently show us the workings of the mind without so much internal manipulation as an adult. Adults are more masterful at hiding their shame and making excuses for themselves. So here was a child already learning different ways to avoid responsibility for not paying attention by actually blaming her inability to pay attention on an astrological tendency.

What?

It brought much laughter to me later. This laughter existing, because we all do it, just in different ways. All of us make up excuses for ourselves in the most complex ways to avoid taking responsibility for our emotions, actions, lack of action, and beyond. Most of the time, we are unaware of it because we have become programmed machines doing it as an automatic response any time we feel discomfort or want to avoid something. How amazing would life be if we could see our selves from the outside perspective, like I could see my step daughter so clearly, and laugh at ourselves rather than allow our mind to hold onto its rationalizations for dear life in pure dramatic form?

Sometimes I think of that scene in the movie Meet the Parents, where Ben Stiller’s character is on the airplane near the end telling the flight attendant that the only way she is going to get his bag from him is if she can take it out of his kung fu grip. His reaction is like the pure manifestation of our mind’s kung fu grip to old belief systems and judgments. How do we obtain the openness and flexibility to be able to confront such a grip on reality? What kind of structures can we place in our life to assist us in seeing ourselves from the observer point of view when we start to go to that place of denial?

In my coaching work with the Ford Institute, one of the ways we do this with ourselves is to write down all of our typical excuses, rationalizations or justifications in advance so we identify what they are from a point of awareness. Once they’re out there, it shifts something and it makes it more difficult to give power to them when we know what we are doing on a whole different level. We recognize as the observer of the mind that this is something we really do; it is not just something someone is telling us they see. There is power in observing from our own awareness. When others tell us what they see, the mind usually reacts discordantly. There may be more resistance, more stress.

From the Buddhist perspective, we have slowly become addicted to the mind’s power and the wheel of karma. There is so much suffering, yet we still engage in the same behaviors that cause us suffering without regard to the deeper consequences- the karmic ones. Reincarnating countless times, until finally our awareness evolves to a level deep enough that we just touch on the surface of enlightenment. Yet our laziness and resignation to the mind’s way of constantly dragging us into the past, into our worries of about the future, and its need to be right pops us in and out what we truly are like a contestant in a pinball game. The lights go on, the noise distracts us, and we give away our power to move in a certain trajectory to wounds that never heal.

Taking the step to acknowledge our weaknesses and make the commitment to become more aware of them is the beginning of liberation. Once we start to question the mind’s addictions and its constant wasting of energy, we start to bring the power back in and see how choice can enliven the soul. The choice to say- I’m not going to react in autopilot today. Let the liberation begin! Namaste.

Knocking on Death’s Door

Attachment, Awareness, Buddhism, Life, Life Coach, oneness, Peace, Psychology, Reflection, self-help

Knocking on Death’s Door
By: Jessica Burnham

Think not disdainfully on death, but look on it with favor, for even death is one of the things that nature wills.
Marcus Aurelius Antonius, Meditations

The notion of death can be perceived in many ways. Kali the Hindu goddess is deemed the bearer of death and destruction. Many fear the idea of death and destruction that Kali embodies, without thinking about how important it is to our life. Without death and destruction our lives would not be a mirror for our evolution at all. We would remain without growth, enlightenment- and nothing would ever end. We would be living Bill Murray’s life as the eternal weather man in the film Groundhog Day, only it probably wouldn’t be quite that funny.

The great thing about Murray’s character in that film, is that he finally gets sick of trying to die and end everything without ever growing and seeing beyond his self centeredness- and realizes that he has this great opportunity to become something worth living for and for others. Would it not be amazing if we could look at our present life as the eternal Groundhog Day? That this life will continue on after our death, only in another form, and we would still experience the same old crap that we currently experience unless we decide to take hold of this amazing gift and use it for the highest good of all sentient beings?

Grace has given many of us experiences that show us how fleeting our current life is, and the wisdom to take heed. We can choose to use this life to its maximum capacity for our growth as evolving beings, and not only change the world in which we live in- but change the world others live in as well.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Mahatma Gandhi
This quote by Mahatma Gandhi says it all. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” He certainly did, didn’t he? The thing is, we will live forever and if not in this life, or maybe in the next, we will all experience what we are meant to experience- the understanding that every moment is a moment of dying or ending. Only it is not the way our ego perceives dying. It is the end of something completed, only to give rise to the next step, phase, experience; yielding to us the present moment- a moment without attachment to anything in the past or future.

In my coaching work, we are taught to ask this question- what are you willing to risk or give up in order to accomplish your goal. I often think of this as- what are we willing to end? What pattern or addiction that we are attached to keeps us chained to our monkey mind’s demands- and does not provide opportunity for growth and evolution?

In Buddhism, they teach a lot about attachment. I was sitting on a plane returning home after visiting family for the holidays. I was reading a book about anger by Thubten Chodron, a Buddhist nun, and I looked over at my significant other wanting affection. I gave him affection- hoping for some in return and it was not granted. I felt bad inside, but didn’t say anything. Then I looked at my book and began reading again. I immediately came to a paragraph about attachment to relationships, and how they feed an expectation for affection. I laughed inside at how amazing the universe delivers these little tidbits when we need them most.

I chose to look inside myself and say- it is time for me to give up this attachment to this personal relationship, and all others. I can love without attaching my expectations and desires to this person. I made the choice for this addiction to end. And hopefully it will not carry over into the next life, if I can continue with my dedication to let go of my mind’s attachment. It is our attachment that makes death appear so daunting. If we were not attached to anything around us, then the idea of death would seem very simple- wouldn’t it? The fear of destruction would end- because change would be okay.

Think about it- this psychology- the fear of ending the fear of something ending. I know that sounds confusing at first- but it is a reality. How many of us really are afraid of ending the attachment to what fear does for us? What does your fear do for you? How does it give you the opportunity to hold onto things that you’ve outgrown? It is like having a co-dependant relationship with your inner demon. This co-dependant relationship is what creates our perceptual hell. Many people are afraid of death, because they don’t know what will happen after they die. But the truth is, we never know what will happen from moment to moment. All we can do is continue our evolution by letting go of our attachment to the fear of the unknown, what some people call death or destruction.