Tired of swimming upstream?

In coaching clients from 10 to 70 years old, I've concluded that the biggest challenge of adulting is not pushing ourselves harder; it's knowing when to rest and let go control. 

It's trusting the largeness of life. It's learning to love ourselves as is, where is, even if we never change and never fix that thing or change that habit that annoys us.

It's deciding to give ourselves unconditional approval. Even if nothing gets crossed off the to do list. Even if we have not written a to do list.

Anything else is an addiction - to busyness,  to doing, to fixing, to pleasing, to achieving - without unconditional self acceptance and self love, it's all a front, a mask, a way of seeking the acceptance and love we so desperately crave and never got in childhood because someone tried to cheer us up or solve our problem instead of just accepting our emotions and listening to us in that deep, deep way that a human being needs and longs for in order to feel utterly loved.

Make a decision right now to accept yourself warts and all - even if nothing gets done and no one is pleased. Notice the sensations, they will bloom, flower, and pass and the sensation of self acceptance will emerge. Notice where it occurs in your body now, feet, or hands, or gut, or chest...where is it for you? Find it, welcome it. You are loved by you. And therefore the entire universe.

Now you are ready to listen to Your Real Dreams, the whispers, the yearnings, the longings. I don't know how soon you'll be ready to voice them, big dreams, small dreams, as long as they're your real dreams, that's what matters.

And I've noticed, that once people find those whispering voices, and voice those real dreams, the more they listen, the stronger the whispers become, perhaps they turn to words on paper, or dreams at night, and daydreams, stolen little moments in the day, until a croaky voice begins to speak those dreams, and when others try to crush them, these dreamers find others who dream, they find their tribe, their soulmate, the people who they can share dreams with.

And at some point a dreamer becomes ready to make a plan. A new to do list, and the old one is swept away, unticked and forgotten.