And there it is. It’s always going on. Comparison is a blindfold, not a lens.
Some years ago, I attended a wedding and met Risa, a younger woman who had attended not one but two Ivy League schools, bagging her doctorate and a husband with buckets of money. Before our Caesar salads had even arrived, I’d learned that she had run marathons, hiked in Cambodia, had an electric sense of humor, owned a raging side business, and could belt out hip-hop at the karaoke bar.
Clearly, she’d gotten quite the package deal from the big cosmic travel agent in the sky and I would have to change my seat. And if you’re anything like me, you will meet someone like this at your most bloated, hormonal, horrible moment possible. One moment you’re feeling fine-ish and then suddenly you have to win a Pulitzer Prize or do a TED talk that goes viral just to justify your existence. It’s exhausting.
A Course in Miracles teaches, “Love makes no comparisons.” It says this because comparison is impossible. You do not ever know the real story about someone else or yourself. Because if you did, you would choose your life again and again and again. In fact, many spiritual traditions teach that on a soul level, you have chosen this life.
But let’s just stick to simple logic: Since this is your life, it’s better if you choose it. So, I’m going to ask you to consciously and wholeheartedly “pick” and embody your own good life. Because the only reason you could ever want to be in someone else’s life is because you’re not really in yours.
I remember seeing Natasha and Steve at a conference. They were the “perfect” couple. They would have made Barbie and Ken turn plastic green with jealousy. She had long flying blond hair. I am not even kidding. Let’s just say that when life wants to show you something, it pulls out the Hollywood movie props.
Natasha was wispy in a soft blue cotton top. Steve, also blond, was stroking her hair, whispering in her ear. I was watching like a stalker, but nonchalantly, of course. He was the singer at the event, funny and quick-witted, and moving us to tears and laughter with each of his original, offbeat songs.
They had met at another conference and had been traveling together since that time. They meditated in the arroyos at dawn in New Mexico and drank goblets of wheatgrass. They had strolled on moonlit beaches in Kauai and ate farm-fresh papaya on the balcony of a condo lent to them by friends. They read each other’s auras, palms, and astrology charts. I wanted to puke. I wanted to touch them.
“We’re twin flames. We’re soul mates. This is everything you read about,” gushed Steve about Natasha. They were disgusting. And, of course, time-consuming, as I had suddenly lost complete track of my own life and why I’d come to this conference. Obsession hit me like a hurricane.
I was having issues in my relationship life at the time, as in I didn’t have a relationship. I felt injured every time he looked at her or she giggled, because I was lonely for love and didn’t believe I’d ever find it. I didn’t want to keep looking, but it was like a bad car accident on the side of the road. Don’t look, I told myself. I gaped. At one point, she saw me, so I smiled a forced, gooey, spiritual, I-am-beholding-your-love kind of smile, before I slithered off.
Later in the conference, she came over to me and asked if she could partner with me in one of the sharing-in-communication exercises. Oh great, I thought. This is exactly what I need. Only I didn’t know how true that was.
Her yoga-type ensemble hung loosely on her body. She was a stalk of wheat lit by sun. I was her opposite, being short, dark haired, intense, and with meat on my bones, junk in my trunk.
I realized I was afraid of her.
I just didn’t want to hear how great her life was. Sure, I wanted to be “enlightened” and happy for her success. But on the car ride here, I’d cried for half the trip. I was raw with pain. I was fragile. I had been left by the man I loved and I was having trouble breathing and my taste buds had gone numb for life. That’s why I had decided to come to this conference in the first place, looking for a filament of hope. I found it hard to be joyous for others when I’d just had my heart crunched and broken.
But it was too late. Natasha sat cross-legged before me. Cross-legged with long legs. And we began the exercise.
We were supposed to share what was going on without fixing one another or editing. I started first and blurted, as boundaries are not so much my thing. I don’t remember what I said, but I no doubt shared about my insecurity about relationships, career, or life, or how unfortunate it was that I had not been born blond like her.
Then perfect, nimble Natasha shared with me. “I hate my life,” she said. “I’m so scared. Steve is hanging all over me night and day and I need to get out of this relationship. I don’t know how to tell him. I’m scared to tell the truth. I don’t want to hurt him and then I’m sick to death about how I don’t tell the truth ever. I am living a lie again.”
Natasha looked at me with these clear blue eyes that could skewer you into Sunday if you didn’t blink. Then she said the unthinkable: “I wish I could be like you. You’re so honest. You would never let this happen to you. You’re so real. I could never be as together as someone like you.” I swear to God she said those words. She was my guru, come down from the mountain to gently usher me back into reality and an appreciation of my own flawed and phenomenal life.
Borrowing again from A Course in Miracles, “You are altogether irreplaceable in the mind of God. No one else can fill your part in it, and while you leave your part in it empty, your eternal place merely waits for your return.” This is the work of trusting ourselves and our lives on the deepest levels.
It’s time to own a greater story of your life than the one you hear from your yapping ego. Here’s the nutshell version, which, if you’re like me, could just keep you from being a nut. You are a promise and a vessel like none before you. You were born on the day crafted for you in all of time. You will always draw to you what you require for your True Life. You haven’t yet fully lived your story. It’s the only reason you pine for someone else’s story.
I remind myself that when I live my undiluted life, I will want no other. I’m on a journey of healing. It’s not a race. It’s not about external appearances. It’s a story of how I break open my own heart and discover the pomegranate seeds and red juice of magic. It’s a story of what I bring to the table. It’s a story of coming home to my own astonishing capacities. But I will never come home while I long to be where I am not.
I once heard about a little girl who was at her family’s Christmas celebration. Her brother opened his present and pulled out an electronic game. “I want what Johnny got!” the little girl cried out. Her mother stroked her head and said, “But darling, you don’t even know what you got yet.” The little girl was inconsolable. I don’t know the end of the story. I just remembered that part, because I am that longing little girl at times. I don’t really know what I have yet, so I crave what I think others have. And the irony is this: The more I focus on what others have, the more I have no idea what I have.
“You haven’t yet fully lived your story. It’s the only reason you pine for someone else’s story.”
Yet we are all in the right life.
It’s blasphemy to diminish yourself. It’s not just an attack on your own abilities. It’s an attack on the mysterious integral forces of the Universe, the committee of the unseen that whisper stage directions here and there. I often write to a voice within me I call my Inner Teacher. It’s part of the Inspired Self Dialogue technique I teach, and not a Sybil moment, just in case you’re wondering. This Brilliant Love once answered in my journal, “Do not limit my destiny with your feeble opinions of yourself.” I love it when my guidance talks clean to me.
And when I get out of the way, I get back to the simplicity of reality. I did not create myself or my inherent inclinations. I’m a creation as much as any design in nature. There is a blueprint for my natural expression. A wild purple iris knows when to poke through the
dirt in spring. A robin knows when to molt. I’m going to trust my own pokes and seasons.
I am learning to trust myself the more I lay claim to my life. This is my practice. Can I stay loyal to myself? It costs too much to long for someone else’s life. I don’t want my heirloom roses to wither because I’m so busy looking over my shoulder at my neighbor’s roses that I neglect to water and feed this beauty before me. Nothing grows without love and attention.
Likewise, nothing given love and attention remains the same.
TURNING POINTS:
No One Has a Better Life Than You
It’s really hard to trust yourself when you don’t want to be yourself. But dear one, you do not know who you are.
Comparison is a blindfold, not a lens.
It’s time to own the greater story of your life. You are a promise and a vessel like none before you. You were born on the day crafted for you in all of time.
You haven’t yet fully lived your story. It’s the only reason you pine for someone else’s story.
The more I focus on what others have, the more I have no idea what I have.
It’s blasphemy to diminish yourself. . . . It’s an attack on the mysterious integral forces of the Universe, the committee of the unseen that whisper stage directions here and there.
I don’t want my heirloom roses to wither because I’m so busy looking over my shoulder at my neighbor’s roses that I neglect to water and feed this beauty before me.
Nothing grows without love and attention. Likewise, nothing given love and attention remains the same.
DARE TO BE UNFAITHFUL, SPORADIC, AND UNUSUALLY TRUE TO YOURSELF
Sometimes I know I can do more. I know I can be more. This haunts me when I’m taking a baby step or coaxing out a new behavior. But lately it’s occurred to me that I don’t want my potential to rob me of my potential.
TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)
It is better to begin in the evening than not at all.
English proverb
One of my coaching clients was talking to me about not being able to stay with a Zen meditation practice—so she gave up meditating altogether. “I’m either gung ho all the way or I don’t show up at all,” she said with self-disgust.
We were talking on one of the unfortunate evenings when she “hadn’t shown up at all.” To listen to her, you would have thought that she had just hacked up Checkers, the family’s cocker spaniel. Things were a tiny bit morose. Clearly, she needed self-forgiveness more than self-discipline. Actually, I’m thinking she might have benefited from a good old-fashioned head-spinning exorcism. But that’s just me.
I understand the desire to make changes in your life. I am a believer in enthusiasm. I also believe in commitment. But I’m more of a fan of incremental, organic, natural commitment.
That means I invite you to be inconsistent and unreliable. I dare you to break promises to yourself and I dare you to make fresh new ones. This is what it takes to be on the courageous path of learning to reinvent, hunt down your bare heart, and discover and trust yourself.
You are here to follow an unpredictable light wherever it leads, not to wrangle unfathomable power into a silly, stupid box. This isn’t rationalization. It’s strategy. Because a realistic and sustainable path doesn’t come from obligation or hostility. If you want something to go the distance, it needs to come from love.
Commitment is bold and wondrous. Still, let your intention breathe instead of suffocate you. You’re learning how to commit from something deeper than willfulness. I’ll call it willingness. This willingness arises from an inner summons. Authentic success springs forth from irrepressible desire—not impatience.
“I never follow through,” said Sandra on one of our afternoon calls. I knew this wasn’t true. She is a bright, passionate woman who has raised children, which, if you ask me, is quite the follow-through. In fact, she’s still feeding them, last I heard. “I get it. You’ve got to stare resistance down sometimes,” I said. “But honey, believe me when I tell you that rigidity will create more problems than it solves.”
Following through is so much less important than following inner guidance.
It’s not effective to stay true to a faded goal. Stay true to your gold. Your intuitive guidance is the gold. I am a coach who happily turns the term accountability on its head. But Ralph Waldo Emerson, leading the transcendentalist movement in the mid-nineteenth century, beat me to this. He said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Now don’t get hot and bothered. Your inner wisdom is never going to ask you to abandon your integrity. It may ask you to abandon your hobgoblins. And give yourself room to grow.
Being flexible doesn’t mean you have a problem with commitment. It may indicate adaptivity, which is so much sexier than being erratic. Really, what if who you think you “should” be is keeping you from the fire of who you are becoming?
For example, I’ve worked with many high-powered, successful individuals who “don’t follow through,” because while something might be a good idea, it’s not an idea that sets its fangs into their jugular. It’s just a good idea. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. “I know I’m wildly creative,” says Rhonda, a writer with several books to her credit. “I don’t waste time on good ideas. I’m waiting for the great one. I’m waiting for the whale. I need a whale to carry me out to sea.” It takes emotional honesty to explore and stay true to your instincts. It takes enormous courage to not follow through.
“Following through is so much less important than following your inner guidance.”
Maybe you think you’re just a quitter. Yet I’ve met many intelligent authenticity seekers who refuse to settle. They kept moving on. It wasn’t because they were flighty, but because they had already taken flight. When you move on to the eighth grade, have you quit seventh grade? No. You’re not quitting; you’re evolving. When you’ve grown, it’s healthy to move forward. Sticking with something isn’t always a sign of strength.
There’s also a divine timing, when something just takes hold as it has not done before. My partner, Paul, tried to get sober three times before he got sober for life—or at least for two decades and counting. It wasn’t ever a mistake for him to try to get sober. It wasn’t a failure to take a run at it, even though he didn’t follow through. It’s never wrong to move toward health. It also wasn’t wrong for him to fall down. It wasn’t time yet. You can’t force yourself to be ready. But you can keep taking steps in the right direction as many times as possible.
To me, there’s beauty, intelligence, and grace in showing up lopsided, showing up fitfully, showing up sporadically. Showing up is showing up.
The dream basher in you pushes you into airtight commitments. But real change is about breathing, coming in and going out. Daring to live the authentic life that calls you is a path of invitation, not obligation. If it’s right for you to make a deeper commitment to something, you will move into this grace. But you will make it in your own time and not a second before or afterward.
The Persian mystic poet Rumi, the absurdly free and expansive spirit, writes, “Come, come whoever you are, wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. . . . Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times. Come, come again.”
A Course in Miracles echoes this philosophy by telling us to “choose once again” whenever we have made a choice that has felt painful. It doesn’t say crucify yourself, throw in the towel, and, by all means, go ahead and create your identity out of all that hasn’t worked out yet. No, it instructs us to save time. Just begin again.
Choose the new behavior or belief now. Give birth to a different experience this very minute. This kind of freedom isn’t irresponsible. It’s the ultimate responsibility. I believe we each have a mandate in this lifetime to give ourselves every chance to be healthy and true.
When I first began writing in hopes of turning it into a career, I suffered from my own blame and sham
e, kind of like bad cop and worse cop interrogating me about my creative whereabouts and lack of productivity. I’d work up all kinds of writing schedules. Then I’d ignore my own intentions and, seeing as I was on a roll, eat my way through muffins and chocolate, too, a screw-you etched in sugar. I absolutely couldn’t trust myself. This was mortifying.
Of course, I did make progress as a writer. But I didn’t get there by finding a nice, harmless chemical to paralyze my legs from the hours of twelve p.m. to four p.m. so that I’d sit still and focus—and yeah, maybe I thought about researching manacles on the Internet. I didn’t get there by calling myself a string of names that would make a marine drill sergeant call home and cry to his mother. No—get this, I was kind. I learned to coax myself to dare what was most important to me.
In my first book, This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love, I wrote, “Only the tender can breed the fierce.” This was a revelation to my alpha-trained type A brain. Like my nonmeditating client, I thought that if I had “misbehaved,” I deserved an electric cattle prod, not a bubble bath.
But my deeper wisdom reflected, “Be even kinder to yourself when you feel fear. Love, not anger, inspires right action.” It was true. Part of me avoided writing because I was afraid to face a new challenge in the bright, blinding light of my own self-cruelty. I quivered with the pressure to perform.
Every minute of writing was like having NASA monitor a launch, not to mention the panel of Olympic writing judges in my head, forever irritated that I wasn’t Proust or a senior editor of The New Yorker. They’d dispute every word I wrote: Really, you’re writing about that again? Do you think this material is scintillating enough to promise you a career? And you’re going to use a comma there? With cheerleaders like these, I didn’t need hit men.
Thriving Through Uncertainty Page 11