Parenting is a whole new world today as I was reminded of yesterday while dealing with a slightly rebellious teenager under protest. Let’s face it, they’re all like this sometimes. I’s a necessary ingredient to the growing up recipe that from time to time inevitably boils over. I found myself in an apparent rerun of my own adolescence.

Locked in her room, music on, my disgruntled teen began her protest to …oh so many rules does it really matter which one we focus on? Her plan? Refuse to come out, join the family for dinner and ….. I’m sure she felt that the drama alone would be enough to sustain her until her demands were met and the laws changed in her favor.

I can empathize. I remember being that teen and those fleeting moments of intense belief that the world (mostly my parents really) were completely unjust. I had to stand up for my beliefs and as my parents had so successfully drilled into my head, make things right in my world. And so, I stood there face to face with the white, six panel door and pondered.

In my days of teen angst my parents would have gone one of two directions. If my mother had her way, the door would simply have been knocked down. It was amazing the amount of furious power that little 5 foot tall woman could muster up. My father, on the other hand was more industrious. He would have simply proceeded, tools in hand to remove the door from the hinges, disconnect the electricity (silence alas) and store the door in the garage for a few days until I valued the difference between my right to privacy and his right to be my father. Dramatic? Yes. Effective? Well, kind of.

Of course at the moment that my own teen locked herself in I replayed the possibilities. Breaking it down seemed painful. I don’t own a tool belt and I’m not sure I can carry a door down to the garage anyway. I just paid a contractor to put this door in, maybe I should have left it the loft it originally was, hmmm. Talking seems logical but that would require her to hear me which she now can’t. I could flip the circuit breaker but in all honesty I have dinner reservations in less than an hour and I still need to dry my hair and I’m pretty sure both our bedrooms are on the same line. Moving on to a new and more modern approach….I don’t have one. Luckily though, my daughter does. Seems that texting is the new tool of choice for negotiations in the world of the newly double digitized anguished youth. And so the texting began. At first I though “oh, come on! This is ridiculous!” But then I began to recognize her wisdom as a controlled and non confrontational conversation began to unfold with every glip and beep and vibration coming from my phone -kind of like talking to CP3O from star wars which made me laugh. Luckily she didn’t see that as it would only have contributed to her agitation and make us later than we already were. After a short and empathetic review of the rules and expectations of our relationship she was in the car and we were off. Yes, there were still some consequences to the dramatic behavior and yes, I would still prefer to speak with her face to face, which we did after the door finally opened. But all in all, this was a reasonably effective resolution. And so, my teen solved the problem herself, wisely and calmly and with the resolve of an older and wiser soul…of course this is because while texting I can only evaluate the communication based on grammar and capitalization rather than on eye rolling and head wagging and….well, if you have ever had a teenager or been one yourself, you already know.

James Twyman

James Twyman on Hay House Radio and The Soul of Attraction

I’m so excited to be joining James Twyman as a guest on his new Hay House Radio show The Soul of Attraction on Monday.   James is a gifted author and bright Spiritual leader. His favorite book of mine is The Moses Code although he has many more. In fact, The Moses Code really inspired me to expand my philosophies on what a soul mate could be. That’s what I love about James’ work. He writes from a perspective of leading me to draw my own conclusions. He shares what he sees and gently guides you to unearth your own discoveries allowing you to completely share in his work. That makes for an amazing journey in every chapter.

On Monday we’ll be talking about balancing the soul and the ego.  Interesting topic to go over this week as I’ve already been blogging about the same.  We live in a media driven world that we all realize controls the majority of the infomration we are exposed to.  Today though, we’ve moved way past that and now control our own media.  Really, anyone with access to the internet now has the ability to not only claim to be whoever or whatever they want, they have the same media power to make you believe it too.  Now, I’m not suggesting everyone is a fake, I’m simply suggesting that everyone has the potential to be.  And with the right promoter, marketer and branding campaign in their corner the liklihood that you’ll buy it is pretty good.  So what’s the balance?  If the ego sells what does the soul do?  It shares.

On the opposite side of the ring from the ego driven marketing corner is the soul driven desire to share with the world what you see, want and think.  Revealing more of yourself and sharing that with others is a prgressive cause and worthy of financial reward when done for the mutual growth and benefit for everyone.  Let’s face it, I’ve been in this industry a long time and it’s provided me with prosperity and I am comfortable telling you that I’ve worked hard and earned it.

Yes I’m breaking my typical “prosperity is easy” lingo here but keep in mind that had I worked hard at being poor I’d be just as tired and not in a position to leverage my success for good… definitely a topic for a different post.  Anyway, the point here is that the media is a necessary tool for most methods of success.  That means that those most successful are that because they are also the best sales people.  I did NOT say they were dishonest or corrupt, just the best.  So how did they get to be the best?  By selling themselves into believing that’s what they are.  Now, that’s not intrinsically bad.

If you can’t believe you’re the best you won’t be.   That’s the most rudimentary rule of success.  The flag here is that the best sales persons in the world are so able to sell themselves that it becomes self justifying and that becomes dangerous.  That’s when the soul sharing stops and the ego takes over.  There has to be a balance and it starts with knowing how to check your own balance first.  When someone is selling an answer it’s human nature to want to buy it because it serves our ego.  Ego likes to know fact.  The soul, I’d prefer to think, would rather discover and grow as it needs.  Others are certainly able to help us with that offering guidance and insight but it is not an instantaneous answer like the ego would like to believe it is.  Spirituality isn’t a quadratic equation that we can solve.  It’s a progression.

There is no one single correct answer and to think that you have the one answer, the one secret… would mean there’s nothing left to question.  There’s something new waiting to be revealed around every corner.   So if you find yourself seeking quick answers.. that’s probably your ego screaming for certainty and I promise you there’s millions of egos out there willing to sell it to you.    If you find yourself willing to share, explore and most importantly willing to take the time to evaluate the answers you find and verify their truth only within yourself, then you’ll attract the right people who are ready to assist you in that journey.

Self Sabotage, or self defeating patterns of behavior are one of the most frustrating and destructive obstacles to come across. They are easy to identify in hindsight when you hear yourself muttering to yourself, “ Why did I do that?” or “I can’t believe I just did that!” Identifying those patterns is a great start, but it’s more important to identify how they are serving you and why they continue to live and grow.

One of the greatest moments of my life was realizing that I had two very deeply rooted and equally enormous beliefs. The first was that I could do anything I wanted to and I really mean anything. My ability to believe the impossible into life is tremendous and it’s been an ability that has supported me well. The second belief however, contradicted the first. See, I could do anything I wanted to and I really, really knew that, and I thought that was enough to compensate for the other. I was wrong. While I was confident I could DO anything I wanted to do, I just also happened to believe that I couldn’t do anything right. You can’t compensate for a wrong belief with a right one. All this does is create an escalating series of conflicts. The war doesn’t end, the battles just grow larger and so do the self defeating behaviors. The only solution is to surrender. NOT to your limiting beliefs, but instead to your empowering ones. Yes, I said surrender to the good guy. You’re the only one putting up the fight my friend. One more time – surrender to the good guy.

There is just one life for each of us: our own. ~Euripide

Yes, I know that’s hard to imagine. We all enjoy comfort, but the most amazing thing about the lack of it is knowing that it’s nothing more than the chaos before the recreation of something better than what it was before. The evolution of life and ourselves is a constant cycle of chaos and comfort. Each level of chaos is the redirection and movement of energy into new form where it becomes once again comfortable and familiar until once again it turns over into yet another cycle of chaos. It’s a process of rebuilding and renewing and we can be confident that it will always lead to a new level of comfort that will be more enjoyable than the next as long as we allow it to rebuild us for the better and not get lost in the confusion. By lost I mean lose hope that something bigger and better is being formed. If we see chaos as a meaningless and random frenzy of disorder that we have no effect upon whatsoever, we lose hope. This is when we never reach a new level of comfort, that place of satisfaction where we rest and enjoy what we’ve created. What an exhausting approach! If we see chaos; however, as an orderly rebirth of energy into new forms and allow ourselves to be a part of that newness, to float along, eyes open and reveling at the wondrous opportunities all around us, chaos takes on meaning and order and purpose and ultimately the discomfort can become adventurous and exciting and sharpen your senses. This is the spirit of adventure and an intricate part of living The Unabridged Life.

Studies done by researchers including those conducted by the American Association of Music Therapy tell us that music has healing power. Its ability to alleviate pain, anxiety and depression are just the beginnings of what we are coming to understand about the power of the arts. Innately, the arts have always been a part of every human culture that is honored as something we seem to know is important although we may not fully understand the scope of its power.

Most of us know that music can lift our Spirits, calm our minds and lift our thoughts. But do we understand why and how to use it to for the most effective results.

There are two sources from which you mind gathers information to process into working thoughts. The first is the physical world through your physical senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell. The second is through the divine senses of imagination, creativity, insight and intuition. What proves to be most interesting about the arts is the ability to reach the mind through both of these sources both divine and physical.

This ability to give us well aligned information is what fives music such power to move and change us. Imagine if you were struggling with conflicting messages in your life. Maybe you have the creative ideas of a genius just waiting to be manifested into the real, but the messages you see and hear through the physical world tell you that you can’t, it’s too difficult, you might fail and that should scare you. That’s the kind of conflict that keeps someone feeling stuck. The messages conflict and the mind becomes stuck trying to orchestrate them into harmony.

Now imagine that you were listening to a song. The composer wrote the music by divine inspiration and imagination and the preformer passed along both that as well as the physical sound. As you listen you are in an active communication with both the physical and the divine simultaneously. There’s no conflict in that message. Both sources delivering the same content, the sounds touching your soul, to inspire you and the physical touching your body to sooth or excite you. The spiritual message passed on by the composer and performer at a physical level. Whalla – you have synchronious harmony in both physical and divine and therefore a message that is capable of moving you at a much deeper level than either one could alone. This is how music moves you and the same is true for any other art form.