Monthly Archives: November 2007

In addition to what may appear to some as my more ‘other worldly’ pursuits, I have also functioned from time to time as a personal or life coach. In fact I’ve had a little coaching practice running off and on for a while, called “Success Alliances” and one of my favorite questions to ask new or potential clients has always been, “How would you like to succeed?”

Since most if not all the words that leave my mouth or pen or keyboard these days seem to have that boomerang, come-back-and-bite-me-in-the-ass thing going on . . . it should have come as no surprise when I found myself asking myself that very question not too long ago. It was on a day when feelings of success seemed to be successfully eluding me, and so I turned first to myself to ask the question . . . and then to The Shower Team for what I was sure would be a much better answer.

From the broader, nonphysical perspective, this is one of the most important questions you will ever ask, because the answer to the question: How do I define success is one of the clearest possible indicators of your alignment—your connection or disconnection—from who You really are.

For most of you, success is defined in terms outside yourself. Most of you look around at and listen to what everyone else is labeling “successful” and you shrug and say, “Well I guess that must be it,” and with very little real or conscious thought, you start chasing the same stuff. Some of you, of course, realize sooner or later that you need to put a little more thought into the whole idea—particularly as you manage to acquire some of that same stuff only to find that it comes up short for you somehow.

But even in the efforts that you sometimes make to find a different perspective on the topic, to uncover different criteria for what “success” means . . . .you often continue to look for your criteria everywhere but the one place that it truly resides: in your own connection to Source. You seek it in any and every sort of relationship you can think of . . . you look for it in books (or blogs). . . you search for ways to redefine your terms—which is fine—but you will look virtually everywhere other than the one place where you will ultimately find it.

We do not judge your desires. We do not categorize your dreams according to level of worthiness . . . unlike those of you who dole out awards of one sort of another . . . we do not stage contests where there are first and second and third prizes and honorable mentions. You are the ones who decide that one form of success is better than another. You are the ones who decide—and agree together—that you will hold one kind of achievement in higher esteem than some other. You are the ones who compare yourselves to each other according to the rather arbitrary—and often meaningless—standards that you have accepted as ‘real’.

So it is never ‘our’ judgment that you feel when you look at yourself and feel that you are not enough. What you are always—always—feeling in those instances, is your own recognition of some way in which you have wandered off from the knowledge of who You really are and what really matters to you.

And we would suggest to you that “success” is never more than a step or two away from wherever you have wandered off to. Success is always as close as your decision to turn around and see yourself as You really are. Success is always as close as the connection you always have access to . . . the connection to well being that always abounds . . . the connection to guidance that always flows . . . the connection to your own knowing that you are blessed, bright, loving and loved beings.

Success is yours by birthright. Success is yours to define in any way you choose—however, success will only feel like success to you, when it comes in the form of what truly lines you up with who You really are. Success in any other terms—by anyone else’s definition—will ultimately fall flat, leave you cold, fail to satisfy you . . . because success by anyone else’s definition, has nothing— NOTHING—to do with You.

So instead of spending your time and energy and giving your attention to the criteria others have chosen for defining success . . . spend your time and energy and give your attention to questions about what will let you ‘feel’ successful. Never mind how anyone else might judge that answer. Pretend that you are the only one who gets to ask and answer that question for you (because—guess what—you are). Decide what success would feel like to you. Decide why that feeling or why that accomplishment or why that action would let you feel successful.

Get absolutely clear about what a successful you would look and feel like to You. And we promise you, that once you have answered those questions for yourself and tucked that knowledge under your arm, you can go forward with such power, with such clarity, with such authority, with such creativity, wish such exhilaration and eagerness and joy . . . that the world—the Universe—will truly feel like your oyster.

When you know what success means to you . . . when you have the clearest possible vision of that for your life . . .when you have defined your criteria—nobody else’s—for what a successful you feels like . . . nothing and no one can hold you back from the fulfillment of that desire. Your “success alliance’ with the YOU you really are is truly a partnership—a marriage—made in Heaven. It can’t fail you. It can’t fall apart—as long as you remember and believe that what you know–who you are—is what matters most to you.

So . . . what does “success” feel like to you?

I think that’s what we like to call coaching the coach—or maybe “Higher Self Coaching”. In any case, they sure know how to slip the shoe on the other foot. At the risk of spending even more time talking to myself than I already do, it never hurts to be reminded that I really am the only author or editor or my own story whose opinion counts. Regardless of what the critics may say, it’s my story to write. I get to decide what makes for a good plot or a happy ending.

So in my ever growing list of notes to Self, I now add one about remembering that whenever I’m feeling the lack of success . .. it pays to ask whose idea of success I’m feeling the lack of . . . and if it’s mine—and only if it’s mine . . . then I need to remember what that idea was in the first place, decide if it’s still the story I’m wanting to tell . . and go forward from there with my partners–Me, Myself, and I. And of course, Them.

Knowing I’m part of that kind of success alliance leaves me feeling that much closer to something resembling real success . . . and if not quite a complete success . . . then at least, for the moment, more successfully complete.

I’ve never had a near death experience in the literal sense. Seeing the car I was in skidding across a winding two-lane mountain road into the path of an oncoming van several years ago was pretty damn close, but there was no leaving my body and walking toward the light—only a blackout that lasted a few seconds, and a headache afterwards.

I have, however, had the experience more than once of suddenly ‘waking up’ and looking around and realizing that I had been on some kind of autopilot—sometimes for years. It was as if someone had, for all practical purposes, flipped a switch and turned my life off. Somehow the switch got thrown and I woke up . . . but I wondered how and why and what or who decides whether I’m “on’ or ‘off’.

I asked The Shower Team, why do we seem to be so often asleep at our wheels . . . jolted awake only when we run off the road or by some other near catastrophe . . . only to eventually go right back to sleep?

Sleepwalking is probably an apt term for the way that so many of you move through your experience. It’s a barely there approach where you are operating on a primarily unconscious level, acting by rote, responding in a kneejerk fashion to most of what comes your way . . . and with very little effort being applied toward the nature or direction of your thoughts.

Sometimes, something will jolt you awake for a brief time. Some dramatic or traumatic experience will shake you out of your stupor, seemingly ‘forcing’ you to take a closer look—or a broader view—of your experience. You may find yourself, during these rare, dramatic episodes of wakefulness, seeing yourself and your life with much greater clarity, and you may feel much greater levels of appreciation for that experience as you see it from this heightened or enhanced perspective.

Your “near death” experiences as you call them, are good examples of this phenomenon, but sometimes there can be a more pleasing stimulus, such as the birth of a child or anything else that prompts you to let go of your usual resistance in some pronounced way.

In these moments of sharpened clarity, everything looks better to you. The colors of our life appear brighter and more vivid. The sensations of your physical experience feel richer and keener. And you typically find yourself in an uncommon state of grace or gratitude that is palpable to you and noticeable to those observing you.

The problem with these shifts, of course, is that they typically do not last very long. You don’t’ know how to sustain them in the face of the inevitable contrast or variety of your daily experience. What you think of as “real life” (that is—the dreary or dull or depressing or dire details) intervenes and you eventually find yourself sucked back into the routine of trying to justify your existence through hard work and struggle and scattering your focus to the winds, paying little to no attention to your own guidance—the guidance that was so briefly but sweetly acute to you in your shining moments of wakefulness.

“So tell us something we don’t know” you might say. And we say, take shorter naps, and you won’t need such a noisy alarm clock to wake you up.

It all comes down to making decisions—and the way that you make them. So much of the time you excuse your scattered thinking and your random-feeling life experience by pleading that you are only reacting to what is—to the “realities” of your life. And there’s the problem.

You have an important choice to make and it has to do with how you perceive your own life. You can choose to see it as a string of random, uncontrollable events that you can only react to involuntarily . . . or you can choose to see your life as the result of the choices you make . . . and the deliberateness—or lack thereof—with which you make those choices.

When we say, take shorter naps and you won’t need as noisy an alarm, what we mean is, decide—CHOOSE—to approach your life in a more deliberate, conscious manner. Decide that you’re going to be more awake more often—and asleep less. Decide that you are going to pay more attention to what you’re thinking—and to make a greater effort to have more of a say in that matter.

Decide that you’re the one in control of what passes in front of you in terms of focus and perception. Decide that you get to decide what you’re looking at . . . what you’re observing . . . what you’re giving your attention to.

You cannot make conscious choices about where to place your focus moment by moment . . . or hour by hour . . . for even for a little while during each day . . . and stay asleep. Making those conscious decisions about what you will give your attention to always wakes you up . . . pulls you out of your slumber . . . and offers you an opportunity to see what is really there, always going on, always flowing, always shining, always smelling and tasting so sweet.

You don’t have to be yanked out of your unconscious living by a train wreck or a plane crash or a spontaneous recovery from some deadly disease . . . You don’t have to wait for the sky to fall to look up and to look around and to begin to truly see . . . see you for who You really are . . see the wonders of your life experience . . . see the magnificence that surround you . . . It is always there, all the time . . not just when you’re noticing it . . . but it doesn’t count for much and it doesn’t’ matter to you for very long as long as you are letting everything and everyone but you determine what you’re seeing.

Your life can be ‘on’ or ‘off’ at any moment and no one has control over that but you. It’s your choice. We would recommend not waiting for calamity to convince you to flip that switch. Make it as simple and easy on yourself as picking out a new alarm clock or adjusting the volume of whatever wakes you up.

Your finger is always on the button that controls whether you are awake to the splendor of your existence or not. The extent to which your life feels ‘on’ to you . . . the extent to which you feel that you are truly living versus just existing, is always in your hands. See that mechanism for waking up as the simple switch that it is—and you as the one who can flip it whenever you choose.

I like to watch those movies about people who literally die and come back . . . who report these vivid visionary experiences while they’re unconscious . . . and then who seem to have the most incredible shifts in their perspectives when they come back around. It always sounds so cool.

But how much cooler could it be to just live with the switch ‘on’ more of the time . . . to have more of those really alive life experiences without flat lining first. What we call death comes soon enough–sooner than most of us would say we want. But how soon could we have those real life experiences that make us so happy that the blood’s still pumping and the neurons are still firing?

Sooner and more often than we think, seems to be the message. It’s a pretty provocative idea, if you ask me. It leaves me wanting to keep my trigger-happy finger on the button . . . flipping my switch back on every chance I get . . . every time I remember it’s mine to flip . . . . It leaves me feeling like I’ve got the power . . . at least over my own life support . . . and that leaves me feeling wide awake, eager to keep breathing, and for the moment, complete.