I don't know if there is something very wrong about me or perhaps very right, but I cannot sit like a normal person. The outside table where I write this drives me nuts every morning as it attempts to coerce me into a standard seated position. I CAN'T DO IT, Table, so just BACK OFF! Why won't this table just let me be who I am?! I've come to terms with it, why can't the furniture?

Of course life would be easier if I could just fall in line. If I could contort my body to fit into the tiny box. The problem is, I'm more inclined to dance than walk a straight line, and I've never been all that physically flexible.

It's not really that I have a desire to rebel against the life society set up for me, it's just that it causes me pain to live that way. I'm not trying to be hip or difficult or contrary. In fact, I sometimes feel envy for those who can abide by the formula we've been given for a "successful life". The paved road can look very tempting as I crawl and trudge through the...

The best way to ensure a successful day is to have your agenda planned the night before. 

Having your agenda done the night before means that as soon as you wake up you are in action mode instead of in thinking and planning mode. You hit the ground running as soon as you get up. Maybe for you, you wake up and you're in silent prayer and meditation or you know something that doesn't feel very active, but you are already engaging with your day in a proactive way. 

It will change your day; I guarantee it.

The best way to do that is to sit down at the end of your day and do a review of the day that has just come. Look at the things that you did that were beneficial and those that you didn't get done, whatever you have to do, set your agenda for the next day, and plan it around your known energy levels. 

Are you at your most productive in the morning? Great! Put your really important tasks there.  

Do you need to be in a...

Today's tool - get creative!

Find some creative outlet that you dig and engage in it regularly.

Why? One: it's fun - do fun things in life. If creativity hasn't been fun for you in the past, find something that is fun for you. I used to think creativity was all about art, like painting and drawing and things like that, but that's not true. There are tons of activities where you can be creative. It's fun that's one of the reasons, but also recovery is really really hard (if you haven't noticed yet); it's really hard, and it takes a ton, and the tools that work one day just don't make an impact the next.

You have to be creative and utilize all parts of your brain if you really want to get serious about holistic recovery and living a super full amazing life.

Creativity doesn't just come out of nowhere. The idea that some people are creative and some aren't is a lie. Creativity is actually part of our brains; it engages parts of the...

Let's start with the heavy hitter - Meditation.

There is a myth going around about meditation and it super sucks because it blocks a lot of people from the most powerful tool in the toolkit -awareness. Any transformation journey, whether it's recovering from addiction or anything else, requires awareness as a foundation for any kind of major change.


Meditation is the practice of expanding awareness and learning to control the mind. A lot of people give up on meditation because they are frustrated. They sit there and they try to have a quiet mind and they don’t; it's really loud and crazy (because they're a human), and so they think they're bad at it and they quit. In actuality, meditation is a very active practice. It is a training modality of being in the present moment, and then the mind leaves the present moment and you realize it and you come back to the present moment, and then the mind wanders off, and you realize it and you come back to the present moment.

...

This is Part 2 of this post, so if you missed it, check out Part 1 now.

So what in the F am I supposed to do if I am constantly told I'm not good enough but also that I have to project to the world that everything is fine!?!?!?

For most of my life the answer was to hide. Hide my struggles. Hide my pain. Hide my fears. Hide my flaws. Hide my quirks. Hide my dreams. Hide my enthusiasm for wonder and magic. Hide my mistakes. Hide my imperfections. Hide myself. This started as hiding it all from others. It turned into also hiding it all from myself. This started when I was a very young child, as it does for so many of us.

I learned another word for hiding recently; it's called lying. It wasn't used in a way to shame or judge what I'd been doing but to bring it into reality. In my case it went to the extreme and was very dangerous.

I grew to despise myself so much that I was convinced every part of me was ugly and unacceptable.

My lying went so far that it...

Authenticity has become one of the biggest buzzwords lately. Like all of a sudden there's this new thing called being yourself!

The fact that this has turned into a "trend" tells me one scary thing: as a society we have gotten so used to pretending to be something/someone we're not that it's a fresh idea to actually show up as we are. That is not ideal.

How did it come to be that revealing our real selves is a novel concept?

I have a few theories. As Americans (or members of any capitalist nation) we live in the middle of a very frustrating paradox.

On one hand we are expected to have no problems - not in ourselves and not in our lives. We've been taught to put our best foot forward and never display our dirty laundry. Social media has propelled this to the extreme with people spending hours getting just the right photo to post to show how amazing their lives are.

Now on the other hand, we are inundated daily with messages that we are not ok as we are,...

Do you ever have days when you just can't seem to focus? Times when your 100% isn't as powerful as you feel you need it to be? Periods of your life when you have so much you need to do, but you don't have the energy to begin let alone complete all of it?

Yeah, me too. In fact, I'm in one of those right now. I've gone through this often during and before recovery. In truth, I think everyone goes through something like this whether they are recovery from addiction, living with mental illness or simply moving through the human experience. I reckon it's all part of it; though, that doesn't seem to make it any easier.

These times are bound to happen. Sometimes they last for a day, sometimes a week, sometimes a seemingly endless season. Sure we can say "This too shall pass" and of course it will, but what about all that time in between when we are expected to continue showing up in the world? 

Today I'll share with you the top three things I do during these times to help stay...

Back in 2016 I was traveling a lot for work. I remember one month when I took something like 2 dozen flights. It was nuts and fun and tiring. Either way, I had a lot of time to sit and to think on those planes. I recall one such trip when I was sitting near the back of the plane on the aisle seat. I felt so much stress and fear and anxiety in me that had built up over the years.

It had increased since coming into recovery because I was becoming more and more aware of reality and was beginning to feel all of it.

I was exhausted. I realized that so much of that came from the heavy weight I was carrying with me from the past. All of the things that had happened to me, the things I'd done. That which I had lost. The things I'd missed out on. How different my life was from what I had hoped. I felt like I could hardly move under all this weight. Any tiny thing that was added to it seemed like another 100lbs.

So on one this flight I decided to collect it all up. I closed...

Have you ever said any of these phrases to yourself or others?

"I would exercise more if I had the time."

"I don't have time for hobbies/vacation/fun."

"If I had the time I would work on my book/passion/invention/etc."

If you have, you are not alone. "I don't have enough time" is one of the first defenses people use for why they aren't taking the action they keep talking about. 

The truth is, we all have the same amount. People who earn millions haven't figured out how to buy more of it. That super fit woman you see running each morning as you drive to work has 24 hours a day just like you and me. People who take vacations every year have 52 weeks just like the rest of us.

So what are these people doing differently? What secret have they discovered? 

Here's a tip straight out of the Success Handbook:

Wake Up Early

Even earlier than that... 

I discovered a wondrous, magical world hidden in plain sight: the morning. I’m not talking about 8:00 in the morning....

This is one of the top questions I receive from people and for good reason. We live in a culture that teaches us that we're not good enough as we are. We come from generations that were taught to "power through", "toughen up", and "not air dirty laundry". We received the message that having and expressing emotions was impolite and weak.

Basically we are living under the suffocating pressure of lies.

::A quick note: This is universally changing. Just you seeking to develop self love is sign of that, and you're not alone. There is a massive energetic shift that is happening right now, and the time has come for a new way of living. This is a perfect time to focus on self love::

There is really one thing that gets in the way of most people's ability to love themselves. Efforts put towards anything else before this will not be totally wasted, but they are not going to get you the result you're looking for. I won't write a whole post teasing you about it only to reveal...