Morning Reflection: What Gives You the Right

What Gives You the Right?

I struggle a lot with what is known as “imposter syndrome”. If you haven’t heard of that, it’s a persistent feeling that you are not qualified, or adequate, to do a certain thing. 

If someone was to ask me what makes me think I can write this page and have something of value to share with the world, I would probably start by saying nothing, and then my natural instinct would be to shrivel up inside and withdraw from the conversation.

Because I feel like I am wholly unprepared to do this.

Yet if I were to allow my instinct of fear and my sense of not being enough to just pass on by, and answer from a place of deep conviction, I would explain to them that I felt it was my purpose to be of use on this earth, to help others, and that writing this page is a part of that purpose. 

Whether or not I have anything to share is between me and the person who reads it. Some might say it has value, others might say it has none.

But if it’s in alignment with my purpose, I should do it regardless.

And it’s been a long time trying to find out why I’m here. I read a quote one time that said that your purpose on this earth was to find out what your purpose was, and then to live it. 

Interestingly, it didn’t say you had to be good at your purpose, or have some astounding earth shattering truth to reveal. It just says that you have to live your purpose.

Which is what I try to do each time I sit down to write this page.

And finding your purpose is not necessarily easy, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who just know. I told a friend tonight that I am just beginning to understand what it is I am supposed to do with my life at the age of 48. 

She asked me what it was, and I falteringly managed to explain something about it, describing this page and the coaching work that I am honored and humbled to perform. 

Since her husband is a trained counselor who helps people, I expected her to ask something about how I was trained, or qualified, or certified to do this.

But she didn’t say any of those things. Instead she just asked more questions, and we had a wonderful conversation. The more we talked, the more I realized that the feelings of insecurity and of not being ‘enough’ to do this were only on my side of the conversation. 

She never questioned, never once gave a gesture or intimation that she thought I couldn’t do what it is I feel I am born to do.

And her belief helped to wash away some of mine.

So today, I come to you to tell you that my name is Alan, and my purpose is to help people. Through my writing, through my coaching, through speaking, and through caring. 

I have little to represent me other than a willing heart, years of experience listening and helping, and a fervent belief that this is why I am here, this is what I am born to do. 

I believe that the gifts I have received are mine to share with others, to help them find peace in a universe that seems to provide very little of that.

And I leave today with two questions…

What is your purpose, and how can I help you achieve it?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Be kind to others, and be right for yourself

Be kind to others, and be right for yourself.

One of my mentors taught me an incredibly valuable lesson. I was barely 5 years old when I first heard the teaching, which was too young to properly understand the profound nature of the proclamation that was shared with me. 

Over the years I’ve been amazed at how incredibly powerful that one statement was, and how it could change so many things about our world if it were followed with more diligence, applied with greater intensity.

Just five simple words. “Always keep an open mind”.

Because there are few things worse in this world than someone who believes they are right, and who is determined to never listen to another point of view. Marriages have broken up because of it, families are destroyed because of it. Societies are torn apart over it, and nations go to war because of it. 

For a species that really doesn’t know a lot about the universe and the world in which we live, we certainly seem to be very good at making it up to suit our wants and our needs.

But that is starting to change.

Because the rate at which we are learning new things is accelerating, and the only thing you can be ‘certain’ of is that the ground you are firmly planting your flag in today may not be so secure in the days to follow. 

Every time we think we have found something out, we learn later that we were mistaken in our understanding, lost in our desire to be certain more than we desire to be kind.

And kindness is something we seem to always be a little short on. I wish I could say the same about people who think they are right.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong intrinsically with being ‘right’, as long as the truth you cling to affects and applies only to yourself. We need to have things on which to believe, to plan our lives, and to chart our course by. 

If not, we become paralyzed and lost in a sea of never ending possibilities that leaves us unable to function. 

The problems start when we decide that somebody else should live our truth as their own.

Because I’ve found in my life that when I cling to a truth of mine so tightly, and judge others based on my truth, that I am essentially judging their value through a prism entirely of my own creation. 

Gone is an acknowledgement of their own nobility, their own divinity, and of their freedom to choose their life by the dictates of their own conscience.

As another mentor of mine once taught me, “Sin is when we start to treat people as objects”.

So I am trying to be more kind, both to those who I inadvertently judge, and those who would judge me. 

Because one of my ‘truths’ is that kindness is really about acknowledging the person I see as my equal, and treating them with the compassion that they deserve, even if they are not yet extending that to me. 

Just as our knowledge changes, so can the way we treat people, if we can just let go of our needs and see them for who they truly are.

And lead with kindness.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: No One Nowhere

No One Nowhere.

Who are you when all the labels are gone? When all the descriptions have flown, the labels and self affirmations have fallen away, and you are simply a consciousness, observing the flow of time and matter around you. 

Does the thought make you uncomfortable, the idea that you can lose everything that you rely on for an identity…

And yet still be yourself.

You’d be amazed at the pushback I get from some people when I introduce this concept to them. The idea of giving up their titles, their possessions and even a knowledge of where they are is so foreign to them that they experience an existential dread, as though the loss of identity is the death of their selves. 

I guess in a way it is, yet it is also the pathway to the highest level of yourself.

The one that serves without selfishness.

But what is more powerful, and ultimately much more healing, is that in giving up everything, you become the person who needs nothing. Imagine the clarity of your thoughts when you can act without need, without a desire to control the moment, simply willing to allow others to be themselves and to assist them in any way that you can.

There’s nothing more affirming than to allow someone to be themselves without having a desire for their behavior or their beliefs.

I’ve written before about how humility is not to think less of yourself, but to think less about yourself. When you can achieve the principle of “no one nowhere”, then nothing is really about you. Insults directed at you become a mere reflection of the pain from the one who issued it. 

Attempts to hurt you emotionally become clear as a cry for help from a soul who has not yet found the peace within that transforms into a desire for peace without.

When nothing is about you, you see with eyes unfiltered and a heart open to help.

Yet all of us, especially me, seem to struggle with letting go of who we think we need to be, and what we think we need to accomplish. We cling to the idea that our value is a direct correlation to our achievements or our attractiveness. 

In holding on, we bind ourselves to the lies that bring us sadness, unable to see the truth of who we are, and what we are worth.

The worth of the human soul is not a derivation of its assets, but rather a statement of its existence.

We all have different gifts, yet these do not define us. We all have strengths and weaknesses, yet these need not determine the purity of our soul. Our experiences shape us, but they need not describe our totality.

When you are no one nowhere, you can be the truest expression of yourself.

You can be love.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope.

Did you ever play with one of as a kid? Where you looked into a tube and all you saw were shifting patterns of light cascading in upon each other in a never ending, mind blowing, vista of beauty and color. 

If you did, you probably remember that it was really difficult to decide where one color started and where one ended.
They all just seem to blend together, twisted patterns without beginning or end.

And that’s often how we experience our emotions. 

Driven by increasingly complex patterns of thought, we sense and react to the world around us without being able to stop and see clearly everything that’s happening, or why we are feeling the way that we do. We just know that everything is turning, changing; weaving in and out and hiding from view.

Unless we are able to slow down the movement and really examine what is going on in our heart.

I have tried to do this recently with some of my more complex and painful emotions. Just today (Wednesday) I received some news that was difficult to hear, and yet as I reflected upon the feelings that arose, I found it hard to clearly, accurately and cogently identify why I was feeling a certain way. 

I could explain at a surface level how it felt, but as I tried to go deeper I struggled, because the emotions, fears and desires all blend together.

It’s like trying to pick apart a knot in a shoelace, when you can’t use your eyes to see what you’re doing.

But if like me you believe that self-awareness is not only the path to peace for us as individuals but as a society you’ll understand why I couldn’t stop trying to unravel the emotions I was feeling, and get to the bottom of the root cause. 

It’s a hard process, that demands the blistering self honesty along with a willingness to accept whatever truths you find, no matter what they say about you.

So I started looking. Quietly, calmly, honestly and painfully.

What I found wasn’t really a surprise, although it was a disappointment to recognize that something I thought I had worked through was again coming to the surface. 

As I realized that it was my significance need that was driving this emotion, I understood that it was really a fear of a loss of significance, which when you don’t necessarily have a great deal is a painful thing to endure.

And the primary emotion driving this Kaleidoscope of chaotic emotion was a feeling of not being enough.

I know most of us struggle with this in some way or another, so I wanted to share today in the spirit of honesty and truth so that you can see that your struggles are my struggles, and our struggles are universally human. 

Although we differ in our race, our creed and our societies, the problems that bind us together are very much the same.

So I return again to my meditation practice, struggling to find feelings of worth and peace, tempered with an understanding of the imbalances in my thought processes that were defined by my childhood. 

It’s a long slow process, but one which we all have to do if we are to find peace in this world.

Picking apart our emotions is never easy, but when you finally find that one true ray of light at the bottom of the Kaleidoscope of your soul, the clarity you feel is the beginning of your healing.

May we heal ourselves and our world.

Together.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Climb

Climb.

Has it ever looked like it’s too high to climb? That mountain, that vast landscape of pain and suffering in front of you, that journey that you know that you have to traverse alone. 

Have you ever for one moment sat there in the quiet stillness of your soul, and asked yourself in that gentle voice that you reserve for your darkest moments…

Can I do this?

Because sometimes the journey in front of you seems just too much. Like there is not enough energy in the world to carry over the peak and down onto the other side, and you wish, in one fleeting heartbeat that you could just stay here right now, and just be still forever. 

Not quitting, not succeeding, just stopping, and removing yourself from the flow of time so that you can truly, completely, and most of all quietly, rest.

And you can for a moment, but that moment never lasts.

Because someday soon, at some indefinable point on your journey, you’re going to have to do what you were always destined to do. 

Probably without a fanfare, and maybe even without a cheerleader or a coach to help, you’re going to stand up, take a deep breath, and point yourself in the direction that you know leads away from that which you are trying to avoid. With one foot slowly, falteringly in front of another, you begin the process that takes you out of the darkness.

You start to climb.

The journey upwards is never easy. Sometimes you walk, sometimes you are pushing yourself to take another step, to raise your foot for another movement. There are rocks underneath you, and boulders that block your way. 

Life, in its unceasing cruelty, demands your blood, sweat, tears and pain as the toll for journeying on this particular highway, and it will take every ounce of hope you can muster.

Because sometimes, you’re just climbing in the dark, alone, afraid and miserable.

But you keep climbing, because you know that there is no way that you will ever arrive where you need to be unless you keep going. You fix an image of your destination in your soul, and with every thought you breathe life and power into it. 

Each footstep, each trembling muscle, each river of sweat and drop of blood give that image another atom of reality, until it stands in your soul as both the beacon to guide your footsteps, and the energy to harness your soul.

So with another footstep, another trembling tear, you climb your mountain while building your destination in your heart.

And finally, one day, one blessed glorious moment that shines out into the darkness of our universe, you finish your climb, and arrive at the top of where you were always going to be. 

With a renewed sense of faith in yourself, you stand there in the actuality of your vision, and understand that the strength you needed was always inside of you, waiting for the day that you were to begin.

The climb was always possible, you just had to reach deep into your soul to turn on the light, begin the process, and move forward with determination and desire.

Your mountain is waiting, waiting for you to begin. Start today, start now, and take faith in the truth inside you. You are ready now, Just begin.

And climb.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Be Selfish

Be Selfish.

If we’ve messed up anything as a society, a species, or a people, it’s our attitude towards the idea of our selves. We hold up the ideal of the giver, the sacrifice, the inherent nobility of sharing, which are all true, yet we have gone too far in at least one aspect; namely that of giving away your opinion of yourself to the opinions and beliefs of others.

Which is something that you can never do, if you wish to find and then spread peace.

How many times have you been worried about someone else’s opinion of you? If you’re honest, it probably occurs way more frequently than you want to admit. 

I can tell you that as someone who spent many, many years being severely overweight, I spent far too much of my time and emotional energy focusing on what others thought of me, rather than how I could serve them.

And I allowed their imagined thoughts to color my opinion of myself.

Which is exhausting, yet most of us do this to one extent or another. Maybe it’s just about what you are wearing to go to the store, or the car you drive, the house you live in, or the clothes that you wear. 

For reason, we’ve outsourced our opinions without doing a job interview on the people who we are hiring to be the overseers of our self opinion.

Which is a recipe for sadness, as well as exhaustion, regret and isolation.

There’s a wonderful African proverb I heard one time that has stuck with me. It goes something like this: “If there’s no enemy within, then the enemy outside can do us no harm”. Isn’t that powerful! 

The greatest enemies to our happiness and our self esteem actually lie deep within our own hearts, buried under a mountain of time, trauma and tears.

I’m here to tell you that it’s time to get selfish about your self esteem, your self opinion. It’s time to stop listening to the voices inside your head that judge you, and leave you victim to the judgments of those who have not earned the right to play a part in your psyche. 

It’s time to start accepting yourself, and finding peace within, so that you can withstand the storms without. In short, it’s time to get selfish about the things you believe about yourself.

Now please understand, I’m not advocating narcissism here, quite the opposite. The narcissist is unable to examine themselves with any measure of objectivity. 

Nor am I advocating psycopathy, where you sever all connections with the emotions and opinions of others. 

What I am suggesting is that you take a journey inward into your soul, and become familiar with the truths that you don’t want see, but also the truths that you block out for fear of feeling good about yourself.

Let’s give you a different viewpoint on yourself, and see if we can change how you feel about yourself.

Because when you feel better about yourself, you’ll feel better about the world.

— Dr.Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Sanctity of Heroes

The Sanctity of Heroes.

We all have them. Even if we try not to, there’s always going to be someone in your life who you look up to, someone who makes you want to be a better person, a kinder friend, a more giving partner. 

We need to have these people in our lives, because we need an ideal to guide ourselves by, to show us the pathway through our own darkness, to light our way and lead us on.

And some days, heroes seem to be in short supply.

I’ve come to realize lately that the greatest heroes in my life are not the people who perform grandiose feats of courage or achievement, but those who in their quiet way fight against their weaknesses, and against the difficult cards life has dealt them. 

Those who get up day after day, fighting their own fight, and standing firm when they want to fall over and quit. They fight not against monsters or armies, but against time, against age, against loneliness, fear, despair and sadness.

Interestingly, the majority of my heroes are women.

My wife is the most obvious one, and her fight every day is putting up with me. Her patience with my weaknesses is legendary, and her ability to keep me focused when my creativity (or ADD, whatever you want to call it) goes into overdrive is nothing short of miraculous. 

She has stood by me for 23 years, while other people told her she was crazy. Maybe she is, but I’m glad she’s here. I would be nothing without her, and I knew I should marry her when I felt that I wanted to be a better person because of her influence in my life.

Another hero is my mother-in-law. 

Her quiet strength through years of difficulty has amazed and humbled me. Her conduct, her strength and her faith over the last 9 months has been inspiring and deeply moving as she has withstood events that would have crushed almost anyone else I know.

Her resilience is beyond understanding.

I have a sister-in-law who lives close to us, who is one of my very best friends. As a single mother, she works tirelessly for her children, pushing through time after time when called upon to battle difficult situations. She always leads with kindness, when other would become bitter and angry.

I’m so grateful to have her presence in my life.

And my children are my greatest heroes. I have been blessed with two boys (now young men) who constantly lead me by their quiet examples. 

Although they are incredibly different from each other, the goodness and strength they express every day moves me to wonder, and an incredible sense of gratitude that I get to learn from them, and to share time with them. The greatest privilege of my life has been being their father.

I am richly blessed with heroes to look up to, and be guided by.

And I wonder, who are your heroes?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: All the Broken Pieces

All the Broken Pieces.

Is it just me, or do you feel it too? That moment when you see someone, either in person or online, and all you see is their completeness, their success, their ever present happiness and their seeming perfection, and all you can do is look at yourself and feel like you are so much less than they are. 

I think most of us have felt that way at some point in our lives. We feel like we are in some way wanting, and always will be.

We see ourselves as an accumulation of so many broken pieces.

When I look at where I am in my life, compared to where I thought I would be, I shake my head in wonder. When I consider the kind of husband and father I have become against the ideal that I carry in my head, I want to shrink into a dark corner and stay there for eternity. 

When I measure my conduct in the role of son-in-law and brother-in-law, I find myself again wanting.

And I wish I could be ‘whole and complete’; able to show up in the world in the way that I would like to.

But in the quiet moments of my soul, when I leave behind me all the comparisons and judgments, I can see that I am actually doing better than I could have expected. 

If I go further, and examine the lives of those who seem to ‘have it all together’, I find a startling truth that leads me both into an attitude of humility, and yet an acceptance of the person I currently am.

Because the successful people are also just an accumulation of broken pieces.

I know a few millionaires, and I can see that their lives are broken in their own ways. I have friends in the fitness space who have incredible physiques, yet who struggle in their intimate relationships. 

I know people who seem to be powerful and connected on social media, and yet they struggle with insecurity, doubt and difficulty in the quiet gardens of their soul.

In truth, we are all broken in some way or another.

But that’s enough. The opening gateway on the road to peace begins with a desire to accept yourself for who you really are, and that means acknowledging and accepting that right now a part of you may be broken, insufficient and imperfect, and yet you are still of value.

One of my very favorite books, from which I have learnt so much wisdom, begins by explaining our nobility as a consciousness. 

It doesn’t tell us how we are imperfect, because you can still be noble without being ‘whole or perfect’. It then goes on to explain how we can progress towards ‘a less broken state’, while not condemning us for where we are, knowing that the status of being human is enough.

And it helps us to realize deep in our heart that the broken state of our emotions is not a factor of our birthright, nor a judgment of our value, but it is merely a result of travelling through this temporal sphere, where none are whole, and yet all have worth.

Your nobility, your worth, your value have always been the same, and always will be. 

( I chose this picture today because the raft you see this person using is nothing more than an accumulation of broken trees.)

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Sisterhood (plus one)

The Sisterhood (plus one)

Over the last month I’ve had the distinct blessing of being part of an online challenge hosted by a friend of mine. The purpose of the event was to help us become more visible on social media, allowing us to make a greater impact on the world around us. 

It was a wonderful experience, that at times pushed me to get clearer on what I’m doing with this work, and at other times gave me the joy of seeing new friends succeed and push past their own limiting beliefs into a greater clarity and sense of purpose.

Interestingly, I was the only guy in a group of amazing, talented and wonderful women.

Which I was think was as fascinating for them as it was for me. I’ll admit to being a little nervous as to how I was going to be received – this one Y chromosome in a sea of double XXs. 

I hoped my presence wouldn’t be disruptive to a sense of community with the group, which is vital for these kind of things as people need support and trust as they share their truths, and push past their fears.

What I found, to my joy, was quite the opposite.

Because during one Facebook live, the phrase was used ‘a sisterhood plus Alan’, and it was suddenly adopted into the lore of the team. It was kind of humbling for me to feel part of a group filled with people I really admired, and it made me reflect on how important connection and community is to our soul, and our wellbeing.

To quote from a favorite show, “The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives”.

Being suddenly accepted and inducted into the Sisterhood gave me a sense of belonging, which in its own way denotes a connotation of acceptance, as though you have been judged and found worthy. 

But most of all it really added another testament to a belief I hold that although we may differ in gender, race, belief and desires, we are more alike than we are different.

And it is our similarities, not our differences, that bind us and allow us to grow together.

So as I learned from my new found ‘sisters’, and shared my thoughts and feelings with them, we each partook of the kindness and knowledge that was shared by all, and in doing so, we each received more that we gave. 

Despite what a Math professor may tell you, sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that is especially true when each person plays their part without ego, without fanfare and without selfishness. 

Just a wonderful group, with a courageous leader, working together for the good of all.

What we can do together is so much greater than what we accomplish alone, but it’s easy to allow our small differences to create division over harmony, and disagreement over hope. 

So today, I invite you to consider who you might be able to forgive in the cause of community, and reconcile and move forward with. If we desire a world of peace, we have to begin by reaching out to those from whom we feel separate, and bringing together our dreams and desires.

Because no one is an island, and we need each other to thrive.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Myth of Respect

The Myth of Respect.

It’s funny how people get so caught up in the search for something that doesn’t exist. I’ve seen people argue, families fractured and relationships ruined because one side or the other felt like they were being disrespected. 

These arguments over a myth can destroy the harmony of a home, or shatter constructive conversations between the old and the young.

All because someone felt they weren’t being respected.

So if I were to ask you to define respect, what would you say? A manner of speaking, a way of behaving, the proper showing of deference to another? I would ask you why this is necessary? I’ve done this before with people, and it always comes down to someone feeling like they are owed something. 

Sure, they might detour around the subject for a while with the argument that it ‘preserves civilization’ or that it ‘teaches the young to be controlled until they are ready’, but it’s never really about that.

It’s all about the lack that a person feels inside.

When you think about the really spiritual people who have walked the earth, they weren’t above another. They didn’t need to be fawned over, or ‘treated with respect’ by having people stand when they enter a room. 

The truly humble people, those who have done the work to balance their soul, are just grateful to be a part of whatever. They didn’t need to ‘preserve the order of things’, or to ‘teach another how to behave’.

They weren’t looking out for themselves, they were looking for an opportunity to serve.

In my life, the people who have ‘demanded respect’ have been those who had deviated from the path of love and service, and were instead extrapolating a sense of significance from the structure and order they seek to impose upon the world. 

They fear the dissolution of the organization that they mistakenly believe gives them a sense of ‘being in the right place’, when the ‘proper place’ is nowhere without and everywhere inside.

If it’s not ‘about’ you, you can never be disrespected.

If you seek to serve, and to uplift and edify others out of the absolute knowledge that it is right, taking no sense of personal value from the interaction, then you show up with a different energy. 

When the force of your love and compassion lead your interactions with another, you’ll find a very different energy in the interaction, and you’ll have no need or desire for ‘respect’, because you desire only to help another heal, another enjoy, another edify and another find peace.

Once you realize that ‘respect’ is a myth, you’ll show up with a different energy, and you’ll touch the lives that no one else could.

And in doing so, you may find that others treat you with ‘respect’… and you’ll realize why it was never necessary at all.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Time to Find You

Time to Find You.

Do you have a clear sense of who you are? That might sound strange, but as I work with people to bring them to an awareness of themselves, and find the directions in life that are most authentic for them, it’s becoming more and more evident that many of us don’t have a clear understanding of who we really are. 

Please understand, that’s not a judgment on you (or me), rather it’s an observation that we’ve become too caught up in the electronic cacophony that seems to rule our days and intrude into our nights. 

It began with radio and television, and has exploded with the growth of the internet, so that we lost the most necessary ingredient that is vital to the survival and blossoming of our soul.

Time, and the space to think quietly.

I read a statistic recently that a teenager now sees the same number of unique images in 1 month that a person living 100 years ago would see in their entire lifetime, and I suspect that even that number is out of date now. 

We’re bombarded with so many changing messages, idealized scenarios and perfectly manicured manifestations of everyone else’s lives that we feel like we are constantly trying to keep up with an impossible dream that moves away from us with every passing moment.

When was the last time you unplugged, sat in nature and just breathed?

We all need time to reflect on the things that have happened to us, and integrate them into the fabric of our mind, judging not only the event, but the meaning that we take from it, as determined by the filters we apply to our judgment, born out of the needs and traumas of our soul. So many of us react without ever understanding how or why we are thinking.

And the best way to see how we are thinking is to stop doing it for a while :)

Because too many people are living their lives in the constant chaotic confusion of a fractured sense of self. 

Not knowing who they really are, or what they really want, but desperately searching for some form of healing in their soul, so that they might once again find the peace that has eluded them for far too long. Yet they seek and search in vain without, not realizing that the answers are only within. 

But to hear them you need to listen quietly, and take time to hear the answers whispered in the silence.

The answers are there, I promise you. They can be hard to understand , especially if you are new to the art of self exploration and understanding. At first, they might not make any sense, or seem counter-intuitive, but once you begin to seek in silence, accepting the answers without judgment and without fear, the truths will come running out to meet you.

And in finding truth, you will find yourself.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Afraid of the Win

Afraid of the Win.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed by human nature. Every nuance, every gesture, every slight pause and hesitation with a dropped tone and a stuttered intonation masking a specific choice of words that tells me what you really meant to say. I watch body language, micro-gestures, true reactions versus staged ones. 

As you can guess, I’m a nightmare to be married to 🙂

But sometimes the biggest tell, the greatest cry echoing out of the broken mystery of the human soul, is the lack of something. 

The reaction that should have been there, but never was, or the words that should have been shouted from the rooftops that were instead choked off in a moment of fear and frustration. What you do tells me what you feel safe doing, but what you don’t tells me what you are afraid of.

And some of us, me included, seem to be most afraid of the win.

I think it’s because we’ve tasted defeat before. Maybe you haven’t, at which point you have my admiration and (sadly) a small measure of jealousy. We all know what defeat can do, how it hurts and burns and gnaws at our soul. 

We’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt. You know in your soul that you can survive most of the defeats coming in your life.

But we’re afraid of what success can do to us.

For me, I’m worried about what parts of my soul, my insecurities and inadequacies, will raise their ugly heads when things start to go right in a really big way. I say ‘when’ because I believe the words we use define and direct the universe, so I’m careful of the words I write and speak. 

I don’t believe that success changes you, I think it just allows those parts of you that you’ve kept controlled to break loose and find their way into the sunlight.

And some of those don’t look too pretty in the light of dawn.

So when things start to go right, I think we feel a little of that trepidation swirling around inside of our heads. I’ve written before that our light creates our shadow, and the brightest lights cut the darkest shadows in the room. If you’re in any aware of who you are, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what your shadows look like.

So you watch yourself, while watching everybody else.

But the funny thing about success, if you use it the right way, is that it also allows the better parts of your soul, the ones that give you hope and wonder, to shine forth as well. 

For every negative side, there is always a positive that can be discovered, polished, lifted up and shared with the world in a tribute of generosity, kindness and love.

The choice of which side of our nature gets to rule is one we can make moment by moment.

It is rarely the content of our soul that defines us in the long run, rather it’s the choices that we made along the road of life that leave our mark on the lives that we touch.

So today, choose success, and choose kindness, and let both of them bring you joy.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflections: Humanity Is Good.

Humanity Is Good.

Sometimes I want to stand on the rooftop with the largest megaphone and scream this at the world. I get so tired of all of the negativity that passes for content in the news media and on social media. 

I get that we are not always the smartest species, and sometimes I think that the elephants and the whales are looking at us with a perplexed and bemused look.

But most of the time, we do all right.

Because for every news story that leads because it bleeds, there are a thousand quiet actions every day, performed in silence rather than with fanfare, performed out of humility rather than hatred. 

Quiet caring people who give their time and their resources to try to improve the lives of those around them, and yet their names are never known, never made famous like they should be.

All of the traits of humanity, I believe one of our most enduring is kindness.

Yes we can be cruel to each other as individuals, and yes we can be hateful sometimes, but when you look back at how far we have come, especially in the last couple of hundred years, we have a lot to be grateful for. 

Both in scientific advances, and also in advances in the way we look after those around us who may not look like us, pray like us, love like us or vote like us.

We still have a ways to go, but we are so much farther along than we used to be.

But I truly believe that in order to take us to the next level as a civilization, we have to be willing to change how we exist within ourselves, so that we may be able to change how we function as a society.

If you don’t have a sense of kindness and compassion towards yourself, you’re never going to be able to share it with others around you, and ultimately change the world.

So why don’t we focus on ourselves as individuals?

Because there’s no money to made off that. In politics, in religion, in companies, in competing systems of thought and existence, there is a never ending clamor to section us into groups, and somehow derive our sense of identity from being part of a group, rather than being an independent consciousness of self. 

Loving yourself means you don’t need what someone else is selling – and that’s a danger to a system that relies on making you feel worthless to increase someone else’s net worth.

So today, I invite you to extend your compassion to humanity, because as a group we are worthy of love and respect. Yes, there are always going to be the few who will make life more difficult, because they have not yet arrived at a peace that requires not external validation, but they are a pathological minority. 

The vast majority of us are good, and worthy of each other’s love and empathy.

Love is a verb. Go do something.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflections: The You Who You Are Becoming

The You Who You Are Becoming.

Three years ago I began my transformation. On May 2nd, 2016 I weighed 330 pounds. 18 months later I would weigh-in at 185 pounds, having lost a total of 145 pounds in 18 months. 

No medication, no surgery, minimal exercise. It was a combination of diet and mindset that helped me become somebody who was unrecognizable to my former self. At the end, I naively thought I had arrived at my new self.

Which just goes to show how you can achieve something amazing, and still be woefully misinformed.

Now I find myself facing my next transformation, or maybe just the next phase. When I was losing the weight, I had a goal of how I wanted to look, and how I want to feel. 

I spent so much time visualizing myself at my goal weight, and imagining how wonderful it would feel to be able to buy clothes at a regular store, and wear something that I felt I actually looked good in.

And while I was right, it wasn’t enough.

Because if you want to make a real transformation, if you really want to change not just how you look but who you are, then you actually have to decide who you want to become. 

It sounds simple, but in my work as a coach helping people transform into the person who they are becoming, I found that so many of us determine our identity by the things we have, and less by the behaviors and the emotional states that we aspire to.

But that’s where our real power lies, in our sense of identity.

I can guarantee there are things in your world that you would never do. Actions that would be such a violation of your own psychological identity that the mere thought of them makes you uncomfortable, and the actual performance of the behavior would emotionally destroy you. 

The stronger your sense of identity, the more emotional energy you have to apply to any situation.

So if you want to transform, we have to understand and become the you who you aspire to be.

The more you strengthen your identity as to the person you want to be, the more you will find your actions and your emotions conforming to who that person is. If you desire more compassion, then the person you are becoming will understand how to act in a situation that requires compassion. 

Likewise if you want to become a peacemaker, the person who you are becoming will be a person of peace both in themselves and in the world.

To be other than who they are would be a violation of who they are.

So if you want to change something, become familiar with the person on the other side of that change. Explore their mind, feel their thoughts, and let their energy emanate from you. 

The more you identify as that person, the greater your power to make the changes in your life that that person has already made.

To hold yourself in the past is to remain the You who is trying to change. Being the You who is already changed, is to allow the future to pull you forwards beyond the now and into who you can become.

Don’t try, just be. 

You will be surprised at who you can become.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: The Struggle is Real

The Struggle is Real.

Life is hard. I get that compared to some most of us have it amazingly easy, but compared to some most of us have it pretty difficult. We tend to look at other people’s lives and see this one dimensional picture of either suffering or joy, when the truth is never that simple. 

If you think someone doesn’t have problems, my guess is that you don’t know them well enough. No one gets out of struggle. It’s always there if you look for it.

So if it’s a universal truth, why do we take a sense of personal value from our struggles? I once read a book on running a small business (which I do) and was amazed when the author explained that finding it tough going didn’t mean you were failing, it meant that you were running a small business. 

The actual act is going to be hard, the level of difficulty just tells you whether you have mastered it or not yet. But even at the level of mastery… IT IS STILL GOING TO BE HARD.

So there’s no need to have your struggles be some judgment on your value as a person.

Which was kind of news to me, because I always felt (and sometimes still feel) like my struggles were a sign that I was, once again, screwing something up, because I was a big fat failure. 

So instead of trying to learn the lessons inherent in a situation, I instead took a massive sense of self worth on whether something was easier or harder.

I think this is why most of us don’t live at our potential, because we perceive failure as a judgment, rather than an unavoidable part of life.

It’s true that sometimes the struggle is a result of our own making. I’m kind of in the middle of one of those circumstances right now, and I hate it, knowing that I could be doing something else, somewhere else, if not for the many weaknesses and deficits that adorn my soul. 

In one aspect, what comes so easy to others is for me a physically nauseating, emotionally taxing chore that fills me full of dread.

And my weakness creates so much struggle, that I become lost in the maelstrom of the madness of self judgment.

But when I learn to stop judging myself, the magic begins.

The struggle becomes an opportunity to learn, to grow, to change, and to overcome. When it’s not about me, then it’s about just getting it done, and moving onto the next challenge.

And believe me, there will always be a next challenge. I once heard it said that the only people who didn’t have problems were dead people, and it’s kind of true. No matter who you are, or where you are in life, you’ve probably got at least one struggle that you are facing.

So if you are struggling today, please know that it doesn’t make you a bad person, or less of a person, it actually makes you the one thing that we all are.

Human.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Butterfly

Butterfly.

When she was little, she was told she was beautiful, which was true, because she was. But over time, if people tell you the same one thing over and over again, and it’s the only thing that you think has any value, you’ll start to believe that that one thing is the only value you have. 

So she listened when people told her she was beautiful, and ignored people when they said anything else.

Even though she had so much more to offer.

After she was grown, the person who should have been the one to teach her that she had so much more value than her looks took a different path, and taught her that she had no value whatsoever. 

In her heartbreak and loss she believed that person, and began to feel like she was no-one at all. So she withdrew from the world, and surrounded herself with an emotional chrysalis.

Hiding from everyone, especially from herself.

Once you identify yourself a certain way, the world has a tendency to only see you that one way. People come to expect your behaviors, and they get comfortable with the way that you are. 

It’s not their fault, or a sign of bad intentions on their part, it’s just human nature, but it can lead to some difficulties along the way when people forget the purpose of a chrysalis.

Because a chrysalis is really a crucible of change. Inside a chrysalis an amazing transformation takes place, where a caterpillar completely changes its nature, becoming something quite different.

And inside of her own chrysalis, a wonderful change was taking place inside of her.

Because through all of the struggles, the heartaches, the lonely late nights, the fears of never being enough and the day to day worries of how to survive the changes that she was going through, her own marvelous transformation was taking place. 

The little girl who believed she only had value in beauty began to realize that she was her own person, and that she liked that person very much.

And then it became time to open the chrysalis, and step into the world.

As she did, there were those who loved her who worried for her, which was only natural and right. For the change in her was profound, and all of us struggle with change in our own way. 

But bravely she continued to flourish, finding her wings, finding herself, and ultimately discovering the truths of her own soul. And finally it came time to spread her wings once more, and see who she truly had become.

And to her great surprise, she found that she was still beautiful.

But no longer was that as important, for she had come to see that the greatest beauty that she possessed were the stunning facets of a soul that had endured hardship without bitterness, loss without fear, loneliness without cruelty and hopelessness without despair. 

She realized, in that moment, that her beauty was greater within than without, and that she had something to offer the world.

So she spread her wings and took flight, and it was a beautiful thing to see.

For Pamela. Ever the butterfly.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Filter

Filter.

Truthfully, I’m scared of them. As someone who is a little color vision deficient (I have issues seeing some shades of colors) I have been watching with interest the evolution of glasses that help people with color deficiencies see better. 

I keep seeing these videos of grizzled older guys (the ones least likely to show emotion) breaking down and sobbing when they try on these glasses and see for the first time all that they have been missing. 

And I’m afraid to try them for myself.

Partly because I’m afraid of that sudden rush of emotion, because it seems pretty intense, and partly because I’m afraid of how much I’ll realize I have been missing all these years. 

As a father who has an incredibly artistically talented son, I’m sure there are levels of beauty to his work that I have missed because I don’t see colors the way he does. 

So I’m scared to try these glasses, but if I never change my filter (how I see the world) I will forever miss out on what is all around me.

And just like there are filters for our vision, we also have many filters in the way that we perceive the world in both emotional and philosophical ways. 

These filters are usually very strong beliefs about how the world works, the nature of right and wrong, but they can also be driven out of our deep seated needs and any deficiencies thereof. 

These deficiencies can create some of the most powerful distortions that I have even seen. They can create monsters out of ordinary people.

Have you ever met that person who finds everything to be an insult against them? They may be acting from a need to feel significant, and so filter reality so that everything is done against them, so they are always the center of attention. 

Conversely, there are people who are outrageously optimistic; not because they are balanced in their core, but because they are afraid to ever contemplate the possibility of things going wrong, so they ignore it right up until it happens.

And then they underplay the seriousness of the situation.

Most of us are unaware of the filters that we use to screen this reality, because they are so instinctive to us in our day to day lives that we never to stop to challenge them. 

Instead, we just accept these truths as self evident, and continue to process everything that happens through them in the blink of an eye. But never questioning the way we see the world leads to a far more dangerous kind of deficiency of vision than the one I started talking about.

Never questioning what we think means never becoming aware of the truth of our soul.

History is replete with examples of single minded people who never stopped to think if what they were doing was really the right thing. Instead, they went forth out of hatred and desire to slaughter millions in their search for (and desperate need of) a reality that fit their thinking, rather than change their thinking to fit reality.

Self awareness and self peace through acceptance is the only antidote I know for the suffering of individuals, nations, races and the world.

May we start our journey into ourselves anew every day, and may we share the peace we find with each other.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: I Want To Believe

I Want To Believe.

If you ever watched the show “The X-Files”, chances are you saw a poster in the small office that was shared by Fox Mulder & Dana Scully. The picture featured a UFO with a caption underneath. 

It stated simply “I Want To Believe”. And while I don’t know where I stand on the concept of little green men in flying saucers dropping by to hang out and watch us get on with our lives, I do know this much.

What we believe is very often determined by what we want.

I had a wonderful conversation with one of my favorite patients this evening. We share somewhat differing views on the concept of an afterlife, and what that would look like, and what we would do there. 

As we gave freely of our opinions, it became very clear to me that our wants (and I mean our deeper psychological wants, which are really expressions of our non-critical needs) were coloring our thoughts and hopes.

We all do it, even when we are aware of it.

And it doesn’t have to be in the concept of spirituality. If you look at the realm and conflict of politics, you’ll find the very same expressions of ‘belief’ occurring, just in a more directed and focused way. 

Maybe one person favors a more regimented society because what they really want is the absence of chaos, which is an anathema to their soul, while another person favors a much freer society with less rules and restrictions, because what they secretly want in their deepest heart is to be themselves without the risk of not being accepted.

Those may sound like simplifications, and maybe they are for some, but for others it’s the absolute truth.

It especially shows up in the values that we hold dear. A person who values a certain characteristic may do so out of a deep desire not to be seen as someone who acts of believes a certain way, or their aspiration for people to be treated a certain way. 

In this, their ‘belief’ becomes the very manifestation of their desire, be it from a place of darkness, or a beacon of light.

And if we are not aware of our reasons, our ‘wants’ can drive our beliefs into a paradox of suffering.

Because if you look around at your world, there are so many things that fall into a concept of belief more than a absolution of knowledge. Outside of the ‘hard sciences’, most everything falls into a pit of possibility rather than a crucible of certainty.

Even this work is an act of belief, coming from the idea that I could be of help in this world, and that people are happier both individually and as a society with a heightened self awareness and a greater sense of internal peace. Yet the very awareness that I desire for my soul suggests that maybe this work is just because I want to feel like I have made a difference.

There are always more questions.

If I can offer you one thought (or belief, depending upon how you look at it) to think about today, I would ask you to consider any beliefs you have that may be impacting another in a negative way, and see where those beliefs (wants) are coming from. 

It may be, as you consider and become more aware of yourself, that you can feel differently about something by understanding the reason that you believe it, and in so doing, find a greater pathway to peace within you and around you.

May we find a greater sense of peace and harmony as we do this work together.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: Don’t “Start With Why”

Don’t “Start With Why”.

That probably goes against everything that you’ve been hearing lately. There’s even an author and speaker who’s made a lot of money on the concept, and I think he’s a really good guy, but missing a step.

It’s not that his advice isn’t good, but blindly rushing out to follow your ‘Why’ without understanding it can be a sure way to find unhappiness and a loss of motivation.

First you must heal your Why before you follow it.

‘How can my Why be sick?’ you ask, and I’ll grant you, it’s a strange concept, but just hang in for a moment, and I think you’ll understand what I mean. 

All of us are a product of many different things; our time (the generations in which we live), our upbringing (how much or how little our parents imprinted their beliefs onto our psyche), our needs (the way your personality is wired in your brain) and most especially our traumas (the experiences of our lives that have left us with wounds on our souls).

And our Why is often the combination of these as well.

Imagine a woman who doesn’t really want to have children, yet the time and the faith that she is born into impresses upon her that her road to happiness is found through the bearing and rearing of children. 

Left unhealed, her Why may be corrupted to believing that she needs to have children, despite the inner whisperings of her soul. So she gives up her career, and finds a growing sense of discontentment and unhappiness, because she was not following her true Why.

And if you think I’ve made that up, believe me, there are many more where that came from, and a lot that are worse.

So how do you start the process of healing your Why? It begins by understanding the truths of what motivates us to do anything. If I were to ask you to name your 5 biggest goals, could you do that, and more importantly, could you tell me ‘Why’ it’s your goal? 

What do you hope to achieve from achieving this goal; what emotional states are you looking to arrive at; and what filter of reality translation are you going to use to get you there?

I know, that’s a lot to take in isn’t it? 🙂

But there’s nothing more important in your life than to make sure that the ‘Why’ behind the goals you are seeking is truly, completely and incontrovertibly yours, and not infected with the desires of those around you, nor corrupted by the traumas that have beset you. 

In saying that, I don’t intend to judge or assign blame to anyone. I honestly believe that the majority of people are good, kind, and honest at heart, even though they may be acting in a manner pathological to others because of the wound that they carry within them.

The chances are, they are carrying a Why that is not healthy, for them, nor the people they come into contact with.

So today, I invite you to begin the process of trying to understand your Why, and delving deep into your soul to find the truths that matter to you. I truly believe that the more you come to understand and heal yourself, the greater your happiness will be.

Once your Why is whole, you can follow it with all your heart.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection: For I am Willing to be Wrong

For I am Willing to be Wrong.

Do you ever feel that being right is a burden? In our quest for absolute certainty, which is really our desire to avoid the pain of being wrong, we hold on to certain truths with a steadfast grip that will likely be there when we are dead. 

Sometimes we hold onto our judgments with equal passion, without ever stopping to ask if the desire to be right is overriding our basic human requirement to be kind.

I know I have been guilty of this many times.

I have seen good friends struggle so hard to be right that they are willing to defy logic, common sense and even their innate compassion for others. It’s never a fun thing to watch, and it’s even worse when you see that behavior in yourself. 

It takes a measure of integrity in your heart to stand in the midst of the opinions of others, and utter a single statement that gives you so much flexibility.

“I am willing to be wrong”.

I’ve tried to incorporate this into my soul recently, and I’ve been very surprised by the latitude of thought and the inherent sense of freedom that I find in this attitude. 

As I have removed from me the requirement to ‘always be right’ I am open to possibilities that once were beyond my understanding and experience. By removing the need to be right, I am left to explore the secrets of the universe.

And what I find is amazing.

Being willing to be wrong insulates me against the opinions and judgments of others. Once I accept the possibility of my fallibility, the voices in my head (not those kind of voices, well at least I hope not) that once warned me of the pain of being wrong are silenced or reduced to desperate whispers of the potential outcomes of my exploration.

Outcomes which exist only in the possible, not in the actual.

Once you remove the stigma of failure from your reasoning, suddenly avenues of possibility are judged not on their ability to destroy, but on the potential price that may be required for a lesson that may well be worth learning. 

No experience is truly wasted unless you cannot learn from it, and I have yet to find such an experience. For the heart that is open, and the mind that is seeking, will always find a lesson to be learned.

You just have to believe in yourself, and face the day with an attitude of self approval deep within you. 

For once you have accepted the truths of your soul, and found a sense of identity outside of your own abilities, you will come to realize that your value is not in your anxious striving for an imaginary perfection, but in your willingness to place curiosity over concern, humility over hate, love over loss and wonder over worry. 

In the end, you will come to understand that the value that you seek was always there inside you, just waiting to be born anew.

Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings