Tell Me What You Mean

Communication literally means to share - thoughts, feelings, facts, information etc. Yet it is not sufficient or effective to share only the surface stuff without being explicit and clear about what you actually mean.

Before you communicate anything, you need to look beneath the surface of the stuff you want to say to get clear about what you want the other to understand before you start communicating. There is a huge difference in the efficacy of your communication when you clearly and explicitly communicate context before blahing out all your content.

The meaning of your communication IS the response you get …which means that whatever comes back in response explicitly shows you what the other actually understood … what they actually thought you meant … which may be quite different to what you expected them to understand.

As I have said before, being “misunderstood” is a myth … what’s really going on is a failure on your part to effectively communicate what you mean before you communicate anything else.

Whenever you feel misunderstood, rather than simply reacting and ending up in the fruitless blame game of the A<>B conversation, stop … take a breath and ask yourself:

“What did I want this person to understand from my communication? How is that different to what they actually understood? What didn’t I say, that once said, would have this person understand me the way I intended?"

Then communicate what you mean - openly, honestly, clearly, directly and completely and keep communicating until they get what you mean and you get they got it.

When you tell me what you mean, I have a context within which to truly understand what you mean to say rather than making up what I think you mean.

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"Tell me what you mean before you tell me what you want to tell me."

The Truth, The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth

You are probably familiar with this statement. It has been part of our modern legal process and seems to indicate that when agreed to, that’s what will happen.

Not so.

In my world (and paradigm of unlimited cause), everybody lies and there is no such thing as absolute truth. Yet we persist in lying to ourselves about what truth is and how it “should” be told. And when my “truth” is not the same as your “truth” we argue, fight and go to war.

You have your own unique set of filters through which you view yourself and everyone and everything in your world. Your filters inform the meaning you give to everything and thus inform your “truth” at any given moment. So insisting that your “truth” is the “real truth” is a lie … unless everyone shares your exact same filters …and the truth is, they don’t. Not now, not ever.

Your truth is whatever you believe is true and so is mine. Your truth is whatever you think, feel and know and so is mine and when they are not the same, it doesn’t mean you are lying or that I am … it just means we have different filters, different ways of seeing the world and different ways of making meaning about what is happening.

You are probably taught that it is “good” to be honest and that lying is “wrong” yet telling the truth is not as simple as just saying what you know is true. Telling the whole truth requires a willingness to acknowledge the whole of what is so for you. It includes what you think AND what you feel, viscerally and emotionally, about what you perceive is going on. It also requires a willingness to listen to and accept the feedback you receive, (particularly when it is not the same as what you perceive it is), as part of the whole truth. When you are willing to be responsible for the whole of what you give and what you get, your truth can become the whole truth.

Telling the truth is powerful and liberating … when you tell the whole truth - what you give and what you get as feedback - the energy shifts and you will feel it. And when it doesn’t … you have more truth to tell. So keep opening up, speaking up, acknowledging the whole and the shift will occur.

And that’s the truth!

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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

George Orwell

You Always Have a Choice

Ever feel like you don’t have a choice?

And there is the rub ... feeling like you don’t have a choice doesn’t mean it’s true that you don’t have a choice. What’s true is you FEEL you don’t have choice ... it’s a feeling not a fact.

Feeling like you don’t have a choice often means you are not aware of the myriad of choices actually available to you in any given moment.  There is always another choice (or two or three or a dozen) you could choose ... so when you feel like you have only one choice ... stop ... take a few deep breaths and ask yourself: “What other choices could I make right now?” and see what shows up. Chances are, the other choices will trigger a feeling that you either like or don’t like. And when you reject other choices it’s usually because you don’t like how you feel when you consider those choices.

So the next thing that happens is you choose the ONLY choice you feel ok about ... even if it’s not really what you want or need.

Often you say you don’t have a choice because you want to avoid conflict, or confrontation or feeling vulnerable or uncomfortable etc. - not because you really don’t have a choice. It’s how you don’t want to feel that’s informing the choice ... not the whole of what’s going on. And the only sustainable way to create what you consciously want is to first tell the truth about the whole of whatever is going on right now ... including how you feel ... then choose again ...

Choose to remember that you can choose anything and that you do choose everything ... and when you make a choice, something shows up ... either what you chose or something else. When you accept that whatever shows up shows you the choice you made and what you need to respond to in order to manifest what you want ... the process unfolds with ease and you get what you want.

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You always have a choice ...
Just because you don’t like the other options
doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice.

Let It Go

Another year has dawned and with it comes the perfect time to write a new chapter for yourself and your life.

So who will you BE and what will you choose this year?

If you find this question exciting and inspiring ... a chance to dream big and choose boldly ... go for it.

And if you find this question daunting and a bit scary ... if it brings up concerns about what is the “right thing” to choose ... consider this as a strategy ... let it go!

Let go of the worry and the fear about getting it “right”, let go of the notion that there is a “right” way to BE or DO or HAVE. Get present in your body ... breathe ... and let yourself imagine who you choose to BE and what you choose to DO to HAVE what you choose to manifest. Then write it down, or draw a picture, or make a collage/vision board and let yourself go.

When you let go of worry you free yourself to create that which your heart desires. When you source your dreams from love rather than fear you connect with the universal energy of creation and harness the power of the whole universe to support you Being, Doing and Having in ways that will delight you.

Fear constricts and diminishes ... love expands and illuminates ... and always the most profound choice you can make is to let go of fear and embrace love.

My context for 2016 is let it go ... specifically letting go of my fearful, future focussed ego-mind chatter and staying present and connected with who I am choosing to be in each moment irrespective of what I am doing. I am choosing to accept, allow and appreciate whatever occurs - particularly when it is not what I expect! I choose to consciously participate in the whole of my reality as creator rather than victim and to remember that I always have a choice to hang on or let it go.

Unshakeable inner peace is my goal ... and the best way I know to experience inner peace is to relentlessly let go and keep letting go internally of anything that is not peaceful.

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"The day I understood everything,
was the day I stopped trying to figure everything out.
The day I knew peace was the day I let everything go."

C. JoyBell C.

Check Your Attitude To Gratitude

If you constantly focus on what you don’t have, you will keep experiencing the relentless futility of “not-enough”. No matter how hard you wish and hope and dream and vision and choose ... an attitude of “not-enough” will simply produce more of the same.

In the paradigm of cause: I Create The Whole Of My Own Reality, the most critical distinction to get is that you create ALL of what is so ... the happy and sad, the up and the down, the “good” and the “bad” ... all of it, everything, the whole.

Yet when it comes to gratitude, you tend to focus on what you like, what you enjoy, what you find pleasing, what feels “good” and thus out of hand reject being grateful for the pain and sorrow, the suffering and misery ... all the stuff you don’t like and then you judge it as not ok and thus not worthy of your gratitude or your thanks.

The more you resist being grateful for the whole, the more you experience lack and wanting and needing and never being truly satisfied.

When you are willing to accept the whole of your own reality as your creation, when you take the position that everything you create has a purpose and is worth being grateful for, when you give thanks for the all, you will transform your experience of yourself and your world.

As the year comes to a close I am truly grateful for all that I have caused and experienced this past year. It has been extremely challenging and very rewarding in both expected and unexpected ways. Some of the greatest gifts I have received this year have come wrapped in conflict and fierce, explosive conversations ... and through it all I have experienced the fullness of my feelings and the peace that comes as I accept the whole of my own reality as my creation and give thanks ... not just for what has manifest but also for myself as creator and for having the ability to respond from love.

Thank you each and everyone of you for being in my life. Thank you for your honesty and love, for your vulnerability and willingness to call me forth out of love. I am truly blessed to know you.

Wishing you and yours a very jolly holiday time and may 2016 bring you peace and love.

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"Gratitude turns everything into a gift"

BEING of Service

I have just had the most delightful and surprising experience of BEING served ... by a mobile locksmith.

My back door lock refused to budge ... I turned the key and nothing. I started to feel a bit anxious ... what will I do if I can’t get the door open? My fearful mind chatter went into overdrive ... “I won’t be able to sleep tonight if I can’t get this door unlocked ...” (Gotta love the relentless persistence of the fearful ego mind!)

So I searched my local paper to find a locksmith who handled emergencies.

Call #1:
Answering machine ... scratchy, garbled message. I hung up.

Call #2:
A man answered and when I told him I needed someone today, he said “No way!”

Call #3:
“Good morning :) ... Mobilisation Locksmiths ... how can I help you?”

I could hear and feel the smile in his voice and his genuine desire to help me. After explaining my situation, Blake said he could be at my home within 20 minutes, was that suitable for me? Yes indeed!

Blake arrived within 15 minutes and as I opened the door I was struck by his energy ... he was fully present, smiling, hand held out to shake mine. When I led him into my dining room (where I was running a mentoring day for a group of three), he smiled and introduced himself and shook hands. Wow, I was already impressed with this young man and he hadn’t DONE anything ... yet.

He got down to business and within 30 minutes had removed the lock, replaced a part, serviced it, restored the mechanism to full, smooth functionality and he also fixed one of the keys which was bent. I happily paid him and he left, thanking me for calling him.

What a joy to BE served by someone who gets the value of BEING present and open and willing to do what it takes. And he was. The whole experience left me and my group of three smiling and talking about his energy, his presence and his willingness to be of service ... referenced at various times throughout our whole day.

As a result, I want to tell everyone about him and his service:
So Blake Cole of www.mobilisationlocksmiths.com.au this is for you.

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"Our own self-realisation is the greatest service
we can render the world"

Ramana Maharshi

The Business Of Feelings

Your feelings and how you react or respond to emotional complexity is one of the most important things to master when building a successful business.

Yet this is not a subject that I have ever seen adequately addressed in any training, MBA Program or University Degree about how to run a successful business!

Every problem you have in business (and in life) can be traced back to some emotional blockage. If you want to change something that’s not working; transform a relationship or situation; resolve a conflict ... first you need to tell the truth about what’s actually going on right now.

You probably know how to tell most of the truth ... and yet when things don’t change, it’s because you have left out the most critical element of the whole truth ... the feelings ... yours and theirs.

How often are you asked/do you ask this question in a business context ...

How are you feeling?

In my experience, this single question can save a lot of time when dealing with conflict and the messy, unpredictable human element in business. And let’s face it, business is just people doing stuff!

And why would you want to get feelings on the table?

So you can respond to the whole of what’s going on at any point in time. Feelings are not facts ... when you respond to the feelings and let them be felt and released ... you then have space to discuss the “facts” in ways that actually work. And when you respond to the whole truth, everything changes.

When you unblock the feelings, you liberate yourself and your business to become what you dream.

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"Feelings ... nothing more than feelings ..."

Albert Morris