Which option do you think will make your life much better much sooner – the Band-Aid or the bulldozer?

Palliative care is dusting the tabletop. Relief with Teeth is rearranging the furniture. Palliative care is managing cash flow with the calculator set on four decimal places. Relief with Teeth is doing whatever it takes to find the perfect customers and wow them with your natural gifts.

Relief with Teeth starts in the centre of your chest, where your heart is. The rumble of heavy machinery lives there. Dusting and pinching pennies to avoid the real issues means the mind is afraid. And it should be – real relief means real change. Relief that permanently changes your life involves the heart as much as the head. Your pulse shifts into a higher gear. Otherwise, you would have changed already, right?

You’ll be okay, though, because Relief with Teeth is both grounding and propelling. And the best part is that you already know exactly what to do. Really. Check in with your pulse. You’ll find answers there, along with a hardhat and the keys to the bulldozer.

Quit raking leaves. Grind some ground instead. Move the Earth.

Related reading: Pep Talk | Defend Your Territory, Pep Talk | Choose

Flickr photo: Dozer Tracks, by adamr.stone

What do you stand for? Is it Love or Beauty or Home or Peace … or, perhaps, The Acoustic Guitar. What it is matters less than that you know it.

It’s the thing you’re a broken record about, the thing that stands the test of time. The thing your bones and cells know. It’s the thing you’d walk the plank for.

It’s the worthy devotion you carry with you, giving you confidence and buoyancy, even when you’re poked in the back by people who don’t agree or see, forced out toward the tip of the plank.

Make the plank just another way to enjoy a swim.

Run toward the end of the plank with a flippant bum-swish. Fling yourself off into the gathering dark with a wild “Yeeeee HAH!” Before you even hit the water you’ll out-grin the sharks to the point of freaking them out.

When you dare to stand for the song your very cells sing to you, the plank is only a springboard. And you sail from it into the air as the embodiment of a dream.

As the ship and its cheering, jeering mayhem sails off into the black distance, you float, at ease. That’s when the sea plane and the luxury yacht and the friendly sea serpent arrive, drawn by the lighthouse of you.

The story – the sharp sticks, the salt spray, the shark fins (the layoff, the weight gain, the creditors) – is not important. What’s important is that you tell yourself what you already know you stand for.

Everything else is merely darkness waiting for your shine.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Related reading: Pep Talk | Count Your Limbs, The Power of the Hero Alone

Flickr photo: Schiermonnikoog, by Bert K (revised by Grace)

Saving the world is good. (Duh.) But we can’t do it if we’re dead.

Or lying on the floor in a puddle of half-checked to-do lists. Or transfixed by the three-digit number of unread emails. Or brow-beating ourselves for being in debt or fat or lonely or dorky.

The first world to make sustainable is my own. Your own. Our own little bit of the whole. This is not about whether or not you recycle. Sustainability is about living your life in a way that gives you sustenance. Sustenance nourishes us to flourish.

If you’re reading this, you’ve automatically got a great head start. After all, if you’re alive, you’ve been sustainable for years and years now. Good job. So how sustainable are you?

When the ecosystem of your life provides you with ongoing, constant nourishment, you’re grounded. (See? It is about the Earth after all.) When grounded, you’re a renewable resource.

Figure out what works in the microcosm of you. If unread emails pile up, unsubscribe. Or do a Delete All once a month. If you’re lonely, ask everyone you know to introduce you to someone you might like. Do whatever it takes to prioritize self-love. Do whatever it takes to breathe life into the places where you’re dying.

Own your world. Take responsibility for the state of the world of you. Be the benevolent dictator of all you survey, inside and out. Be the epicenter. Be stable. Be durable. It’s the only way to help the world.

Related reading: Book | Fitting in is Overrated, Pep Talk | Choose

Flickr photo: will fails as atlas, by meigooni

“You usually do not try to describe your relationship with your leg, because you understand that your leg is you.”
~ Abraham/Esther Hicks, The Vortex

You may be unsteady on your feet because you’ve lost a part of yourself. Don’t circle the house wondering where you left it or scan your companions for signs of thievery. Ask yourself when you last saw what you’re missing.

Where did you leave the truth?

If you’re hyperventilating with anxiety or blaming someone else for the hard row you’re hoeing, at some point you parted company with a vital bit of yourself. Maybe you gave too much at the office and had to strap on a flimsy excuse to make it through the day.

FAKE feels like an extra limb.

Pretending is an amputation that’s having an identity crisis. Follow the weird tracks back to where they join again with your standing-tall self – figure out where you started to tilt. Then count your limbs and remain intact.

TRUE feels like reunion with a missing part.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Related reading: Pep Talk | Dance, Avoid the Rush – Finish Last

Flickr photo: a frivolous moment, by jenny downing

How often do you feel overwhelmed? What story do you tell yourself then?

If there’s any self-pity in your story, it’s time to change your perspective. If you compare yourself to others and conclude that you’re designed poorly, you’re looking through eyes that aren’t your own.

You are perfectly packaged. Adjust your advertising.

Too scratchy. Too fast. Too much noise. Too much light. Too much going on. What’s another word for too much of something? Bounty.

Overwhelm = Bounty. So choose.

You’re not unable to keep up. You’re not sub par. There’s no need to keep trying to reinvent yourself to fit a space it hurts to be in. If overwhelm is a form of bounty, that means you have options to choose from.

You’re well-suited for evaluating complexity and making astute decisions. Honour your innate, glorious, heightened ability to discern and decide.

Choice is a power tool. Plug it in.

~

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Flickr photo: Yes, we’re now officially up north, by wili_hybrid

Related reading: Pep Talk | Revise the Story, Giving Up Housework

The comfortable side of the coin tends to land facing up. What’s below, what faces the tabletop, is the dark side. But it’s only your dark side, not The Dark Side. A coin is not possible without two sides. There’s no right side or wrong side of you.

Try holding only one side of a coin. Ain’t gonna happen.

I tend toward rowdy optimism. I know how to be a good friend. I can break big tasks down into little ones and reach a goal. But I also cry my heart out in the shower, miss the friends who left because I wasn’t willing to change, and lose my way.

None of those flip sides are down sides. Crying clears the soul and recycles emotions, staying true to oneself is worth the loss of a friendship, and astonishing discoveries can be made by stumbling through the underbrush.

Gamble on yourself. Flip a coin.

Your sides aren’t dark and light. They’re this and that. See the whole of you without rejecting the parts, no matter how unfamiliar or uncomfortable the flip sides seem. Your task is not to delve under the dark side of the coin, like a hiding bug, but to get used to flipping the coin so both sides get light.

Explore the other side. Make some change.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Flickr photo: Rome – Trevi Fountain “Coins” – by David Paul Ohmer

Related reading: Pep Talk | Revise the Story, The Power of Equal and Opposite Forces

The more you follow your own rhythms, using your internal world as your compass, the more you deviate from the norm and live a more thrilling and expansive life. But be on the lookout – your deviations may cause others to trip over their own expectations.

To gain the fabulous benefits of being a deviant, you must be willing to risk upsetting other people’s expectations. If you succumb to other people’s agendas, your navigation will flounder in a fog of confusing motivations and you’ll end up pleasing others first. Then you’re just a hollow robot, plodding around in a circle until you rust to death.

An expectation is not an agreement. Know the difference.

An expectation without an explicit agreement is a land mine waiting to explode. If you land with both feet on someone else’s land mine, so what? They put it there. Let them clean up the mess.

Responsibility for an expectation always rests with its owner.

If the life that rises up – pure and compelling – from within you goes against someone else’s expectations, free yourself from the tangle by asking yourself two questions: Is there an explicit agreement? and Who owns the outraged expectation?

If there’s no explicit agreement being violated and it’s not your expectation that’s blowing up, then proceed along your merry, deviant way. Get used to the idea that it’s impossible to fix other people’s expectations of you. Let them go so you can go.

Remove the shackles. Take the weird road. Claim your inner deviant.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Flickr photo: A New Path, by jurvetson

Further reading: Pep Talk | Defend Your Territory, Crying and Staying

Giving up the space and time you need for yourself is not an option.

You may be so habituated to giving it up that it’s difficult to feel you deserve it, but you do. And you always have. Even if you’ve never in your life had enough space and time for yourself, you must claim it now.

You control your space and time. Period.

People who love you but don’t really understand your need for chunks of uninterrupted space and time don’t control your ability to get it. They don’t need to understand. If you wait until they understand before you get enough of what you need, you lose.

Tell them, “I’m going to rest for an hour,” then close the door, dim the lights, and quietly do whatever you want. Say you’re going out to run an errand and spend the whole time hunkered down in a quiet corner of the library. Tell them you’re going over to so-and-so’s house and, once there, take over the guest room for the afternoon, closing the door behind you.

Consider the idea that telling others only part of the truth actually makes everyone’s life easier. You must please yourself first or all is lost. Figure it out.

Explore easier living through subterfuge.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Flickr photo: Bed, by modomatic

Related reading: Pep Talk | Keel Over, Secret Spaces

Be pro-active. Line up advisors in advance.

An advisor doesn’t need to be someone who knows it all, a halo-topped, superpower-wielding, bigger-than-life, mythic hero. They only need to know more than you do. And, further, they only need to be wiser in the one area you need advice about.

Take inventory. Who’s on your team?

Go so far as to identify specific people who are more experienced and knowledgeable than you on certain topics. No need to be formal about it unless you want to. Just mentally reviewing your options can save you if a crisis arises. You’ll be more likely to think to reach out to the person who can help.

Lining up advisors doesn’t mean you’re bringing on the worst by focusing on a what-if. Think of it, instead, as pre-emptive. Knowing you’ve got a plan can go a long way toward repelling the crisis. Practice calms our fears and automates our responses.

All hands on deck! Oh. That was just a drill.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Flickr photo: Friends for Ever, by Hamed Saber

Related reading: Pep Talk | Ask Anyway, The Perpetual Support List

You guard your softness at times, I’ll bet. When, though? Only when to do otherwise would truly get you hurt? Or has that defensive wall become a habit?

Prove to yourself that the world requires your sensitivity.

After years of wariness around a fierce, but beloved, friend of mine, I decided to be myself around her, no matter what. Rather than trying to fit in with her and her crowd, I stood my ground as the real me, even when it meant saying no, or saying or doing something I couldn’t predict a reaction to. One day, after I started doing this, my friend said, “You are one of the easiest people I’ve ever known to just be around, to just be with.”

Lose the hard shell. Tenderize your surroundings.

Rather than assuming you’ll be splatted, test the edge of the envelope. Notice when you close up from the untried assumption that your soft, glorious, sensitive perspective will get you stomped. You’re much, much stronger than this culture’s idea of being sensitive may have led you to believe you are.

Experiment with letting your guard down more often than you do. Be selective, but be persistent. Start small and safe, but notice as you go how habit doesn’t always serve you. Discover all the ways, every circumstance, in which your sensitive perspective makes a positive difference.

Take a risk. Take the shell off. Take off.

{ PEP TALKS deliver a bracing blast of Grace }

Flickr photo: 1..2..3..Fire!, by juliam1111

Related reading: Kudos for Sensitivity, The High Demand for Sensitivity