Morning Reflection #614: Welcome to the Work

You don’t have to do this you know – honestly you don’t. You can just keep on going the way of the world, being spoon fed your feelings and your philosophy through the constant drip of mindless media, recycled dogma and the occasional flash of inspiration that’s quickly smothered by the endless opinions of others. It’s the easiest way to waste your years.

And it leads to a life that never feels like your own.

But be warned, starting out on the journey of your own work is never easy. Chances are you considered beginning on this road because the life you were living just wasn’t getting it done for you. You probably had feelings of loneliness; not for the people around you, but for the company of yourself in a way that you could live with.

The moment you realize that your problems are within and not without, you have a choice to make.

But let me step back for a moment, and make sure we’re talking about the same thing. A dear friend recently shared with me that she had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned doing the work, and she’s at the point where she could really benefit from this in her own life.

I think it’s kind of a sad reflection on the culture we live in that this isn’t something we learn in our youngest years.

If I were to put it in a nutshell it goes something like this… ‘The Work’ is a process of turning your attention away from the things of the world, and going inward so that you can discover the truth of who you really are, and then living it.

Wow – that might win the greatest oversimplification in the history of mankind award.

Because let’s not have any illusions. This is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and it can seriously change your life. There are times on my journey where I’ve had to swallow some pretty hard truths, and let go of a lot of things I was holding onto for the sake of my ego, not for my truth. It can change relationships, and change how people relate to you.

In case that all sounds horrible, which it can be, let me also tell you the upsides, because they are there and they are wonderful. Probably my favorite outcome is actually beginning to like myself. Over the last almost 5 years of writing this (which has been a huge part of my own journey) I have come to understand myself at a level that I never thought was possible.

In doing so, I've been able to forgive myself for many of the things that I have done. None of these have been heinous, rather the way that I have affected myself and my family for playing small, not using my voice, and for allowing other people to walk over me when I should have stood up for myself.

Once you know why you do things, you can start to deprogram the things about yourself that you don’t like.

But you’ll also start to become your own hero. When I see how far I have come from where I started, both emotionally and geographically, I can see the courage it took to make some of the choices that I did, and I derive a sense of safety from understanding that I do have a strength inside of me. Knowing that I can survive the struggles necessary to change my life helps me to face change with peace and calmness.

But by far the greatest outcome is knowing yourself at a level that allows you to live authentically.

That’s a term that gets thrown around a lot, so let me define it from my point of view. To live authentically means that you live true to your deepest feelings, regardless of your fears and your insecurities. It means working through the beliefs that hold you back, and discovering who you really are along the way.

There is an incredible strength in being honestly and truly yourself.

And the funniest thing is, you often come to find out that who you really are is not who you thought you were at all. Once you break through and let go all the nonsense in your head, you can truly start listening to your heart, and finding your way to your own sense of purpose and happiness. Because living someone else’s idea of what your life should be is never going to make you happy.

But like I wrote in my last post, growing can also be scary, but it’s only by doing the different things, the things that scare us, that we grow into the people who make us happy.

So I’m going to do something scary, and you might get to be a part of it. I’m putting together a 6-7 week workshop based around finding yourself, using a lot of the things I've discussed over the past 5 years in this work. I’m looking for a few people who might be interested in being a part of that. There won’t be any cost, other than putting up with whatever craziness flows out of me, but I’m hoping that it will be something of value to you.

If that sounds like something you might like to be a part of, then feel free to comment below and let me know.

It will be a small group to start, and I’m still working out how it will actually work, but if that sounds like fun, then maybe we can get to be a part of each other’s journeys.

Because the journey of growing into yourself really is worth it.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 613: The Different Things

Everyone likes to preach about getting out of our comfort zones, but rarely do people tell us just how uncomfortable that can be. Over the last two and a half months I've been pushing myself to do things that I would not normally do, and let me tell you – it sucks.

I’ve been scared, wanted to run away, and found myself wanting to throw up after making a certain phone call or sending a certain text.

Or pressing the publish button to put my first ‘podcast’ out into the world like I did yesterday.

But over the last few months I’ve come to some pretty solid realizations that in order for my life to change, I have to be the one to change it. And sometimes making those changes is not only uncomfortable, but depending upon my limiting beliefs, it can actually feel immoral or unkind. Please understand that I’m not doing anything that I think could be considered overtly “wrong”…

It’s just that sometimes we are programmed to think that looking after ourselves is actually a form of taking from others.

So while some of the “different things” that I’ve been doing have made me feel uncomfortable because I of how I think it would be perceived by others, some of those different things have actually been difficult because of my own perception of the morality of the action I’ve been taking.

And I’m guessing if you’re the kind of person who reads this work, you’ve probably felt the same way at some time.

I’m pretty sure that there are some of you out there who struggle putting yourself first, because you’ve always been taught that others are more important. Even to do something that doesn’t hurt somebody else, but elevates your needs above theirs, can feel like an immoral act. So let me share with you a small revelation about life I had recently that has helped me to work through some of the thoughts I’ve been having while doing the “different things” that are making a change in my life.

When it comes to life, the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

Please don’t misunderstand what I mean by that. I’m not saying that morality isn’t important, because it is. I’m not saying that whatever faith you may or may not have isn’t important, because if it’s giving you a sense of joy or purpose or peace then it has value in your life. But so many times we are operating within certain boundaries that we think we have to stay within in order to be a “good person”, when really there’s nothing wrong with looking out for ourselves.

My guess is that you are a good person already. Not because of how you are behaving, but because of the goodness in your heart. I have found that my writing is kind of a litmus test, and bad people don’t tend to read it.

So guess what, you’ve already passed

I’m pretty confident that if you and I sat down and had a conversation, before long we would figure out something that you could do for yourself that would make your life better but that you’ve been holding back on it because of the fear of what other people might think, or even worse, the fear of how you might feel. Maybe you’re just waiting for permission from somebody other than yourself, so that you can take the step forward that could change your life.

Well here’s your permission, and in addition, here’s a friendly word of advice. If you don’t do the different things to make your life different, it’s always going to stay the same.

So I get it if it’s scary, and I get it if it makes you want to throw up or scream. One of the different things that I did a few months ago made me so scared that I was crying, and could barely form words… But I did it. Pushing through that level of fear, and that level of uncomfortable has a powerful effect, because when you break through fear, it comes back as confidence.

And when you break through the lies in your head that are holding you down, you realize that the most authentic form of you is the one that can do the greatest good in the world.

Please do something for you today. If it’s something difficult or something scary, so much the better, but if that’s no where you’re at right now, just do something to celebrate yourself. Eat the cookie, drink the coffee, buy yourself a book or a blanket or a scarf or new pair of boots or whatever it’s going to be. Celebrate yourself, and get used to doing that because you are worth it.

Sometimes the hardest changes in life are the ones where we finally take our own happiness seriously, and then we live according to the changes that we need to make.

May you find confidence as you break through fear, and may you find joy and happiness as you do the things that will make your life better.

I truly believe that you are worth it.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Podbyte: Episode 1

Doing this makes me VERY uncomfortable…

which I guess is why I should do it. I’m not at a point where I’m ready to start a podcast quite yet, but I also wanted to add another option to serve you, so here is my very first attempt at what I’m calling a ‘pod-byte’. Facebook only lets you upload videos, not just audio, so this is just an image with the ‘pod-byte’ audio.

I didn’t have a script, this is totally extemporaneous. I initially intended it to be about 5 minutes, but it runs a little longer than that, which gives you an idea of how my mind works.

It’s a pretty rough product right now, because I need to up my audio editing game, but if I waited until it was perfect I’d never get anything done, so please bear with the glitches, and let me know what you think.

(The link may not work, but you can listen/watch here.)

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #612: My Struggle with Gratitude

As someone who grew up in England, celebrating Thanksgiving never used a be a part of my life. When I moved to the United States, I was aware of what Thanksgiving was about, but I had never had a chance to participate.

It’s been close to 30 years since my first Thanksgiving, and while I enjoy the time spent with family, I have to confess that it’s not my favorite holiday, and it’s one that always leads me to be quite reflective.

Because I seem to have a gratitude problem.

And to be honest, that’s bugged me for quite a while. I can remember a Christmas probably in the early 80s when my sister and I were both given a Walkman for Christmas. (For those of you too young to know what that is, it’s basically a cassette tape player that was small enough to put on your belt and have music as you walked). Although I was grateful for what I had received, in truth I was somewhat upset because the one that my sister received was functionally better than mine.

At the time I was too young to realize that my reaction was a symptom of a much greater problem.

But as I started to get a little older, and a little more introspective, I came to realize that gratitude was not an emotion that came easily to me. So I went through a period of believing that I was an ungrateful person, and that I was not good because I felt that way. I wished that I could “feel” this deep sense of thankfulness that other people seemed to experience.

And, of course, I spent a lot of time judging myself harshly over it.

Fast-forward to a situation about 10-15 years ago where somebody did something for me that was truly, profoundly and wonderfully kind. Something that should have brought forth from me a strong sense of gratitude and thankfulness. Although I was grateful at the time, and although I did express that to the person who did something for me, I was forced to realize that the magnitude of their kindness to me was not reflected in the magnitude of my gratitude towards them.

And I felt really bad about that, and struggled to figure out why I was responding that way.

Through a lot of meditation, reading, introspection and time, I finally came to understand the answer, and in order to explain it, I’m going to start with a small story that started making the rounds a number of years ago in the online business space.

It’s the story of a young man who goes to a business guru and asks the guru to teach him how to be successful. So the guru has the young man meet him on the beach the next morning. The guru takes the young man by the hand and walks him out into the water until it is almost over his head, and then dunks the young man down into the water and holds him there until the young man nearly drowns.

Then the guru pulls him out of the water and tells him that when he wants to succeed as bad as he just wanted to breathe, he will be successful.

I realize that seems kind of a strange story, but here’s how I think it applies.

Sometimes people have enough of a wound in their soul that it overshadows all of their other emotions. For some people it manifests in their inability to be happy, for some in their inability to form meaningful relationships, and for some it can even be a strong difficulty towards feeling grateful, because the magnitude of the wound is so great that unless that wound is healed, nothing else really means anything.

Because for that young man on the beach, nothing other than air was going to solve his problem.

I realized that the psychological wound I was struggling with was so significant to me that unless somebody gave me a solution to that situation, anything else was going to seem small in comparison. It didn’t mean I wasn’t grateful, it’s just that my fear and pain over the situation that wound created made it so much harder to feel what should have been a commensurate amount of gratitude to the person who helped me.

When I finally realized this, it helped me release a lot of the shame and self judgment that I was carrying.

Please understand, I’m not saying gratitude isn’t important. The longer I study and the more I learn, the greater certainty I have that gratitude is one of the most powerful ways that we can change our lives. It’s just that sometimes people are hurting so much that trying to be grateful is supremely difficult, because the weight on their soul distorts how they feel about anything that doesn’t solve the problem that is causing them pain.

And although it sounds kind of funny, I am very grateful for that lesson, because it has helped me to understand so much about the behavior of others.

I recently had the chance to talk with the mother of a teenage boy who was acting in a way that was not appropriate for him or his future. She came to me in frustration because she couldn’t get through to him, and help him see that his behavior now was going to hurt him in a few years time.

I think it really helped her when I was able to explain that he was hurting so much now, that worrying about pain in the future was outside of his emotional capability right now. When she finally understood the magnitude of the pain he was feeling in the moment, all of his current actions made sense. He wasn’t “acting out”, he was just trying to change how he felt.

Because emotionally, all that young man wants to do right now is breathe, and trying to tell him to take actions in the future that don’t solve his pain right now is to disrespect and minimize how he actually feels. If it doesn’t help him solve his pain right now, he’s probably not going to take it to heart.

I’ll be honest with you and tell you that I still struggle with gratitude, because I’m still struggling with that same wound from many years ago. It affects me less in some ways, and more in others, but I’m trying harder to find the place within my soul to feel truly an profoundly grateful for the many wonderful people and circumstances that I do have in my life.

And I’m trying to judge myself less, and give myself more grace and understanding.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 611: Hello

Yes, I’m talking to you. I apologize if I’m interrupting. But there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, and in the midst of all the crazy things in the world, sometimes I don’t feel like I have the time to say it.

Or sometimes it just doesn’t feel like it’s the right time, so I hold back from telling you what I’m thinking because maybe this sounds insane or maybe this sounds corny or foolishly naïve or whatever other adjective you want to apply to it.

To be honest though, I’m kind of past caring what people think.

Because caring what other people think has led me to not say the things I want to say, and it’s probably caused me not to help some people who maybe I could have helped. I have to live with that, and the weight of it is getting heavier day by day. So here’s my rather radical little secret that I want to share with you, so that you may all understand what I’m doing here.

I want to change the world.

Usually the people you hear of changing the world are either billionaires or superheroes. Since I haven’t been bitten by any radioactive spiders or been exposed to massive overdoses of gamma radiation, and since the last time I checked my bank account was closer to zero than it is to $1 billion, I have to choose a different way to make a difference, to enact my “master plan” of changing the world into the way I want it to be.

I have words, and I have you.

See I have this crazy dream. I’d like to see a world full of kindness, where people felt happy, peaceful and contented, because in my experience, happy people don’t start problems. Let’s face it, the universe has enough suffering and pain and stupidity built in. Just being human means that you’re guaranteed a birthright of problems and pain.

But when I look at the biggest problems in the world, most of them are created by people treating other people like objects, because they can’t live with how they feel about themselves in their quiet moments.

And I want to change that.

Yet in my experience, lasting change—the kind of change that actually sticks and makes a difference—doesn’t start with flashy gestures, and it doesn’t involve massive programs. If spending billions of dollars actually made a difference, we should be happy, and yet so many people are not.

I think we’ve been going about it all wrong.

I think the things that fundamentally change the human experience are organic, and they spread person-to-person, touching, enriching and ennobling life at an everyday level. Because when you wake up in the morning surrounded by a world of wonder and imagination, accepting yourself without criticism and without judgment, knowing that you’re trying your best…

Then you become the kind of person who helps others, which is exactly who I want you to be.

Because in a world full of heroes and villains, mayhem and monsters, what we actually need are people who can listen with kindness. I can tell you that on a dark day five years or so ago when I was struggling, feeling overwhelmed from all the pressure I was under, one act of kindness by one man sending me a text changed my entire day.

Kindness and compassion can heal more wounds than all the doctors in the world.

In my experience, the people who have the most kindness and the strongest compassion are those who have come through their own darkness, and in their own healing have found an understanding and a desire to help others. People who are hurting tend to focus on themselves, while people who are healing tend to reach out to others.

So I’m trying to heal the world, one person at a time, so that each person who is healed will radiate kindness and compassion to somebody else.

Yeah, I’m crazy enough to believe that a virus of kindness, happiness, peaceful hearts and loving compassion can do more than has ever been done before.

And my goal is to spread that kindness, that happiness, that peace and that compassion by helping you find your own peace, and then trusting in your goodness that you will share with others.

Right now all I have are these words and these pictures, but probably coming soon will be a microphone, maybe someday a video camera. Because I’m done playing small, and I’m past giving a damn what people think. These lives we have are so short, and the universe can be an unkind mistress, and you all deserve better than what you have been given.

My goal is to even up the score, and see what I can do to get us ahead.

Because in the end, the quality of your life comes down to how you feel about yourself, and how connected you are with others. I plan to help you with the first part, knowing that you’ll take care of the second.

So this is me, doing my best to help you, so that together we can change the world.

Maybe my dream is crazy, or maybe I’ve totally lost my mind.

Or maybe, just maybe, things get better for all of us.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #610: The Whisper

When was the last time that you stopped and listened? Not just turned off the music, or put down the ever present cell phone, but actually made time, scheduled it even, so that you could just take a moment to listen to that voice inside of you.

You know, that one you’ve spent so much time and effort ignoring with endless scrolling, mindless game playing or even endless eating.

Yes, that voice.

The one that is coming from deep inside you, that only you can hear. The one that is trying to desperately tell you all the things you need to know, but that you are scared of listening to because it probably requires you to change how you are living your life. Those changes feel scary, monumental and overwhelming.

So we drown out that voice with the noise of everyday life.

Although the internet has made information more readily available, it’s also made entertainment vastly more accessible, which means if you are looking for a distraction, you can find one. Like most of you, I’m old enough to remember when life wasn’t so hectic, and I had time to think about the things I had experienced, instead of running to a website or an app to distract me from what I was feeling.

And more importantly, what my soul was whispering.

Because if the internet has done anything, I can tell you that it has made it easier for people to ignore the voice of their own inner wisdom, and substitute the opinions of others over that of themselves. Trying to live your life in competition with the curated and managed Instagram feed of an influencer is the fastest way to take from your life any sense of authenticity.

There is no worse thing you can do than live your life trying to match up to a image that does not reflect the intentions, beliefs and desires of your own heart.

But some of us struggle to listen to the whispering voice of our soul because it’s being drowned out by the sound of our fears. As someone who still struggles to stay out of ‘survival mode’, I know that I have to get really quiet and focus hard so that I can figure out what it is that my soul is really saying. The fears that have become so ingrained in my as a result of some of my life experiences make it hard to hear what my soul actually wants.

And even harder to make the changes when I do figure out what to do next.

I’ve been learning over the last year to hear my inner voice by allowing myself ‘free-time’ not only in meditation, but also in ‘play’. Sitting at my computer and letting myself click on Youtube videos that intrigue me, I’ve come to see how my soul wants to live a quieter life off grid, where my wife and I could have more time for each other, and also more time to write and focus on this work.

As someone who grew up in a city environment, that still seems very strange to me.

But listening to my soul has become the best way I know to find greater peace and happiness in my life. Over the last few years, it’s led me to do things that have scared me, inspired me, challenged me and in some cases confused me. Yet every time I've followed that inner voice, I’ve found my life immeasurably changed for the better.

It seems that deep down, my soul knows the actions I need to take, even when they run counter to so many things I ‘believed’.

To quote Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple… “And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become”.

But how are you going to follow the wisdom of your heart if you never spend any time listening to its whisperings, and seeing where they lead?

So today, I’d like to challenge you to spend just 5 minutes in quiet reflection, and see if you can hear your soul, and the message it’s sending. If you’re new to this, don’t worry too much about the message right now, just focus on sitting and listening. Learning to listen is very important, because only when you can hear clearly can you truly understand what your soul is trying to say.

And once you can hear it… you’re ready to start on another adventure.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #609: The Truth About Stealth Trauma

“My childhood was fine… there was nothing wrong with it.” “I was loved.” “It had its moments, but overall it was a great childhood.” I’ve lost count of the number of times I've heard these types of statements, and have had to spend time trying to convince someone who is obviously hurting that they’ve had difficult things happen to them.

Note that I said difficult – not bad.

We have so many hang-ups around admitting that we’ve had trauma. Sure, if someone has had something truly heinous happen to them, we have no problems looking at that and saying they have experienced trauma. But when it comes to our own lives, we tend to have a problem with that admission. It took me a little while to figure it out, but I finally got to the bottom of it.

Because admitting we had trauma suggest that people were “bad”.

And let’s face it, unless something terrible happened, nobody really wants to label their parents as bad. And I’m going to tell you that in most cases, parents who were responsible for childhood trauma weren’t “bad” people (although some very definitely were/are, and we will talk about that in another post).

Chances are they were human, probably doing the best that they could, often under incredibly difficult circumstances and while trying to deal with the nightmare of their own trauma that wasn’t recognized.

I know it was that way for me.

If you had asked me about my childhood when I was in my 20s, I would have told you that it didn’t really affect me, and that I just chose to be who I was. The incredible lack of self-awareness of that comment honestly still makes me cringe. It wasn’t until my 30s that I began to fully understand that there were parts of my childhood that probably left some scars.

To be honest, it took me a lot longer than it should have done to recognize that, because I didn’t want to admit that I’d had trauma, because that meant that I was ‘scarred’ or ‘damaged’. But when I finally came round to the fact that there were some things in my head that I really needed to work on, I sadly took the easy way out. I chose to blame rather than dealing with it.

And if you had talked to me in my late 30s and early 40s, I would have happily told you how angry I was at some of the things that happened. I sadly had that victim complex down to an art form, and it cost me several years of personal growth.

But over time, I finally came to the realization that my parents were never malicious. Sure they had some issues, and there were things that could have been a lot better, but with all the knowledge that I have now, plus having done a lot of my own work, I can tell you that they were probably struggling after living through significantly worse childhoods than mine.

I’ve had to work through quite a bit of guilt over how I felt towards them. Sorry Mom and Dad.

Let no one tell you any different… Doing the work of self-awareness and self acceptance means understanding your flaws as well as, if not better than, everybody else’s, and that can truly suck sometimes.

So when I’m working with someone, and we’re starting to dig down into the roots of their trauma, there’s almost always this conversation that we have where they try to convince me that nothing happened, and that they had a wonderful childhood. Then we slowly and carefully start to pick apart the threads of the psychological blanket that they been holding onto for so long.

Which is when it starts to get painful.

Because most trauma is not what I call “overt” or “obvious” trauma, but it’s quieter, it’s more insidious and it scars us in ways we can’t even see. I decided to call it stealth trauma because that’s really what it’s like. It’s this thing that’s causing damage to you and you can’t even see it. Especially if it occurs while you’re growing up, because you have no sense of normal to evaluate it against.

In fact a lot of the time our response to those traumas is so much a part of us that we don’t even realize that it’s a problem. It’s just “who we are”.

So please do me a favor if we ever have a conversation. If I tell you that you’ve experienced trauma, please try listen with an open mind. I can pretty safely guarantee that almost everybody has had some kind of trauma. It might not be terrible, it might not be horrific, but it’s there, and unless you’re aware of it, it’s probably affecting you in ways you can’t even imagine.

It can be hard realization, but I’m here to tell you that admitting that you have trauma doesn’t make you broken, and it doesn’t make you shameful.

It just makes you human.

And when you can accept that, you’ll have begun your journey out of your own personal hell and into the light of a better and happier life.

May you come through your storm, and may you find your pathway to happier life.

Because you deserve it, you really, really do.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 608: The Interest Rate of Time

Here’s something I wish I had understood earlier in my life…. every day that you are not being authentic to yourself is day of your life that you don’t get back. I know that’s probably a hard thing to hear, but since we’re doing difficult truths, let’s go with another…. Every day you are not being authentic to yourself makes it just that little bit harder to make the changes necessary to be authentic.

Such is the interest rate of time.

Turning 52 recently seems to have been some kind of a threshold for me. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching as I realize that I haven’t yet lived the life, and more importantly made the impact, that I feel like I want to make. While I’ve come further than the circumstances of my birth would have suggested, I still have this stirring in my soul to do more. A lot more.

And a large part of that is to live my life more authentically.

Which can mean different things to different people. For me, I think it means having harder conversations, as well as learning to find my voice in a way that respects the desire of my heart to be kind, while also letting the stronger side of me come out to play occasionally. I've realized that in striving to be ‘good’, I've actually sacrificed some of what it means to be me.

And that’s kind of a difficult balance to achieve.

I’ve been learning lately that I've been out of balance with myself in my attempt to serve, and I've been neglecting my own needs, let alone my own wants. When you combine growing up in a country where ambition and thinking you had something worth saying were considered distasteful, finding my voice through this writing has been an incredible blessing.

But I still struggle with the concept of who this work is leading me to become.

Yet all of this is framed against the backdrop understanding that the clock for me is ticking. Time has this funny way of luring you in with a ‘lower interest rate’… the idea that you’ve got years ahead of you. Then all of a sudden there’s a balloon payment when you realize that tomorrow is not promised, and even the rest of this day could be up for debate.

I’ve discovered that the longer you play with time, the more it charges you.

Which means that the longer you hold back finding your own voice, and your own pathway, you’re paying a greater interest rate in terms of pain and suffering. Please don’t misunderstand me, making the changes in your life to respect who you are, and to find your authentic voice, is not easy, and it’s not without bumps along the pathway.

It’s just that the sooner you get going on your work, the easier that journey is, and the greater the payoff is when you get there.

Because life doesn’t play far when it comes to the interest of time. You don’t get extra credit by sacrificing your voice on the altar of someone else’s feelings. You sure as hell don’t get a ‘get out of struggles free’ card by not living in a way that makes your heart sing. Every single day that I haven’t been 100% myself is a day I’ll live to regret if I don’t become who it is I want to be.

And like I've written before, regret is a poison you never want to taste if you can avoid it.

Some of you this week have reached out to explain how you feel lost, and can’t seem to find a sense of authenticity, much less an idea of who you really are. To those of you, I would implore you to begin the struggle of finding out who you are, and living in a way that makes you feel alive in your soul. If you’re not sure how to do that, give me a little time, because I’m working on something that I think might help you.

More on that soon.

But for now, may I ask you to respect yourself enough to do something kind for yourself today. It doesn’t have to be much, but every little investment you make for your soul will help to offset the interest that life, and the passing of time, are charging up against you.

Every day that you don’t live in alignment with who you really are has a cost.

And I’d like to help you avoid paying it if you can.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #607: Creation

Who are you becoming?

I ask this because in every journey I’ve ever helped someone traverse, there’s a goal that they have. Yet in asking a lot of questions, I've found that most of the time people have a really good idea about what they don’t want, but they have more trouble defining what it is exactly that they do want.

So who are you becoming?

I’m guessing if you are reading this work, you’re probably on your own journey, even if you didn’t choose to start it. You’re probably clearer on the concept of what you are trying to leave behind, and kind of fuzzy on the details of where you want to end up. Which is ok, because just getting started is the most important part, but knowing where you want that next step to take you can save some painful detours along the way.

And yet, sometimes getting lost is the beginning of finding where you’re going to end up.

So maybe the best question to start you off with is ‘where are you now?’ Can you answer that clearly as it relates to how you feel about yourself, your relationships, your dreams and desires? My usual response to asking this of myself is ‘not where I want to be’, which sounds ok, but it’s actually a deflection. It lacks specificity, and in truth, I could give a much better answer.

But we like to avoid being specific, because sometimes getting detailed is painful.

So let me put it another way – if now never changed, and if things stood where they are for the rest of your life, would you be ok with that? Of course, you realize that nothing ever actually stays unchanged, because time is moving us forwards, but if your life, your relationships with others (and especially with yourself) never grew from where they are now, could you live with that?

Or would you face every day moving further and further into regret and sadness.

I’ll be very honest with you, and say that right now I’m moving into the period of the year where the very energy to change seems to be lacking. I hate winter, as both my body and my soul seem to crave nothing more than a blanket and a bed, and I find it harder to look towards the future with a sense of growth and optimism. Yet I realize that in the period where nature sleeps, I could be changing things for the better.

But I have to focus on what it is that I actually want that future to be.

And the definition of what I don’t want it to look like isn’t enough, because that locks me into a pathway where all I have to do is move a little to be not where I was, and then I can stop. I might not be as happy as I want to be, but I’m not as unhappy as I used to be.

Focusing on the negatives you want to avoid is a surefire trap to never achieving the positives that you actually desire.

And the truth is, today could be day one of a new creation for me, and for you, if we want it to be. Sure that might be difficult, and sometimes it requires more faith than I might seem to have right now, but if I put off that which I could start until tomorrow, I’m just pushing my eventual accomplishment just that further out.

And if I keep choosing tomorrow as my start date, eventually all those tomorrows will run out.

So today, I’m going to challenge you a little bit. You don’t have to share it with me (although you can message me with it if you want to), but I want you to get really specific on who it is you are becoming. Don’t just talk about who you don’t want to be, but get as detailed as you can on the person who your journey is leading you to becoming.

The more that description moves you, the more it will motivate you to become that person.

For now, I’ll share a little of mine. I’ve been writing this work for almost 5 years now, and in that time I've discovered a passion for helping people that astounds me as much as it thrills me. The person I want to become is the person who sits with you, and helps you find your own sense of peace, happiness and fulfillment. I’ve had some of the most incredible and amazing experiences doing this, and I hope to have many, many more.

I am creating the life for myself in which I am better able to serve you.

So I’ll ask you….. who are you becoming?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 606: The Journey of Finding Yourself

How do you find your sense of worth? I ask this, because a good friend recently posted a question in response to one of my reflections that had been shared by mutual friend. The question that she asked was a simple one, but as often happens in life, the simplest questions can have rather complex answers. Yet the more I thought about it, I more I came realize that the answer wasn’t complex at all.

It’s just kind of a difficult one to swallow.

She was wondering how to get past her feelings of not being worth her own effort, or of someone else’s, and as soon as I read her question the answer came loud, and quick and strong. Forgive me if I use a little stronger language than normal as I answer this, but I’m going to do it as if I’m talking to her face-to-face, but also to you, one on one.

The answer is simple. You have to stop believing the bullshit that you are not.

And I get it, that doesn’t sound like much of an answer. If anything, it probably sounds kind of callous. Believe me when I tell you that I don’t mean it that way, but in order to get through all the programming that has taught you to believe this lie, sometimes it’s necessary for me to get really honest, and call it just how I see it.

The truth is you are worthy, but somewhere along the line, someone told you that you’re not.

And you believed them, probably because they held some kind of a position of authority over you. Maybe it was in a church or some organization, or maybe it was a parent or a family member. They probably didn’t use specific words, but the way they treated you left you made you feel like there was something wrong with you.

Then as so often happens, the voice that was used against you became the voice that you used against yourself.

You probably spent years living what you thought was the truth, holding back your voice, playing small, and doing the things that everybody else expected of you. They taught you to distrust your own instincts, to suppress your opinion under the weight of theirs, and to stay in the place which they had assigned to you. A place which served them, but did not serve not you.

The hard truth is that if you don’t feel worthy of your own effort, it’s because you don’t know yourself at all.

The only you that you know is the one they’ve created for you. And here’s the horrible secret, in order to keep you down, life layers so much pain over your own truth that getting there and finding it is so damn hard. You’ll have to face emotions that you have buried for so long, and you’ll have to face truths that you would do anything to hide.

It’s not for the faint of heart, but the journey of coming to know who you really are has a treasure at the end of it that has no price except that of radical honesty, and radical self-awareness.

Because once you truly come to understand who you are, you’ll start to understand why you deserve the very best that you have to give to yourself. You will come to see yourself very differently from the way that you do now.

Part of the respect that you’ll have for yourself will have been earned by the very fact that you took the journey and did the work. That you hung in there when you wanted to scream, when you wanted to throw up, when you had to let go of a thousand comforting lies in order to cling to one difficult but worthwhile truth.

The truth of who you were all along.

And here’s the kicker, the thing that will surprise you probably more than anything else. Once you have the tools to understand yourself, and you’ve taken that journey, you’ll start to see the truth of everybody else. Your whole damn world will change because once you know yourself, you’ll find that you can understand everybody else. You’ll see the truth of them, not the lies that you’ve been taught to believe.

Once you understand your worth, you’ll suddenly see the worth of everybody else.

And then everything changes. How you show up in the world changes, because you serve knowing the worth of the person you’re serving. You treat yourself differently, because you realize how very much you deserve the best you can give yourself. You’ll step out of the world of judgment, torment and shame and fear into a world full of wonder, imagination and beauty.

When you find yourself surrounded by people of incredible worth, you’ll see your worth reflected in them, and theirs in yours.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean things are easy. If anything it’s harder, because suddenly you understand why they don’t treat themselves the way that they should, and you’ll bite your tongue and hold back your tears because all you want to do is help them recognize their worth.

That’s where I am; that’s why I write this. I started this work to understand myself, and in doing so I came to understand and care for all of you.

Listen to me very carefully. Your worth is greater than that which you can understand right now. But hang in there, because I’m just getting started showing you all what you mean to me, and showing you the truth of yourselves.

The journey starts here, and I am here for you.

Now, and always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 605: The Me I See in You

I think I first saw you when I was 3-4 years old. I remember being so scared because I was sick and going to throw up, and my Dad was yelling at me for being a baby.

I can still remember what it felt to be there, feeling alone even though there was someone else in the room. So when you told me about how you were treated as a child and how that hurt you, I knew exactly how you felt that day.

Because I could see me in your experience, and I understood your pain.

Probably the next time I saw you I was around 7-8 years old. I remember so clearly how it felt to realize I was a child in a very big world. I had just closed to the front door on my way to school, and it felt like the whole world shifted into a different view, a sharper focus. So when you told me how lost you felt as a kid, and how you didn’t know how to handle that, I felt like I had known you forever.

I sensed every word that you said, and you seemed surprised that I could understand you so well. It was honestly pretty simple – the more I tapped into how I felt, the more you resonated.

And the greater my compassion for you became.

I know I saw you at 17, when my first serious girlfriend, the first real love of my life, broke up with me. I was such a mess, I cried for days, and I realize now that I felt shame for reacting the way that I did. So when you shared with me the heartbreak you were feeling, please believe me that I could feel all the pain and loneliness that you were going through, and all I wanted to do was hold you, and make it all go away.

I think I saw you there probably more than ever before.

I’m certain I noticed you when my wife surprised me with the news that we were pregnant. Someday I’ll share with you the funny (and honestly embarrassing) story of my reaction, but I want you to know that in that moment, I felt all the fear and uncertainty of being a parent, as well as an overwhelming, almost devastating sense of responsibility.

So when you shared with me your fears and frustrations as parent, I knew we were one and the same.

And I knew you on the day of that child’s birth, as the Doctors explained his heart problem, and how they had to open his chest and operate on his heart to save his life. The terror, the absolute and unthinkable fear that my child was going to die was something that I saw later on in you, as you explained to me the terrible loss and pain that you had experienced.

We were one in that moment, you and I. Different worlds, different lives, yet the same feelings, the same pain.

And when I held my wife as she cried over the passing of her wonderful father, and tried my best to helped her deal with the pain, I had no idea that I was seeing you, years later, as you explained to me the unfathomable experience of losing someone so close to you. I saw in her the same that I saw in you, and had some little concept of how to help you through your suffering.

In so many moments of my life, when I was looking at someone I cared about, it turns out I was seeing a reflection of you.

Because although we are different, we are more of the same than I think we ever understand. Although the recipe for my pain and suffering, or that of those whom I love, might have been different, the outcome of those ingredients produced the same emotions as the situations that you went through.

And if you look closely and carefully, in the pain of one person, you can see the suffering and heartache of another.

I’ve seen me in so many of you that sometimes my heart weeps for the things you have felt, are feeling, and will feel at a time in the future. If I could hold every single one of you, and try to take your pain, I would, because I know a little of how it feels to be you.

Because I have seen me in you, and you in me.

And so I cannot help but care for you.

Always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 604: Sorry as a Sign of Suffering

As she opened the door, the cold wind blew in a couple of leaves. The darkness still outside paid tribute to the fact that I was in the office a little earlier than usual, and her demeanor as she stepped over the threshold told me everything I needed to know.

Her shoulders were slightly slumped forwards, her head kind of down, and she hadn’t even closed the door behind her before she uttered her first of many apologies over the next 15 minutes or so.

“I’m so sorry you are here on your morning off”.

Which was strange when you think about it, because it wasn’t like she had forced me to be here. Yes, normally I would have been still at home that morning, but another appointment meant I was going to be in the area, and so getting there a little early really wasn’t that big of an inconvenience for me. In scheduling her appointment it was made clear to her that I was happy to accommodate her.

So a simple ‘thank you’ should have been all that she felt was necessary.

But it wasn’t. Over the next few minutes she had apologized probably 10 times or more, in different ways. I could tell that she felt really bad about me being there, and seemed to be doing her best to communicate how she felt, almost as though she was afraid I would be angry, or hold it against her in some way.

Although I tried to reassure her that I wouldn’t have been here this morning if it wasn’t something that I was ok with, I sadly think that my words could not penetrate the depths of her trauma so that she would have been able to hear me. I use the word trauma very specifically, because it’s the only think I know that creates this kind of a pattern in people.

The desperate need to apologize when it is not necessary is one of the surest scars of trauma that I know.

I have seen this so many times that it saddens me, where someone cannot stop feeling a sense of guilt, almost for just existing! In my experience, this occurs most often when a child grows up with a parent who has deeply unmet needs, and who inadvertently becomes over-sensitive about anything that can be taken as an insult, or an offense.

With no deliberate intention, they cultivate the constant reassurance of others to meet the needs that have not been met thus far.

So instead of a simple apology, where the adult focuses the child on their inherent goodness rather than a mistake that they made, the child instead learns that they need to constantly apologize so as to finally been seen as being truly repentant. The adult may rationalize this behavior in many different ways, but at the heart of the situation, there is always the same constant.

The adult is focusing on themselves, and not on the chance to help the child.

I wish I could tell you that this only occurs in the parent and child relationship, but that wouldn’t be true. I’ve seen this in marriages, in business, in sports… in just about every relationship in life. When I find someone who apologizes more often and more deeply than the situation would require, I can usually see the other markers that show me the sadness and the suffering they have gone through.

Because being around someone who needs your apologies is the surest way to know that you have lost touch with your own sense of self.

Someday we’ll discuss why even requiring an apology is a sign of its own problem, but for today, I’m just going to ask you to see if you can find that person in your life who apologizes more than is necessary, and do something for them that can change their life in a profound way.

And maybe it will change your life as well.

When they continue to apologize well beyond what the circumstances could require, I want you to stop them in the middle of an apology, and quietly tell them that their last apology was enough. If you get a chance, tell them how much they mean to you, and reassure them that with you, if there is ever a need for an apology, that one, and only one, is more than enough.

That you know their heart, you know they are sincere, and that such a thing need only be stated once.

As first, it will probably make them somewhat uncomfortable, as they realize that their behavior has brought them your notice, but if you follow up this moment with kindness, reassurance and genuine honesty, you can help them see their own worth and their own innate goodness. My guess is that they have lost touch with that since the time of their trauma.

In doing so, you may be a part of their healing, and help them find a greater sense of peace and happiness.

And maybe find a greater sense of your own.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #603: Time & Space Enough To Heal

(and yes, my wife gave me permission to post this)

It came out of nowhere. We’d just arrived back to the house on the Oregon coast that we had rented for the weekend, and it looked like we were going to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting quietly, listening to the waves and taking it easy. Little did I know that things were going to go very differently.

Because suddenly my wife Holly was standing in the kitchen, with her hand on the counter, and her eyes filling with tears. She was obviously processing something that was very hard for her.

It kind of shocked me, because I am usually acutely aware of her feelings, and I’d had no sensation that there was anything wrong. We’d just gone out to pick up a few groceries, and other than having to leave a drive through because it was way too slow, everything seemed fine. Yet something had happened in the grocery store that led to a breakthrough of significant proportions.

And it all goes back to a change I made several years ago.

In 2016, I changed my way of eating to a somewhat restricted system of food intake, which sounds a little crazy until I tell you that I lost 145lbs in 18 months. While Holly was really happy for my change, we both realized it was going to be a struggle for her, as baking and cooking are her primary transmission love languages, and since I was no longer eating carbohydrates, a lot of her favorite foods were now off the table for me.

Believe me when I tell you this has been a struggle for us.

Since I changed my way of eating, I pretty much take care of my own food preparation and cleanup most of the time, and have tried to get her to eat what she likes and wants. I've encouraged her to cook different meals for herself and our sons, offered to cook for her myself or go and get take out no matter what the time of the day.

There were times where I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t.

In all the years that we’ve dealt with this, she has been really reluctant to have her own ‘food life’, and I sometimes felt like it was her way of expressing frustration with my choices, and that she was subconsciously hoping that things would change.

Yeah – it turns out it I was absolutely, totally and completely wrong about that.

Because while we were out getting food before returning back to our rented beach home, she was walking down a Safeway grocery aisle trying to find something for herself for dinner and she just gave up. She figured that since I was going to be eating chicken salad, she would just default to that, even though she really didn’t want it. Yet something inside of her, that has controlled her for a very long time, kept telling her the same story.

“You’re not enough, you shouldn’t make an effort for yourself, you’re not special enough to make it worth doing, you should just go along and not be a problem to yourself or anyone else”.

And as she stood there in tears, and in a very certain amount of rage in that kitchen in our getaway home on the ocean, she realized for the very first time that it was that voice in her head that was holding her back, and that that she had been worth the effort all along.

At that moment, the realization of all she denied herself crashed down upon her.

I think a little back story here will help. Holly was raised in what I’m going to politely call a ‘high demand religion’. While her home was loving and safe, and her parents are wonderful people, from the moment of her birth her life plan was essentially mapped out for her. There were instructions on what she could and could not wear, what she could and could not consume.

Entertainment was along a strictly proscribed route, dating activities were expressly controlled, and she was subconsciously taught that her value as a human being was tightly bound to her thoughts, and her behaviors/worthiness. It was also taught to her in actions by the leaders of that faith (although not directly expressed in words) that she, as a woman, was always going to be a second class citizen, and that no matter how hard she tried, she was never going to be enough.

Although she has left behind the faith she was born into, that teaching had stuck with her, so that even the idea of taking the time to make her own meal was wrong, because she wasn’t worth the effort.

I always knew that self worth was an issue for her, but I had never put it all together.

So as she stood there in that kitchen, tears pouring out of her eyes, and even stamping her foot a little, she laid it out for me. All the years that she had stopped cooking, and defaulted to ‘whatever is easiest’, was never about her frustration over my way of eating, but rather the culmination of 50+ years of being made to feel like she was not worth the effort of herself, or anyone else.

And the realization of that was incredibly painful for both of us.

It would have been easy for me to have taken what she was saying personally, because like all of us during a moment of emotional pain, Holly wasn’t exactly at her most eloquent and careful with her choice of words. Even her body language could have been misinterpreted as an expression of frustration with me, but thankfully, I know that she is way too kind to feel that way.

I could feel the intention of her expression, and knew that right then was a time for me to allow her the space to have this experience. That’s actually hard for me, because whenever she is hurting, my instinct is always to try to comfort her, and ease her pain. But in that moment, any attempt by me, however well intentioned, would have been insulting.

I needed to allow her own experience, and to support her how she wanted, rather than how I wanted.

The rest of the afternoon was spent going shopping for something she wanted to eat (lobster Ravioli in Alfredo sauce), holding hands, gently talking and sharing a very special moment together. Like all of us, Holly has her own pathway to walk, and I’m learning to let her walk it in her own way.

Because no matter how good my intentions may be, I need to let her have her own experience, and support her where I can, but only at her request.

Needless to say, we will be going back to the ocean again. I think with enough time and space there, the both of us can heal together.

May you find you healing space, and time enough to be there.

So that we may all find out road to peace.

Together, always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #602: The Space Between Intention and Experience

I call it a space, but honestly, that’s probably not the best way to describe it. Sometimes it can be a tiny crack, and sometimes we’re talking Grand Canyon levels of problems. It can be the resting home of the best you had to offer, and the graveyard of all you dared to hope. But when you finally realize that you can’t control it anymore than you can control yourself, you’ll start to really learn the lesson.

That the space between intention and experience is never going to be the way you want it.

I have an elderly patient who grew up with 6 siblings. If you were to sit them down and have them write out what they felt like their upbringing was like… the answers will divide into two different camps. One will detail something that sounds amazing, the other not so much. The 4-3 split will tell you that the experiences were similar enough within those camps to have some validity, but the experiences themselves will be almost diametrically opposed.

Yet the intention of their parents was the same in each occasion.

‘So you’re telling me that I can’t guarantee that what I intend will happen’ I hear you cry, and even as you ask me the question, I have a pretty good idea that you already know the answer. Sure, you can use your best intentions combined with all your resources and influence, and still end up with someone having an experience that does not match up to what you intended.

Because even if you control the experience, you cannot control the meaning that they take from it.

One of the principles that I teach is to try to have yourself squared away enough that you have the minimal amount of need possible in any situation. It sounds difficult, and believe me it can be, but life has proven time and time again that the person who needs the least from any circumstance is the person who can walk away when necessary, or allow the situation to evolve organically if they choose to stay.

And that is especially important when allowing someone the space to have their own experience that is counter to what you intended.

To give you an example of this, let me share with you something that I expect to happen. If you ask either of my kids right now, they will both tell you that I am an amazing dad, and that they had a wonderful childhood. While I am grateful to hear that, I also recognize that they have limited experience, and have not yet seen all the things in their lives that I could have done better.

And one day, I expect them to tell me what those could have been.

Which will lead to me to a choice, yet it’s one that I have already made. Because in that day, when they express to me a realization that I could have been better, my answer will be a resounding ‘Yes, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t’. No argument, no equivocation. Whether or not I completely agree with them, I will not demean their experience, and will allow them to tell me what they think.

And in that agreement space, we will likely discuss the truth of it together, and probably find a meaning that we are both comfortable with.

Because even with the best of intentions, we cannot and should not control the meaning that someone else takes from any experience they have. If you remember nothing else from today’s post, remember this… their experience of any event gets combined with the meaning they assign to it, and their choice of meaning is beyond your control, and always should be.

The less you need from any encounter, the more space you are able to give everyone to have their own experience and assign their own meanings.

In fact, I can think of nothing more respectful to another human being than to allow them the space to experience life as they choose to. The less judgment (which comes from unfulfilled need) you carry into any situation, the greater space you give them, and the more people will come to you and be willing to listen to your opinion.

And when they listen to you, you can help them find their own questions for their own journey.

If this all sounds difficult, believe me, I understand. On Friday I’m going to share with you a recent experience that hopefully will put this into a little better perspective, and let you see how being able to hold space for someone’s experience can serve both you and them in ways that nothing else can.

Until then, may you continue to find peace and balance in your life.

Today, and always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 601: 601

If you had told me almost 5 years ago that one day I would be writing the 601st piece of this work, I doubt I would have believed you. The first few pieces I wrote weren’t shared under the Morning Reflections account, but just shared to my own personal page. I had written a few longer form pieces before, but when I started writing this work, I had only a vague idea of what I was doing.

Actually, it was probably a lot less than vague, like almost nonexistent.

In the first almost 2 years, I wrote 5 pieces a week, then life dealt me a significant curveball, and I dropped way back. In the 3 years that have followed, I was inconsistent, just putting up pieces here and there. I didn’t know why I was still writing, and for a time even though I had stopped. Yet here we are, at piece number 601, and I feel like the work is beginning anew.

I guess I tell you this in the hope that you will understand that real life is messy, and organic.

Which, given the fact that I am someone with a high certainty need, doesn’t feel good to me. I like detailed plans, clear objectives, and pathways with minimal options for failure and defeat. So I think it’s kind of ironic that what I consider to be probably the most important and meaningful contribution I've made to the world (so far) has actually been messy, and disjointed.

I think there’s a lesson there for me, if I’m willing to receive it.

Because the biggest things in your life are usually organic, disjointed and messy. Sometimes it’s hard to see the future, and to have a clear plan. When I emigrated to this country to marry my wife, the only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to be with her. I left behind a family, a potential career and an entire country and history to start a new life with her.

I didn’t know every step, I just knew what I wanted the outcome to be (us together).

Likewise, when I started this work, I didn’t really know what it was going to look like, I just wanted to write things to help people makes sense of this thing we call life. I don’t know why I felt like I had anything worth saying at the time, although I've always known I’m one of those people who see the world differently to most people, and sometimes that perspective has helped.

And even now, 600 pieces later, I’m still struggling to figure out exactly how this all comes together.

Yet I am getting clearer about the goal, or the ‘Why’ of this work. Quite simply, it’s about you. The person who reads this work, who sometimes shares a comment, or sends me a message when something I've written touches a chord. It’s even for the person who comes across one piece, shared by a friend, and who never reads another word I've written again.

Each of you, individually and as a group, matter to me.

I've seen enough of life to know that it can be short, painful, cruel and merciless. I've also seen where it can be beautiful, meaningful, loving and gentle. Life itself is an incredible opportunity, and yet I’ve seen it be difficult and hard.

There is always a little dark in the light, and a little light in the dark.

Which is why we all need a friend who can help us see things from a different perspective. When I titled this work Morning Reflections almost 5 years ago, I had no idea that what I was describing was how this work would come to serve – by reflecting light from a different source, so that you can see yourself differently.

As I have written before – if you could see yourself the way I see you, I think you would love yourself more, and care for yourself better.

So as I write this post, I realize that if I’m going to reach more people, and help in the way that I want to, I’m going to have to up my game. It’s probably a book, maybe a podcast, or even one day a YouTube channel. It probably means adding social media channels such as Instagram. It definitely means letting go of a lot of my fears about how I will be received, and just staying focused on how I can help you better.

In the end, it’s got to be about you.

Because you are worth it.

Always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #600: “What’s Holding You Back?”

There’s this thing I need to do. If I don’t, I’ll regret it more than I can imagine. The people who know me can’t understand why I’m not doing it already. It’s a combination of something I’m good at, something the world needs, something I love to do, and something I can be paid for.

In Japan, they call this concept ‘Ikigai’, and when you find the intersection of those four things, they say you’ve found the thing that’s going to make you happy.

Sounds good right?

And honestly, I want to do it. I’ve done it before at a much smaller level, and when I’m doing it, it’s like finding the river of purpose, and surfing it just hard as I can. It makes me feel like I've won the lottery of life, and it helps people, it helps them a lot. It opens up a gift inside of me, and using that gift brings me more joy and happiness than almost anything else in the world.

It makes no sense as to why I’m not doing it.

So I've thought long and hard about why I’m not doing it, and to tell you the truth, it comes down to one simple word; one human concept that you can probably identify with, and may have experienced from time to time.

Fear. Nothing more complicated than that.

Because doing this thing would force me out of my comfort zone – by a long way. Not that it would require me to do things that are uncomfortable – far from it. Almost everything it would require is something that I can do relatively easily, and most of the time something that I honestly really enjoy. But there’s one concept that it would need that I don’t feel comfortable with at all…

I know I have the ability, but I don’t know if I have the right.

Which sounds really crazy to me, even though I’m the one thinking it. Because in reality there’s no one who can give me “that right” and nobody can stop me from doing this thing. Yet I struggle so hard with the idea that I am the kind of person who should do it, and yet when I think about my motives, the way I can do it, and have done it, and the way I honestly care about people, there’s no reason as to why I shouldn’t.

But the fear is still there.

And there are some times when it’s almost paralyzing, and it’s taken me a long while to realize why it affects me so much. This next part might sound kind of crazy, so feel free to roll your eyeballs, but here goes.

I think part of the reason that I’m scared is because deep down, I feel like I was born to do it, and if I try and it doesn’t work out, there’s a part of me that’s afraid of what that will say about me.

And yes, I did just put up a piece two days ago that told you how you are enough just by being I do recognize the hypocrisy and the irony of that.

But I think part of the fear here comes from the concern for how I would question all of my instincts if I turned out to be wrong. After all, a lot of the time our unconscious instincts are the building blocks upon which we build our understanding of reality in the world, and if it turned out that I was merely letting my desires and hopes influence my opinions… that would be kind of hard for me to live with.

Am I crazy, or do you ever struggle with things like this?

I listened to a podcast recently where a guy who I’ve come to respect quite a lot was having a very deep conversation with a good friend of his. The friend was trying to work out why he hadn’t done a certain thing yet, and the guy who I respect told his friend something that really resonated with me. The quote was small, but the ramifications were profound.

“You just haven’t decided to step into your destiny yet”.

As I sit here just after midnight on Friday morning, staring at the screen with my fingers on the keyboard, I find myself questioning if this really is my destiny, or if “my ego is writing checks that my skill set can’t cash” I question if I have the right to do this, and yet I can’t think of good reason why shouldn’t.

Have you ever faced a moment like this, and if so how did you handle it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for sharing this crazy journey with me.

It means so much to me that you are reading and listening.

May you find peace today and always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #599: Letting Go of the Labels You Love or Hate

How do you describe yourself… are you kind or broken; difficult or desirable. Do you think of yourself as how you look, how you behave, what you believe, or how much money you make?

Have you even decided, in a moment of guilt and shame, to describe yourself by way of your supposed ‘weaknesses’, and branded your soul with a searing indictment that you probably don’t deserve?

Human beings love labels, and almost all of them are complete crap.

On an early morning drive to work yesterday, when the fog was laying a blanket over the wet roads and fields, I listened to a podcast of a new friend of mine. She is a brilliant human being, who is set on making a difference in the world.

Yet as she talked about a recent experience, she couldn’t help but describe herself with many different labels, but especially as an introvert.

How immediately she limits herself with that one word.

Because the truth is that once we have created a label for ourselves, we have immediately defined ourselves not only as we believe we are, but what we are not.

I grew up in pretty humble circumstances, and I still remember walking home with a friend when he asked me a question that still haunts me to this day. I don’t think he meant anything by it, but childhood curiosity is often partnered with a lack of understanding of how words can hurt and scar.

His simple and honest question left a mark that I still struggle with emotionally…

“Why is your family poor?”

Although the circumstances in which I live now are different from the ones I grew up with, I still, in the recesses of my mind that hide from the light and truth of reason, think of myself as poor.

As with most of the labels we carry, there is an emotion connected to it, a value judgment as to the worth of my soul, and this one is shame.

Even though I know it to be false, in my unguarded moments I still feel it to be true, and suffer the pain of that moment from so long ago once again.

In my work with people, in our attempts to help them find peace, we often delve deeply into the labels that they carry wrapped around themselves.

Often times someone holds onto the label of survivor, and while I am often in awe of their ability to survive terrible circumstances and events, that label creates a link to the trauma that they survived.

All the while they are a ‘survivor’, they are always attached to that which hurt them.

While I never ask anyone to let go of a label, we will often converse about different ways that they could see themselves, and try to find ways and words of honoring their existence that empower them without tying them to things that were, or things that are that not so.

Because in the end, every label that you wrap around your soul can be a limit on the experience you have while you are human.

Obviously there are some to which we cling with desperation, and some we aspire to with all the energy of our heart, yet in the end, every label is a definition away from the most powerful truth you could ever understand.

That instead of ‘being’ something, you just are. And that is more than enough.

Because when you can see the majesty and miracle of the consciousness within you, you come to realize that all of the labels are un-necessary, and transient. The more you give up the needs and the restrictions of labels, the more you can be present in the world with just your observation and your wonder.

And you’ll observe that people, and this planet, are wonderful.

May you find within the understanding that just being you, an awareness and consciousness, is more miraculous and majestic than any label you could give yourself.

When you can move through the world simply ‘being’ and not ‘being something’, you’ll act from a place within you that needs no definition, or labels, or restrictions.

You will simply be you.

And you are enough.

Always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings