Morning Reflection # 632: Why I Think so Many of Us Are Struggling Right Now

If you’ve followed this work for any length of time, you’ll know that I hate January and February. The fun of the holidays is over, and given the fact that I live in the Pacific Northwest, I’m treated to a diet of gray overcast skies, cold damp days and generally weather that makes you want to curl up with a good book, a heavy blanket and a warm drink in your hand.

I tend to live each day of these months trying to remember what blue skies and sunshine feels like.

But it’s not just the physical aspects of the weather, it’s literally the lack of light. As someone who grew up in England, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a real thing in my genetics. I find myself less motivated to do things, and even things that I’ve looked forward to lose some of their excitement. It’s like I come bursting out of the holidays with all of this enjoyment, trying to keep enough inertia to climb up the steep hill that is the following two months.

And this year honestly seems to be worse than most.

I think a lot of us are burned out over the last three years of life. We’ve lived with a greater level of loss, uncertainty, insecurity and contention than I can remember for many a year. As I talk with people every day, they seem to be carrying heavier burdens; struggling for the strength to find joy and happiness in their lives.

But I also get to see those who seem to be doing better.

So being the student of human nature that I am, I try to learn from these people. I don’t claim to have amassed any great knowledge, but what I have seen seems to help a little bit, especially in the cold dark mornings where my brain struggles to see any light in the future. Sometimes this manifests as a desire not to do anything, and sometimes it’s a belief that nothing will ever go right again.

I deal with this every year, so it’s not like I don’t know how the game is played.

But like I said, this year just seems heavier. So I’m trying to keep myself focused on several things. A part of that comes down to a very specific form of mindfulness, where I try to look at this moment right now objectively, rather than how I feel about it. Am I under an immediate threat, do I have options, does the voice in my head that tells me everything is going to fall apart have any validity behind it?

Like I’ve taught many times before, question, question, and then question some more.

But it also helps if I can find some meaning to the situation. True, there are times when the only meaning you can take from a situation is “wow this really sucks”, but often times there’s some kind of a hidden meaning that I can tease out of the experience of life. Which really leads me to my second method of working through the struggles…

If I can find a why, I can tolerate harder things.

As humans, we are meaning creating machines. Somehow difficult times are easier to process and live through if we have some kind of a meaning attached to it. The years of schooling to get my doctorate meant that I could provide for my family. The hours of writing this work are so that I might help you to live a happier life.

So trying to find a meaning even the middle of struggle helps make it easier.

I’ve realized this year that I can find meaning in my struggles if I share them with you. I don’t claim that my life is any better or any worse, or more difficult or any more enlightened, than anybody else’s. But what I have found is that in sharing both the understandings that I’ve reached and the experiences that have shaped me, I’m able to find both a sense of meaning, and also a sense of community.

Your likes and your comments mean more to me than I can tell you.

So my hope today, as we struggle through the rain, the cold, the fog, the overcast skies and the general lack of light, is that we can all find our way back to that spring sunshine having had “a good winter”. Maybe because we hibernated with our family; maybe because we reached out and made friends.

Or maybe, just maybe, because we paid attention to how we felt, and were kind to ourselves.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 631: The Difficult Currency of Kindness

I often use kindness as a measure of how I’m doing. Honestly, it’s the easiest way to see where I’m really at. The easier I find kindness for someone tells me how focused I am on myself versus how I feel about them. Yet to be honest, it’s never that simple of a balance, no matter how I try to convince myself that it should be.

Because sometimes kindness gets mixed up with judgment, and meaning.

There are people in my life for whom kindness is never difficult to find. These are people who are either special to me, or who have been kind to me, or who have been through some incredible trial that I’m not sure I could’ve handled. Sometimes it’s just somebody who I admire because I feel like they are so much further along in their journey.

Sadly, that last paragraph is kind of an indictment of where I’m at.

Because kindness shouldn’t be something that we “give” based on actions, station or relationship. If it’s truly going to be kindness that we practice, then kindness has to be our intention regardless of the person we are being kind to. The person who cut you off on the freeway is just as valuable of a human as the person who let you cut in when you were in the wrong lane.

If my kindness requires judgment, I really should be asking myself if it’s kindness at all.

And to be honest, sometimes the amount of kindness I can muster is a direct reflection of how I feel things are going in my life. I realize that we are all human, and that most of us struggle at some time to find kindness, but realistically if I’m having a great day, if things are going well and if I’m feeling safe, stable and secure, then kindness is a lot easier to find when compared to days when things are going badly.

Kindness, it seems, is a much more difficult currency than I was expecting.

Yet kindness is something we should all practice. At its core, kindnesses is an emotion that moves us away from the focus on ourselves, and by its very nature commends to our subconscious that we are okay. Because truly, it is hard to feel kindness for somebody else if your emotional needs are so unmet that you can’t help but focus on yourself.

So the amount of kindness I can muster is truly a way of understanding that I’m doing okay, and of telling my subconscious that it’s safe to care about others.

Please don’t misunderstand, there are people for whom kindness is very difficult. Far be it for me to judge someone else’s life, someone else’s emotions. I once knew somebody who was so lonely in their soul that all the kindness that they performed was either to feel connection with someone, or to feel like they were being “a good person” so that they might feel that they were meeting the demands of their faith.

The kindness that you are doing out of obligation is not truly kindness, but the fulfillment of a sense of duty. The kindness that you perform in order to “improve a connection” is not truly kindness, but at its core is a selfish desire and an attempt at manipulation.

True kindness should be a gift that is given without any expectation of reward or gratitude.

As a young man, my kindness was reserved for those who could help me, or those who fit my sense of what was right. As the years of seasoned me, I have come to realize that true kindness is about me recognizing the divinity of someone’s inherent worth, and doing what I can to improve their experience of existence.

Because no matter who you are, you are worthy of kindness, no matter what you have done.

And in saying that, I mean you specifically. Not just the generic ‘you’ meaning everyone who is reading this, but you as an individual. No matter where you’re at in your life, no matter how lost, or alone, or guilty that you might feel, you being deserving of my kindness is a reflection of your humanity and your value.

Once you come to understand that, then you’ll start to see how everyone else is worthy of it as well. Because as long as you judge someone else’s right to receive kindness, based on your judgment, you’re going to apply that very same judgment to yourself, and you’ll find yourself treating yourself unkindly as well.

We are all on our own journey, and although someone’s journey may seem easier than yours, or more difficult than yours, or their behavior may seem “better” or “worse” than yours, the ultimate difficulty in spending the currency of kindness lies in remembering that each soul, each consciousness, has a value above and beyond that which is determined by their actions.

Once you understand that, you’ll see and treat them, and yourself, very differently.

And you will find peace.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 630: The Search for Your Actual Self

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember a lot of cartoons as a kid where people would hunt for the treasure buried by pirates. There was always a map, with a big X marking the spot. Half of the time the X was actually in the wrong place, and the other half of the time there were dragons or crocodiles or some crazy thing guarding the way.

I guess I watched a lot of cartoons as a kid.

The funny thing is everybody wants the treasure. Not because they want to sit around counting their money, unless they’ve got a serious case of Scrooge McDuck-itis, but because they think that money will bring them happiness. Yet there are countless numbers of people who have “struck it rich” only to find that money didn’t change their underlying problems.

It turns out when you take away all the other challenges, that hole in your soul, that vacuum, just gets louder.

Because the real treasure in life is figuring out who you are. Sure, you’re an evolving consciousness, and who you are now is probably not who you were 20 years ago. But that’s okay, that’s how we’re supposed to be. But the problem is no one actually teaches you how to find who you’re supposed to be. We put kids in school for hours a day, weeks of the year, and we teach them everything but what’s really important.

How to find themselves, and live with that truth.

The really sad part is that there’s a whole industry of people telling you who you are. From preachers to marketers, CEOs to conmen, and all the influencers in between. There’s never been a time when there has been more people trying to make their money selling you “your authentic self”. They tell you what car to drive, what clothes to wear, what food to eat and what alcohol to drink.

Every single one of them, whether they know or not, is selling you a lie.

Because honestly the truth of who you are is up to you to discover. It’s a powerful but painful journey through the silent desert of your own soul. The entry fee isn’t measured in currency, but in your willingness to spend the time and the attention necessary. It also requires an incredible amount of self honesty, because you’ll find out things about yourself that are not pleasing

We all want to be the hero of our own story, but very few of us are willing to stand up and admit that we can be the villain as well.

The deeper you go into the journey, the more you find out about yourself. There’ll be days when it’s hard to look in the mirror, and days when you feel like you’re walking on air. The more you understand of yourself, the more everybody else begins to resonate. Yet at some point along the journey, there’s one single choice that you have to make before you go any further.

You have to sacrifice judgment of yourself, and then everybody else.

Because the grace you learn to extend to yourself for the multitude of screw ups that you’ve been responsible for is the same grace that you’ll end up giving to everybody else when you realize they’re just as human as you are. None of us are perfect; all of us are subject to the reality of being a mind trapped in a body, or a soul trapped in a sack.

Once you cross that threshold, you’ll finally begin to discover who you are.

Because it requires a great deal of time to figure yourself out. There are those of us out here trying to help, but in the end we can’t do the work for you. I can no more tell you who you are than you can tell me who I am. Both of us have to sit down, stop the world from spinning for a moment and do the hard work of listening to the quiet whispers of our souls, and figuring out what that all means.

It’s not easy, it certainly isn’t fun, but it’s the only way I know to really stop the hurting.

Because there are the moments when you find yourself, and you begin to resonate within. It’s like when an orchestra is tuning up, and 100 discordant sounds suddenly blend into one perfect tone. When you learn to listen to the music inside of your soul and you figure out how to get into resonance with yourself, then you can start to pick apart the puzzle of who you really are, and the more you know that, the more you’ll find peace.

Because once you become self resonant, you can exist in a world free of the need for anybody else.

Please don’t misunderstand me, that doesn’t mean you don’t have people in your life. It means you can have as many as you want, but they are there because you enjoy them, not because you can’t face yourself without them.

The journey to the center of your soul begins with the decision. The realization that you have to do this work because it’s the only way that you’re going to truly experience the joy and the thrill of being human. That realization is followed by the choice, the decision that will change everything going forwards.

When you decide to find out who you really are, is when you begin to take responsibility for your place in the universe.

And that’s really where the fun begins.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 629: Peeling the Onion

There’s this moment in Shrek movie where Donkey is driving Shrek nuts. Well, okay, there’s a number of those actually, but in this particular one Shrek is trying to explain to Donkey that ogres are not just unthinking beasts, but they can actually be sensitive, and that they have layers. Given that he is the comic relief, Donkey of course completely misunderstands this.

Problem is, so do we. Just not about ogres.

Because there’s something else that has a lot of layers, and it’s very easy to misunderstand, especially when dealing with yourself. But often we look at others who have been through difficult times and we think that by now they should have healed, as if another rotation around the sun magically grants them some kind of emotional clarity that has previously been missing.

Trauma, it seems, has a lot of layers.

I am at an interesting phase in my life, where it seems that I am peeling yet another layer of my emotional onion. It’s funny how when you peel an onion in real life it makes you cry, and when you peel another layer of trauma away, it can do the very same thing. I think what makes it hardest is not that it’s happening, but that I thought that I had healed this particular problem.

Newsflash, I can be just as blind about myself as anyone.

Yet having done a lot of work on myself, I find that stripping off this next layer, as unexpected as it was, is in some strange way a good thing. Not that it doesn’t suck, because let me tell you, it really sucks. Coming face-to-face with some of the truths that your subconscious has kept hidden from you because you couldn’t handle it at the time is never a fun experience.

I sometimes wonder if our subconscious knows just how much we can handle, and only allows us to see the few things at a time. I’m guessing that’s where the layers come in.

Or it could just be that I’ve never had the courage to look until now. Or maybe the circumstances weren’t right, or maybe whatever, however, whomever, whenever, etc. There’s nothing like over-thinking the problem to try and avoid it. In the past I would probably have tried to figure out all the permutations of life that got me here, mainly as a way to prevent myself from actually feeling.

So I’m trying not to do that.

Since we’re friends, I’ll admit to you that I’m frustrated to be peeling another layer. I honestly thought that this was something that I had healed, dealt with, and didn’t have to face again. You can imagine my surprise and annoyance when it comes back around all of a sudden, raising its head and demanding to be paid attention to.

But the truth is if I don’t look at it… if I don’t face it… I can’t deal with it.

Of course the timing is imperfect, but when is it ever? The longer I live, the more I realize that the universe keeps giving us the same problems over, and over, and over again until we figure out what we’re doing wrong. I don’t necessarily think that’s any grand design, just the nature of time and reality. It’s like the person who never fixes their oil leak, and keeps complaining when the light comes on to tell them that there’s a problem.

It is really frustrating though, when you think that you solved the problem, and it turns out all you done was put a Band-Aid over what was left.

If anyone ever tells you that the journey through self-awareness is easy, you know they haven’t gone deep enough. If anyone ever tells you that they’re done, they probably have a few layers they are not aware of yet.

The truth is, we’re all on the same journey. We all started at different places, and we’re all on our own path, but it’s essentially the same. We live, we laugh, we learn, we love, and if we’re lucky, we get to constantly refine ourselves against the rigors of reality. Grinding, smoothing and eventually polishing ourselves into someone who can transcend the day-to-day suffering, and who sees the long game and knows how to play it.

Whether you're healing from the loss of a layer, or are currently in the process of peeling another one, please know that I am very grateful for your presence in the universe. The fact that you are reading this work means that you are part of my journey, and I’m so thankful that you are here.

Sharing with you gives me a deeper sense of meaning for my own journey, and I think that makes it easier to bear.

Thank you for being here, and may your day bring you joy and peace.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 628: What I Want To Give You This Year

.As I sit here in my home office on January 1, 2023 I find myself worrying about you. I’ve lived long enough to know that this universe can be an incredible, amazing and wonderful place, full of joy, laughter and magic. But I also know that there are times when it is tough to be human, and it feels like we are surrounded by troubles, trials and problems.

And I really worry about how you’re doing.

Because it’s so easy for us to project a great image to the world. Social media is full of this; carefully curated content that never reveals the sadness and struggles of the people who profess that they are having such wonderful lives. I think sometimes we hold back our truth out of some strange belief that we have to be perfect in order to have value.

I want you to know that this is a place where you don’t have to be that way.

But I also want this to be a place where you come for inspiration, comfort and understanding. I’ve lived long enough to know that the greatest gifts in this world don’t have a monetary value, because they are things that can’t be purchased or procured. My hope is that I’m able to give you something of value every time I post, and that something I say makes every day of yours just that little “or a lot” better.

My goal for this work is that you come to a place of peace within yourself.

If I go back over the last 35 years that I’ve been on this “journey” there have been so many different stages. Anger, frustration, self-pity, rage, sadness. I’m very familiar with all of those. As I’ve done the work, and I’ve reached something that looks like a better place, I’ve come to understand who I am, and more importantly to realize a sense of gratitude for myself.

And that is something you can’t purchase, but I wish everybody could receive.

Years ago if you had come up to me and in some way said something to deliberately make me feel bad, my first reaction would have been sadness, followed by anger. You would have had control over how I felt simply by the way you treated me. I would’ve been your marionette, just the slightest movement of language was all it took to make me dance.

Honestly now, if someone treats me that way, the only control they have over me is to push me into a place of caring about them more. Because I’ve come to understand that people who really have a sense of peace about themselves don’t treat others that way. In fact, we pretty much go out of our way to try and avoid that kind of behavior.

Because we know how it feels, and we don’t desire that for you.

So when I see somebody acting in a way to hurt somebody else, and I can tell that they’re doing it deliberately, but I mostly see is somebody who is hurting, and who in their own way is crying out for attention. Often they’re seeking a sense of significance by feeling better than somebody else, or maybe they just desperate for some kind of human connection even if it’s negative and based in trouble.

Truly peaceful people try to solve problems, not create them.

And when it comes right down to it, that’s what I want for you. I have this crazy dream of changing the world by helping enough people find peace within themselves. Because the more peace will become as a society, the more the people who aren’t peaceful stand out, and we can see their pain and help them.

I realize that there will always be those who are truly beyond help, but if we can raise the standard of kindness in our society, we will find those who are beyond their help will have less people to hurt.

If there is a pathway to peace in this world, I truly, madly and deeply believe that the stones on that pathway are knowledge, healing and a profound desire to serve. It starts by coming to understand ourselves, so that we might truly understand what it is that we have to heal. When we recognize it, we can do the work of stopping our emotional bleeding, binding up our souls, and exchanging peace for pain, happiness for hurt, and a sublime sense of satisfaction for sadness.

I want you to become the most peaceful version of yourself.

Peace does not always mean that you’re happy, but it means that we have enough emotional foundation to see ourselves through the tough times, and to rejoice and enjoy the good. Peace is knowing when to walk away, and having emotional courage to treat yourself the way you deserve to be treated. Peace is recognizing pain in others, and desiring to reach out and heal.

May we together make a world where peace is our birthright, compassion our watchword, and kindness the trademark of our souls.

This is my wish and my desire for you.

This is why do what I do.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 627: Before You Go Changing Everything

I get it. The end of the year is approaching, and a new one starts on Sunday. It seems like a great time to make all these commitments, and resolve to become “a better you”, or to “spend less and save more”.

Maybe your changes have to do with less calories in, more exercise out. You might even be thinking about how to spend your time “more appropriately”, with less scrolling and more thinking.

Do you know what the statistics are on people keeping their New Year’s resolutions?

Honestly, it’s not great. As someone who has set and broken resolutions over the years, I’ve tried to come to an understanding of why that happens. When I finally figured out, it was one of those thunderbolt moments that hit me square between the eyes. My theory on why most New Year’s resolutions fail come down to this one simple truth…

People want to change something because they feel like they are not enough as they are.

And when it comes right down to it, any action you take in an attempt to feel “worthy” is always going to fail because you’re reinforcing the fact that you think you’re not enough. Two people can be performing the same action, but the person who is doing it out of a desperate sense of unworthiness is never going to have the same emotional strength is the person who’s doing it because they believe they deserve the outcome.

It’s one of those strange Zen principles that the more you can let go of your need to change something, or to “become something” the easier it becomes to do it.

Because we get caught up in this idea that something we are doing is “so hard”. The person who thinks that avoiding high calorie low nutrition foods for the next month is going to be “really difficult” has already talked themselves into a corner that they’re going to have to work hard to get out of. The person who realizes that they are enough, but they want to experience life at a different level, won’t feel like changing their diet is a sacrifice, it’s just a part of taking care of themselves.

Because it’s about how they view themselves, not how they want the rest of the world to view them.

Please understand, I’ve got nothing against making resolutions. I think it’s a great thing if, and only if, it’s actually rooted in the fundamental reality that you are enough, and that you want to experience life differently. Because at that point it’s not about some great problem that you’re trying to solve, it’s about an experience or even in existence that you’re going after.

If you’re running from not feeling like you’re enough, you’re going to get tired and stop. If you’re chasing something more because you feel like you deserve it, you’ll keep going until you get what you want.

And I get it sounds like this is a real semantics discussion, but it’s really not. The harder you grasp onto something, the more intense it seems, and the greater emotional energy is required to maintain that. When you can get to a point where you honestly realize that you’re going to be okay whether or not you “achieve your resolution” is the moment that the resolution becomes lighter and easier to accomplish.

When you want it, but don’t need it, is where desire trumps desperation, and your real power begins.

I know there’s at least one person reading this right now is saying to themselves “but what if I don’t feel worthy, and getting/doing/being/achieving whatever is the only way I’m going to feel worthy” I will tell you that even when you get there, it’s not going to change how you feel.

Your worthiness is NOT based on how you look, how you act, the size of house you live in or the money you spent on the car that you drive.

You are a human consciousness. One of the rarest, most complex and most divine entities in the entire known universe. If you need more adornment than that, something else to make you worthy, then what you actually need is to sit down and have a good conversation with yourself. Because you’re holding onto some rules about reality that are set up to make you fail.

You were enough the moment you were born.

So this weekend, as the calendar rolls over and 2022 becomes what was, just realize that 2023 doesn’t have to be some miraculous year of change. You’re already enough, this is just about fine-tuning your experience of being human. When you can fully realize that you don’t have to make “massive changes”, you can begin to realize that everything you want to change is realistically just a small step in a different direction.

It isn’t necessary to make you enough, it’s just going to change how you experience being you.

So stop running from desperation, and start embracing desire. It’ll give you a lot more energy, and it’ll make the journey a lot more fun. Whatever changes you are planning on making, make sure they are about honoring who you are, not some messed up idea about who you’re not.

Because honoring yourself is the pathway to a powerful experience.

The experience of being you.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 626: The Year of Failing Mightily

I have a prediction for the coming year. It’s funny how around this time people start looking at resolutions and promise certain behaviors, but I prefer to deal more in predictions. Especially those that I can be pretty sure I’m going to meet. And in this case, I know that this year there is one target I am very confident I am going to achieve.

I am going to royally screw some things up.

Which is honestly perfectly ok, and really freeing. A few years ago I decided to rent a cello to see if I really did want to play it, or if it just looked really cool but was not worth the amount of work I was going to have to put into it. Turns out that it was definitely the latter, and I sent that bad boy back within a couple of months, and it was made much easier by giving myself permission to turn it back in the moment I rented it.

It turns out that the freedom to fail is the greatest freedom of all.

In the entrepreneur world, there’s a saying that goes something like this. “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” Yet in reality that’s kind of dumb because unless something is so simple that success is a guarantee, there’s rarely a situation where you can’t fail, and anything you “guaranteed can’t fail” probably doesn’t have the power to change your life.

My goal for this coming year is about changing.

But for somebody like me, who is very high in need certainty, change can be really frightening, and I don’t really consider myself someone who’s very brave. Sure I have done some things in my life that looked courageous, like moving to an entirely different country or jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet, but the truth is there have been so many things in my life that I have done while scared senseless.

So giving myself permission to fail is kind of a new sensation for me.

Some of the failures that I anticipate that could happen might be somewhat expensive. A couple of them might be fairly embarrassing. Yet I’ve come to the understanding that unless I am willing to risk failure, I’m never going to risk being successful.

And that the greatest risk of all is playing everything safe.

I’ve always been impressed by people who I thought were courageous, and who had the ability to take what looked to me to be significant risks. I never considered myself one of those people, and it was a stunning realization to come to the understanding that I am no different to them, other than they had come to a decision that I hadn’t reached yet.

Failure meant different things to them, and their greatest risk would have been doing nothing.

So this for me becomes a year of doing things differently, and taking the risks that I think will get me I want to be. But it’s also knowing that there are going to be some epic, epic failures along the way, and that I can learn from them and become different to who I am right now.

And knowing that I’ll be okay no matter what.

Because in the end, the person whose opinion I have to fear most of all is just my own. I know who I am; I know where I’ve come from. I know the things I faced, and the things I’ve run from. I’ve seen myself in the middle of some of my greatest victories, and I’ve seen myself in some moments where I was too scared to try.

Neither of those really matter.

What matters is that I can live with myself today, knowing that I’m doing the things that I want to do, or the things that I believe I should do. The more comfortable I am with risk, the more certain the possibility of success. Nothing is an absolute, nothing is guaranteed, except the guarantee of failure if I try nothing at all.

And that’s the one failure I can’t live with.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 625: All That You Will Not Question

When I was younger, all I wanted was certainties and absolutes. I think it’s easier that way, living in a universe where the boundaries are known, the future is expected, and there’s no pesky realities to get in the way. Nuance wasn’t necessary, ambiguity was an anathema. I held onto everything I knew as tightly as I possibly could, and listened to nobody when it came to a difference of opinion.

But that kind of living will only get you so far, because eventually, if you’re reasonable and you are trying to make sense of everything, you will come to understand that the universe doesn’t care about your opinion, and she doesn’t give up her secrets willingly, if at all.

The longer you live, the more you start to realize that some questions will never be answered, and the quality of your life is determined not by the answers you receive, but by the questions that move you forwards.

A couple of weeks ago I was very blessed to be present on a videoconference run by a friend of mine. Her workshop was called “Shifting Journeys”, and in her unique and brilliant way, she guided those of us who were present through a process of identification, understanding and most importantly questioning.

I was very gratified when she questioned, and kindly disassembled, and answer I had given her.

Because she helped me see something that I hadn’t seen in myself.

I heard a saying many years ago that is really stuck with me throughout all of this work. It’s that “You Cannot See the Label on Your Own Jar”. No matter how much you know about yourself, there will always be things that you just can’t see because you’re a part of the equation, you’re too close to the problem.

Which is why I’m incredibly grateful for a friend like Sarah Brabbs.

Because in the midst of all of my writing and teaching, it’s still so easy not to see the truth of myself. The longer I am engaged on my journey, the deeper my questions have become. But every so often I’ll still find a whole avenue of possibility that I have skipped over in my mind because if felt “so normal and natural and a part of me” that I had not stopped to question whether or not it was really true.

Those are the moments when you may come to see yourself very differently.

But you can’t be afraid of that, even though I’ll be honest and tell you it can hurt sometimes. The pathway to inner peace isn’t the yellow brick road full of gold and clearly marked pathways. It’s a broken cobblestone path, poorly marked and even more poorly lit. You’ll fall, you’ll stub your toe, you’ll struggle with a desire to turn and run back the other way, retreating for safety in the past rather than facing fear in the future.

But the only way is forwards.

I found another part of the pathway last Thursday night as I wrestled with the reflection that finally went up on Friday morning. As I often do when I am stuck writing, I’ll turn to my wonderful wife and have her ask me questions. One question she asked last Thursday evening led to me speaking a truth that I had never fully understood until that moment, and it sent me on a whole new part of my journey.

One that if found to be true significantly changes everything I thought about my history.

And to be honest, it was pretty uncomfortable to realize that. As I drove down to my office in the cold dark morning on Friday to see the patient needed my help, my mind struggled with the possibility of having to reinterpret so much of what I “knew to be true”. If I’m being truly honest, it also means that I will have spent a good portion of my life subconsciously feeling like a victim that I may not have been.

My friends the journey is never over, but it is never not worthwhile.

Because even just questioning what a have been since last Thursday is a valuable process. It’s helping me see things in a different way, and opening my mind to possibilities that are as powerful as they are precarious.

And I am reminded that this journey that we call life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

The quality of your experience will depend on the quality of your questions, and your unwavering determination and dedication to finding as much truth as you possibly can.

May your journey be accompanied by better questions, and may you find peace today and always.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 624: The Gift That Only You Can Give

I’ve been asking patients all week if they are ready for Christmas. Sadly, most of them are. I say sadly because I’m not one of those people who is organized for Christmas. Despite the fact that I know it’s going to show up at the same time every year, I always get caught up in over-thinking what to buy my wife.

I’m always trying to find that “perfect” present for her.

Yet in truth, she just grateful to get anything. There have been times when I have hit a home run with a present, and times when I have honestly struck out pretty pathetically. Yet the funny thing is her response is always the same. She is just grateful that I tried to put some thought into getting her something.

And it’s funny that some of the “best gifts’ that I’ve come up with have actually been purchased not out of design, but out of desperation.

One Christmas I bought her a laminator from Costco. She was heavily into scrapbooking at the time and it looked like a really thoughtful gift. Honestly, it was two days before Christmas, I was desperately trying to find something that she would like. It’s the same with the bidet that is attached to the toilet in her bathroom. Seems like a really thoughtful gift, honestly my version of a Hail Mary.

Maybe that’s why I procrastinate each year, and end up panicking a couple of days before Christmas. It seems I do my best work when I’m under a lot of stress.

But what I’m really struggling with this year is the knowledge that I can’t give you what I really want you to have. I’ve been sitting in my office now on the evening of Thursday the 22nd for about three hours, trying to find the right words for this reflection, and I realized all of a sudden that it just can’t be done.

Because the gift that I want you to have is a gift you can only give yourself.

I can tell you a million times how wonderful I think you are. I can write paragraphs on why I believe in the divinity of human consciousness, and how that spark of life in each one of us is probably the rarest thing in the universe. I can tell you all of the amazing things that you do, and how the goodness inside of you is so inspiring.

But if you don’t believe it, it doesn’t matter what I tell you.

I don’t claim to be perfect at this, far from it, but over the last few months as I’ve done some really deep work on my soul, I’ve come to find a new level of acceptance for myself. I had a situation recently where I made a mistake on something, and rather than spiral down into the pit of constant self derision, I was able to realize that the mistake I made was just a symptom of being human, and that it didn’t change the value of my soul.

How I wish I could help you feel that way about yourself.

Because I’m guessing that you struggle sometimes to give yourself the space to be human. I’m pretty certain that at some point you’ve questioned the worth of your soul and the value of your presence in the world based on something that you thought, said or did that you felt was incompatible with being a “good person”.

I’m fairly confident that you have times were you give grace to everybody else, and yet withhold it from yourself.

We seem to have this messed up idea that only perfection is acceptable, and that anything less makes us broken. I’ve talked to people who’ve come from terrible situations, and who have overcome so many challenges, and yet the biggest challenges they face is hugging their own soul in true and complete acceptance.

And as much as I’d like to help you feel that way, the truth is that the only way to receive that gift is to give it to yourself.

So this Christmas season I’m asking you to give one more gift. Whether you are someone who knows exactly what to get and is done by September, or whether you like me are one of those people who desperately struggle for inspiration on December 24, I’d like you to place one gift under the tree, for the person who you probably neglect most in your life.

And be ready to receive it when you open it.

It doesn’t have to be total acceptance of everything. It doesn’t even have to be forgiveness for some “mistake” that is probably much greater in your mind that it is anybody else’s. All I want you to do this for one minute to just wrap yourself up in your own arms, giving yourself a big hug, and tell yourself that you are enough.

And believe it.

Of all the gifts you give, none will make those who love you happier than seeing you be happy with yourself.

May you find peace and joy this Christmas season, and may you give yourself the gift of grace and understanding.

Because you are worth it. You really, really are.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 623: A Good Long Look in the Mirror

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Since we’re friends, I’ll be honest and tell you what goes through my head every morning. There’s this guy standing there… and he looks older than I think he should. He’s tired and the wrinkles and gray hairs are starting to show. He’s heavier than he has been, but still a lot lighter than he once was.

And yet I really don’t know if he’s who I thought I would be.

But that’s just the surface… and you know me well enough to know that I’m never going to stop there. So inside those eyes, deep back where the light barely reaches, there’s a reflection that reveals so many things. Fear and ambition, kindness and frustration. A touch (or more) of madness, and the beginnings of something that could possibly be wisdom.

But that’s just in the moment… while time within our minds can go forward, and go back.

So when the light bounces off the silver that’s just behind the glass, I can see so many things from the past. Successes and failures, lost loves and moments that passed into eternity. Memories of things as they were, and desires of how I wish they could have been. When I see that man, I see all that he wishes he could have done, and I see the alchemical fluid of regret run through his veins.

Altering the way he feels about himself in the now.

Yet I also see futures in that moment of reflection, and the inimitable realms of possibility and potential. Sometimes I wonder if all that I see there is just a reflection of my ego, and the desperate desires of a soul that sometimes feels as though he has seen too much, and that the only way any of this can make any sense is if he becomes the person he is trying to find in the mirror.

For he feels like a better ending is the only outcome that will make the story of his life make sense.

But most of all when I look into the mirror, I see a thousand beliefs of self, and how the story of my life should be. I see and feel the desire for certainty and kindness in a universe that deals in neither, and I sometime fear the touch of madness that seems to be the reflection of the possible genius lurking somewhere deep within.

Always there is judgment, and none of that is certain.

For as long as I seek to quantify what I see, and try to make sense of the experiences that I remember, I am stuck in a paradigm of judgment rather than gratitude. Instead of being grateful to the man of the past for all that he has done to make my life of this moment possible, I seek to quantify his passage behind the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil.

Judgment involves time, while gratitude is rooted firmly in the now.

I try to focus on the feelings I have for that man, and seek to question the motivations and meanings inherent in the emotions that my mirror self raises. For every belief about him, there is a story that requires interpretation, and I have long since learned that the statements I hold true about him should always be open to question, especially the ones I have held onto the longest.

For what we believe and feel about ourselves is more often than not a response to the traumas of life, rather than an understanding of who we really are.

But most of all, as I stand there looking at him, I try to find a space in my soul for him to exist without my judgment and my expectations. I have came to realize that the greater space I can hold for me to be myself, the greater the space I can hold for you to be yourself, and the better I can help you find a way to your own truth.

Because you have a self in the mirror, and I’m guessing you think about them too.

If I were to sum up the point of this work, and try to distill all of these writings into one statement, it would probably be this… That I seek to help those with whom I connect to find a pathway to their own selves, so that they may accept themselves, and reduce both the suffering they experience, and the suffering that they may cause.

The universe seems to have enough suffering built in for a lifetime.

And my mission is to decrease it in any way I can.

Who do you see when you take a good long look in the mirror?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 622: Honoring Now

This weekend, to celebrate my wife Holly’s birthday last week, we headed up to our get away in the mountains.

About two and a half hours away is a small city situated next to a lake, surrounded by opportunities for skiing and forests of pine trees. We try to get away here as often as is practical, renting the same room in the same hotel, and just spending time together away from the world.

But our plans for a quiet weekend took a rather different turn.

We hadn’t been in the hotel room for more than about an hour, when I began yawning deeply, and struggling to stay awake. Holly suggested that I take a nap, and so I grabbed my pillows and a blanket, and crashed out on the floor in front of the gas fireplace. The sound of the fan on the fireplace is a perfect white noise for me, and I slept deeply, waking a few hours later.

But as sometimes happens, my mind never quite woke back up.

We spent a quiet evening together reading and talking, and when the time came for bed, I found it hard to fall asleep, which is funny because I never really felt like I had properly woken up since the nap. Eventually, somewhere around 1am, I finally managed to fall asleep, only to awaken about 4 hours later with a fairly nasty migraine. My head was throbbing, my neck was burning, I felt nauseous, and I knew that the rest of my day was probably trashed.

So I headed back over to the fireplace, where I spent the next 5 hours trying to sleep.

Eventually it came time for us to check out. I’d taken some medication a short time before, and thankfully I was able to ride in our truck without throwing up, but the journey home wasn’t the drive I had been hoping for. We took the canyon route home, and driving beside a river and pine trees covered in snow is usually a beautiful sight, but this time all I wanted to do was get home and sleep some more.

And even now, sitting in my office at home on a Sunday afternoon, I feel tired, weak, and ready to crash.

Yet as I look back over the last few months, I can see that I have been ‘courting’ this migraine for a while now. I've been sleeping less than I usually do, drinking less water than I know is good for me, and honestly taking less time to do the things that I know helpful, like rest, meditation and being careful about my nutrition. I've also been less frequent about taking the right supplements that can help prevent or reduce the severity of migraines like this.

But I also realize that’s only part of the story.

Because if I’m truly honest with myself (and therefore with you), I have to admit that I've been running in a stress loop for a while now. There are several things clamoring for my attention, and I've been guilty of trying to follow all of them. I’m trying to find my way forward from where I am, to where I want to be, and it’s easy to get caught up in chasing the future.

And not remember to honor where I am right now.

I think we’ve all been through such a strain these last few years that we need to be living with more intent for the now, and getting back to understanding who we are as a people, as a community, as nations and as a world. We have lived, and are living, through moments of history that are unlike anything in the last 50 years, and it’s taking a toll on all of us.

I think most of us would agree that life today is significantly different to where it was 3 years ago.

For me, I see a loss of common community, a decrease in kindness, and a fracture of the basic human decency that has done so much to sustain us in the past. I see people who are exhausted, and who need space to unpack and unwind. I see a desperate need for the simplicity of human goodness, where we reach out to each other out of concern instead of conflict.

I think we’re all tired, and it’s easy to ignore it and keep going until our minds or our bodies break, and we’re forced to rest so that we might heal.

I can see how I have lost a sense of now over the last few months, as I’ve been trying to change the future.

So I guess this reflection really is about reminding both of us that we need to slow down sometimes, and honor the moment that we have in front of us. To take some time for rest, hydration, relaxation and relief. To treat ourselves with the level of kindness we would treat others, and to show our gratitude for all that we do have by letting it be enough for a while.

I guess it’s really about finding a balance between what was, what is, and what could be.

And understanding that in this moment, we are enough.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 621: Just Let Go

Writer’s block is no joke. I’ve been sitting at this computer, either typing on the keyboard or speaking into the microphone, for several hours now. I’ve started and abandoned over five different pieces of work, because I’ve been trying to find the thread of what to write about tonight.

I’ve been doing this work long enough to realize that when I can’t seem to find my way, and when nothing seems to be working the way it should, it’s because I’m supposed to write something that is going to touch someone specifically.

So if that’s you, I really hope this is what you need.

Because as I sat and reread those five pieces that are now just fragments on my desktop, I realized there was one single theme running through all of them. One simple truth that is so easy to say, and yet so freaking hard to do. Not the concept is difficult to understand, but that to actually execute on that understanding requires a surrender not only of ego, but sometimes of dreams.

Because often the thing that is holding you back is the thing that you can’t stop holding onto.

Many years ago, I heard an incredibly wise statement from someone who honestly I didn’t expect it from. That probably sounds like a terrible judgment, but this wasn’t somebody who was particularly eloquent of speech, nor expressive in his manner. Yet he said something that really struck me, and that stayed with me for a really long time now.

“The older I get the less I know, but what I do know I am more sure of”.

As humans we tend to “know” so many things. It’s our way of surviving the chaos that is this universe into which we are born. We believe things should be a certain way; that what we see as good should always triumph; that the “bad” things we’ve done should disqualify us from a certain kind of happiness.

Sometimes we “know” so much that we are imprisoned by walls of our own certainty.

And yet so many of those “truths” that we cling to honestly don’t serve to make us happy. Sometimes we are so full of expectations about how the world should be, and about how our lives should turn out, that we miss the beauty and the wonder of what actually is here and now.

But giving up that “knowledge” is to embrace uncertainty, and the possibility that everything we know could be wrong.

Which is a horrible thing to experience. As someone who is very high in need certainty, I hate living with the possibility that I could be wrong about so many things. Yet the longer I live, the more I am confronted with the understanding that so many things that I “knew” in my former years were actually wrong, and that almost everything that has helped me back, has been a misunderstanding in my own mind.

And learning to let go and embrace uncertainty is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Because I’m one of those people who tends to hold onto things way too long. Maybe it was the “truth” that I couldn’t be successful. Another one was the concept that I didn’t have anything to say that could be of value to others. If we go way back, one of those difficult little things that I held for far too long was the understanding that I didn’t deserve to be happy because there was something inherently wrong with me.

The day that I realized that everything holding me back was not in the world, but only inside my head, was both an incredible gift of realization and a terrible moment of truth.

If I’m honest, I still struggle to let go of many of those beliefs that are so ingrained in me, because it feels like I’m breaking off parts of my soul in my effort to move beyond them. Giving up a “known” for something that is “unknown” brings with it the risk of failure and a feeling like a fool, and it also opens the door for the possibility that I have been wrong about so many things, and that I have been the single solitary jailer in the penitentiary of my soul.

All because I held so tightly to something that wasn’t necessarily so.

Whoever you are out there, I hope this message reaches you. I don’t know what you’re holding onto, and I don’t know what’s holding you back, but I hope you can find it in your heart to maybe spend a few minutes letting go of that “belief” that is making you unhappy, so that you can find a pathway to your own peace and understanding.

The universe is hard enough as it is. Let’s not make it any worse by holding onto things that just hold us back.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection] # 620 Pouring My Soul into Yours

I know where you’ve been. Those darkest nights, when it felt like the world was caving in on you, when every sense of hope had fled, and darkness seemed like the only game in town.

Sometimes the slightest shift in the ground that you stand on can reveal the cracks in the foundation of all that you hold dear, and you find yourself lost in a never ending sea of nightmares and maybes.

Those are the nights that reveal the very depths and damage of our souls.

If you’ve ever had that experience, you know exactly what I’m talking about. My guess is that you’re here in this work because you’ve been there… lost, knowing only that the here and now that is doesn’t serve you anymore, and that you had to find a new way to exist, to live, to be.

It hurts, doesn’t it?

And what seems to cut the deepest is how you begin to feel about yourself. Because rather than understand that you’ve never been taught how to handle this, chances are you probably found an outlet for all that fear, turning it back in on yourself. Distrust, frustration, loathing and anger. All directed back on yourself because at least feeling something that you could handle was better than feeling something that felt so completely out of control.

And in doing so, do you began the slow, silent, sequential destruction of your soul.

Maybe you’re on that pathway downwards, maybe you’ve hit the bottom and stayed there, or maybe you’re slowly trying to claw your way back up. Where we are at doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is the direction you’re going. But when you feel so bad about yourself that nothing feels like it will ever be right anymore, it’s hard to find the energy and the courage to stand and start again.

That’s where I come in.

Because I know what it’s like to be there. To feel alone in a world full of strangers, to feel lost and without direction. To have given up trusting yourself, and to be subject to a thousand screaming voices of shame. Maybe it’s gone on so long that you have no idea who you are anymore, and you’re faced every morning with a stranger in the mirror who couldn’t possibly be you.

But you’re deeply afraid that it is.

Truthfully, you don’t know that person anymore. You’ve been there all of their life, but it feels like it’s been some kind of dark fantasy, some twisted fairytale that’s broken into a million pieces, and you have no idea how it all goes back together. Sometimes the tiny remnants of your soul feels like a shattered mirror that will never be whole again.

And you have no idea where to start.

Which is why I do what I do. When I was lost to myself, I was blessed to find people who could shine a light on my journey. Sometimes just having some random person on the Internet who I had come to trust tell me that they believed in me gave me just enough strength to get through one more day. Sometimes what they said helping me understand where my feet were to follow.

And slowly, step-by-step, I began walking out of the darkness.

The sad part about our society is that we send children to school and teach them all manner of wonders, yet never what to do when nothing makes sense, and when it feels like a very principles that you lived your life by no longer work. We learn how to solve equations, but nobody teaches us how to find ourselves when we’ve lived so long away from the truths that make us who we are.

Which is why I do what I do.

Because let me be completely honest with you. There are very few experiences in the world that match up to that moment where somebody gets it. When something you’ve written, or said or done for them helps them see a pathway out of their own despair, there’s a moment of synchronicity that is beyond word, beyond understanding. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

That’s why do what I do, that’s what I’m chasing.

The world in which we teach children how to find the truth of who they are for themselves. The way in which we respect and uplift each other, knowing that the divinity of the human soul is worthy of our respect, our admiration and most importantly, our love.

That’s how I feel about everyone of you.

You’re worth every word I write, every podcast I labor through. You’re worth the nights when I can’t get this right, and I’m awake way longer than I should be. You’re worth every hour sat at this keyboard and this microphone, trying to pour all the love and wisdom I have into your soul, so that you might come to see you as I see you.

And maybe, just maybe, show you the light out of your darkness, and help you find a way home to yourself.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 619: 5 Years

This work began on December 11, 2017. At that time I was a mess… well at least a worse mess than I am now. I was struggling at the end of my first year of being a solo physician in my own practice. I had no idea what I was doing, only that my soul felt like I was on the wrong path. Nothing was easy, and it felt like everything I did was a step in the wrong direction.

If you’ve ever been there, I’m truly sorry. It’s a terrible way to feel.

About the only thing I was certain of at the time was that something was missing. I felt like I was living someone else’s life, spending my days in somebody else’s recipe. The problem was I didn’t know what my recipe looked like, just this deep overwhelming sense of being out of alignment with who I really am and what I really feel.

And the knowledge that something had to change.

So I began writing this work. I can’t tell you exactly what instinct made me do that, other than writing is something that has always come fairly easy to me. I had written a few long form pieces on Facebook a couple of years before that, but hadn’t really done anything with them. Yet something intrigued me, so I sat down one day to see what would come out.

In my very first post I talked about being broken, and the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is restored with gold.

I had no idea that I was doing that very process to myself, although at the time I would’ve considered myself broken. The truth was very simple - I wasn’t living my truth, and when you do that long enough, you start to lose connection with your own soul. Eventually that process will grind you down until you’re just a shell, disconnected pieces of a person who could be whole if only someone could help put them back together.

So I started doing the work on myself.

Day after day sitting at a computer, snatching the words out of the chaos of my head, crafting a different reality than the one I had been led into. Coming to understand who I am, what I believe, and how my understanding of the universe is put together. I don’t claim to know everything, and in fact most of the time I think most of what we know is more of a wish than a reality.

But writing this work allowed me to let go of so many things that weren’t serving me.

There’s an incredible power that comes from becoming congruent with how you really feel. Most of all, it gives you the courage to be able to admit that there’s so much that you don’t know. We spend so much of our time grasping for certainties in a universe that promises anything but. The more aligned you are in your soul, the less you need external absolutes.

Because you start to realize that you’re actually enough.

Every piece I’ve written has contained a small portion of my soul. I shared experiences and thoughts, moments and madness. The original goal of this work was to try to help me, and yet the feedback I’ve received has helped me realize that I have a chance to contribute in a way that would have seemed ridiculous so many years ago.

Coming to know myself has been an incredible process.

Don’t get me wrong though, it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Doing this work has required a radical level of self honesty that sometimes I wish I didn’t have. I’ve had to make apologies for the way I behaved, and I’ve also had to extend that level of understanding to others when it would’ve been so much easier to wallow in a sense of offense and injury.

Because when you finally understand why you’re doing something, you can understand why other people are behaving in their own way.

Coming to know yourself is the journey of becoming fully human. Cognizant of your strengths, patient with your weaknesses. Accepting your soul at the foundation level, and choosing your future based on what you really want, not what others want for you. Finding courage and strength that you never knew existed, to step out into the void of your own journey, resolute and relentless.

Because the prize of claiming your own soul is worth everything that it costs you.

Once you own yourself, the noise from others falls away. You come to rely on very few opinions, because you’ve done the work to fully own your own. Always open to new theories, but knowing that the final decision will is, and always will be, yours.

Because doing the work has given you the right to have faith and confidence in yourself.

The journey I began five years ago will last a lifetime. Always awakening each day knowing that there are new things to see, deeper levels to unlock, demons to slay and lessons to learn.

The adventure of claiming my soul is the most powerful and productive journey I will ever take.

If you’re new here, or if you have been following since those first faltering steps, please understand how grateful I am for you. Every follow, every like, every comment and every message served to remind me that this is indeed the way forward for me.

I pray my service will be of value to you.

Today, and always.

Best wishes.

Alan.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Podcast: Episode 3

Ok, 3rd week of the 'Podcast'.

This week I share some thoughts about living with our mistakes, and how imposter syndrome affects me. I hope there is something in here of value that helps you.

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

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection # 618: Living with the Mistakes that I’ve Made

Do you ever lie awake at night, unable to sleep because of the thoughts that run through your head? In my past, when this would happen, my brain would generally focus on the really dumb small things that I had done that day, like said something that on reflection wasn’t particularly intelligent or done something that made me look stupid.

I think a lot of us do this as children, because we’re still learning our way.

But I found as I get older that my brain doesn’t focus on those small and insignificant things. Maybe it’s because I’ve healed a lot of those insecurities that made those things painful, or maybe it’s just because the older I get, those small mistakes are dwarfed by other things… things that in the moment weren’t so embarrassing, but when compounded with time their magnitude changes.

And you come to see how they have affected your life, and in some cases still do.

I once heard the phrase that the pathway to wisdom is littered with mistakes, and I don’t know if I would consider myself wise at this point, but I’ve certainly put in the work of mistakes Yet as time has passed and the small things fall away, I find it harder and harder to do with the emotional fallout of some of the bigger mistakes of my life.

Because they didn’t just affect me, they affected my family and sometimes the people around me.

It’s very easy to look back on those mistakes and get lost in the nature/nurture argument, and trying to figure out whether these are a result of the circumstances of my environment, the nature of my personality, or some strange combination of the two. Yet I realize in doing that, I am really trying to find a point of blame, which doesn’t really help with anything.

Because what I’m really trying to do is live with the grief of lost opportunities, and the fear of making worse mistakes in the future.

In one of my previous pieces, I seem to remember writing that regret was a poison. Honestly after 600+ pieces of this work I can’t tell you all the things that I’ve written, but that one stands out. I guess at this point in my life I’m trying to learn to live with the poison of regret, while realizing that even that emotion compresses my soul, and makes it harder to do the things I need to do to change the outcome of some of those mistakes.

In trying to change, I am confronted with all the reasons that I made the mistakes in the first place.

And that can be really hard to live with. On the nights where sleep won’t come, or in the mornings where the world is quiet and I don’t have to rush out of the door to work, I find myself beset by sadness and a longing for things to be different. There are times when I can see the pathway that will lead me out of this place, but the very fears that prevented me from choosing differently back then assail me now, whispering a subtle toxin to my soul.

About how I will only make a mistake, screw things up, and feel even worse about myself when it has all gone wrong.

It’s very easy to get caught in that cycle of regret and fear. The longer I spend in those overwhelming emotions, the less confident I feel making the changes necessary to enable different future. I know that I cannot go back and change the past, but I’m trying to write a better ending to the story that I currently live, and I cling to the hope that a better ending than the one I currently envision will in some way help make all of the past worth it.

Because if all those mistakes were stepping stones to something great, I can live with that meaning. If not, then I have to learn to live with a very different emotional story than the one I would like to be.

I think it’s like one of those crazy Zen loops, where in order to make it easier to move forward in the future I have to forgive myself for the past, but the best way to forgive myself for the past is to move into a different future first. I think it’s far too easy to get caught into that way of thinking, lost in an eternal and internal pattern of frustration and fear.

Breaking that kind of a loop can be difficult.

I know it’s possible, I’ve done it before, but as I get older these kind of changes become harder. The baggage is greater, the outcome of the risks gets progressively larger, and yet in some ways so does the payoff if things work out.

Yet in order to move forwards, I have to find a belief in myself but is sometimes lacking.

Mistakes only lead to wisdom if you learn from them, and can overcome the frailties of human nature that got you there in the first place.

And sometimes that overcoming requires a degree of courage that is not easy to manifest.

But as the years pass, and the pain of regret grows, the pressure on me to rewrite the ending of the story becomes greater, and sometimes an abundance of fear, a cup of desperation and a small pinch of hope are all the ingredients you need to create a recipe for change.

And although change can be scary, if it works out, it can be all the healing that your soul needs.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #617: Finding a Way Home

A few nights ago, a cute little cat seemed to ‘adopt’ our family. It was cold outside, and my son had just gone to check on something with his car. He came back in laughing as he had had to fight to get through the door without a cat coming in.

Since we don’t own a cat, this was rather unexpected. Apparently the cat was very friendly, and seemed determined to come through the door with him.

Little did we know the journey we were about to begin.

We kept checking throughout the evening, and the cat seemed to mount a very determined assault on our porch. He was sitting there quite calmly, just staring up at the door. If we opened it a crack to see if he was out there, he would move hopefully towards the door.

If we didn’t have our wonderful four-year-old silver Labrador named Cocoa, we would have probably let the cat in just because it was below freezing, and he seemed to be trying to get out of the cold.

But there’s no way that our dog would’ve allowed that, and I didn’t feel like spending the rest of the evening cleaning up whatever mess the dog and the cat would make as they fought their way through the house.

As someone who’s had animals as pets for most of my life, I struggle seeing any animal suffer. I won’t go to an animal shelter, because I could honestly leave with every single animal there. The knowledge that a cat was outside in the cold made me uncomfortable, so I took him a plate of tuna for food, and a box with some towels both inside and over the top so that he would have somewhere warm to sleep.

I felt like I was at least doing something.

Over the next couple of days, this friendly cat would keep showing up. I realize that it was probably because I’ve given him some decent food, and we continued feeding him some chicken which he ate in a fairly calm manner. It didn’t seem like he was starving, and his overall condition led us to believe that he had a home somewhere where he was well taken care of.

But he kept coming back, and with the weather getting colder, both Holly and I were becoming anxious for his welfare.

We decided that we would give it a couple more days, and then take him to the animal shelter to see if he had been chipped. I was perfectly willing to continue with this plan of action, but Holly was struggling more and more each day with the idea that this sweet and affectionate cat was not being taken care of, and could be out there all alone.

So she took to the Internet, and started hunting.

It seems that our area has a lost and found pets page, and Holly, who is probably the greatest Internet researcher that I’ve ever met, decided to see if somebody had reported a cat like this missing. As well as unique markings on his face, he actually has some other unique features which make him fairly distinct and easily recognizable.

And after some hunting, it seemed that she had found a match.

Because back in July someone had posted a picture looking just like this little guy, and said that he had gone missing after July 4. There was nothing else mentioned, and so we just assumed that the cat had been found and then gone missing again, and he was just wandering type who liked to hit on kind people and get them to share food with him.

It’s not unknown in the cat world, and we are certainly the kind of people who are an easy target for an enterprising cat.

Holly reached out to see if the cat was still missing, and you can imagine our surprise when we got an excited reply from the cat’s owner. It seems that they hadn’t been able to get him into the house on July 4th and probably being scared by fireworks the cat, whose name turns out to be Mittens, had gone missing. He usually slept every night with their oldest child, but they hadn’t seen anything of him in five months.

To say they were surprised and elated is probably a huge understatement.

So Tuesday lunchtime we came home and found Mittens hanging outside of our house. We enticed him into our garage with even more food, and spend the afternoon with him. We placed a hot pad on the ground, turned it onto warm, put a couple of towels over it and just let him lay there while we fed him, petted him and gave him as much attention as we could give to make up for the last five months where he’s been running alone.

And waited until his family got there.

When is owner got out of the car, he was accompanied by a boy of around 8-9 years old. This was the young man who Mittens would sleep with every night, and to say that he was overjoyed to see his cat would also be an understatement. It was certainly a bittersweet moment, because in the few days that we had been adopted by this cat, we had come to care for him a lot.

But seeing the light that young boy’s face meant more to us than anything else.

I’m not sure what Mittens felt about being returned home, because he’d found a couple of suckers who were feeding him and providing him a hot pad to lay on while they stroked him and paid him every attention. I think after 5 months roaming without a home, he probably felt like he’d checked into a 5 star hotel, and he seemed determined to enjoy his stay as much as possible.

Later this evening we had some messages from his owner to let us know that Mittens was making himself at home, getting re-acquainted with his family, and was doing very well. His owner thanked us over and over, and it was great to know that this little cat, who had somehow talked his way into our hearts, was again living his best life, at home with his family.

After all the time he was on his own, he deserves all the love and attention they can give him.

But honestly, I kind of miss him already.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #616: The Messy Truth of Change

I’d love to tell you that the big changes in my life were the results of intention, planning and taken in calm moments of rational thought. However since I don’t lie to you, I can’t because that would be complete crap. When I look at the biggest changes in my life, they all came from situations that felt super uncomfortable.

Change starts when you’re not happy where you are.

My weight loss journey of losing 145 pounds in 18 months didn’t start with me sitting down calmly one day deciding that now is finally the time to lose weight. It came because I felt horrible when I was denied life insurance coverage, and I felt like I’d let my family down. I was in a difficult work situation, and frankly being significantly overweight was risky for both my health and my career.

So I radically changed how I was eating, and I’ve stuck with it for 6 ½ years.

Exiting that difficult work situation wasn’t exactly pretty either. I should have left long before I did, but it took things coming to a head in a really difficult meeting for me to realize that a change had to be made, and to be completely honest with you, it was my wife who made the decision that we both knew was the correct one to get me out of a situation that had the potential to kill me through stress and worry.

What looked like a brave and confident move was honestly anything but.

Even my decision to go skydiving was born out of a desire to become somebody different. I was emotionally stuck in a place where I just didn’t see a way forwards, and I figured that doing something that scared me half to death might be a way to get things moving again. It wasn’t hundred percent successful in that, but it did help me see that the fear controlling me wasn’t something that had to hold me back at all.

Sometimes we change out of desire; sometimes we change out of fear. Most often times it’s a combination of both.

I’m pretty confident if you look back in your life at some of the really big decisions, you’ll see that they were driven a mixture of emotions. I’ve had people tell me that they married their partner because they love them, but were also afraid of being alone. I’ve listened to people explain their career choice as a matter of reason and fear but also passion and want.

Only you know why you made the decisions that you did, but I’m guessing you also know a few things that you haven’t done that you wish you had.

Like I talked about in the previous post, over the last few months I’ve been trying to do things differently, and one of those is make changes not out of fear, but out of desire. It’s often said that on our deathbeds we will regret the things we didn’t do far more than the things that we did, and I truly believe the failing to change into the person that will make you happy is probably one of the deepest regrets that somebody ever has.

Please don’t let that be you.

I understand the change is scary. As someone who grew up in a fair amount of chaos, I’ll be honest and tell you that I hate change. I would love nothing more than to be able to live my life quietly, easily and changing as little as possible, but I also realize that the greatest growth times in my life have been the times right been pushed to the limit.

Sometimes the only way to find out who we really are is to walk that sharp edge without having a plan B.

In a few weeks we will start the new year, and people will make their resolutions like they always do. Sometimes people even keep them. Yet there’s no magical power around the first of the year, and there’s no sudden burst of insight, inspiration or willpower that happens when the clock strikes 12 in the calendar changes. You can make a change in your life anytime you want to.

And it’s better to do it when you want to, rather than when you need to.

If you are in the middle of a change right now and it’s scary, please know you have my admiration and my respect. If there is a change you know you need to make, but you haven’t been able to yet, please don’t be hard on yourself about it. Life can be difficult enough without you adding to your burdens with judgment and guilt.

Most of all, if you’re facing a change, may I suggest to you try to imagine what could happen if everything works out.

Because sometimes it does.

As I exited that difficult work situation I spoke of, my wonderful wife bought me a plaque that hangs on the wall in my office at home. She purchased it for Christmas that year, despite our agreement not to spend money on presents for each other because we didn’t know what the future held. It doesn’t have pretty pictures, it doesn’t have a beautiful font. It just has 12 words that have made so much of a difference to me.

“What if I fail? Oh but my darling, what if you fly?”

Not to get too corny, but she has been the wind beneath my wings for 26 years, and she inspires me every day to try to be better. Sometimes the changes that we make are out of fear, or out of desire, but sometimes they are made because of the greatest force in the universe.

Simply out of love.

Whatever change are considering, please try loving yourself as you go through it. Make time for yourself, celebrate yourself and be kind to yourself.

My wife Holly has a simple mantra. “Be kind, do good. Love is a verb”.

May you find love for yourself today and always, and may that love give you the strength to change in a way that will make you happy.

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Podbyte: Episode 2

So here's the second episode of my 'podcast'? I'm still figuring this out, but I hope something in this 14 minute episode gives you some insight and understanding. This is all extemporaneous, so there are pauses and meanderings because that's how I think and teach. Again I'm still learning, so this is kind of rough, but I appreciate you putting up with me while I learn this by doing.

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

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings

Morning Reflection #615: The Self You Trust

It sounds kind of funny doesn’t it – I mean if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust? Of all the people in all of the world, the one person you should be able to count on to look after your best interests is the person looking back at you in the mirror. Yet I've worked with people who have a profound distrust for themselves, and honestly for some pretty good reasons.

Because until you’ve taken a good look at yourself, you actually might be your worst enemy.

But how can that be you ask? Well for many years I was in fact my own worst enemy. If you and I had sat down together, I would have regaled you with stories of all the things that were done wrong to me, how unfair it was, and how difficult it made my life. I would’ve probably added in about how dysfunctional my childhood was, and how the universe had set me up to fail.

If that doesn’t sound like me now, hopefully it isn’t.

But it’s been a long road to get from where I was to where I am now, and I realize that I am far from where I want to be. That change happened gradually over a period of many years, starting as I sat across from a therapist who taught me a lesson that I will never forget. It’s probably the only lesson I remember from him, but at the time he taught it to me, I really didn’t want to listen.

Because listening meant laying aside my story, and I had so much emotional energy invested in it, so much justification for my life, that I wasn’t willing to give it up.

So when he told me that my feelings were a symptom of the thoughts that were holding me back, I’ll be very honest and say I didn’t take that too kindly. I felt like he was asking me to give up all the justifications for where I was, and essentially take a sense of responsibility for all the mistakes that I had made. When you feel as badly about yourself as I did back then, the last thing you want is anything that will make you feel worse.

So I held fast to my feelings, and probably wasted several more years believing that everything I thought and felt was correct.

And in doing so I kept myself trapped. I wasn’t moving any closer to feeling happy; I wasn’t progressing in my career; I wasn’t even making any changes to me as a person. Yet I felt like I was perfectly justified in feeling the way I did, and I didn’t want to listen to anybody who would tell me otherwise. It took a long time for me to realize that by holding onto that story, I was actually hurting myself.

And when I couldn’t safely trust any of my feelings, I realize I had to go to work on myself.

It takes some pretty radical self honesty to stare into your own soul and see the truth of it. Most of us don’t have the knowledge or the understanding to do that, and it certainly took me time to learn it. I had to create a framework that allowed me to find ways to explain the patterns of behavior that I saw in myself, and I soon realized that the same systems can be applied to everybody else.

You know something is true when you see it working everywhere.

It’s been a long journey, coming to a point where I can trust myself to be my greatest strength. I can’t tell you the number of hours I’ve spent reading, studying, reflecting and meditating. I’ve lost count of the number of self-limiting beliefs that I’ve had to let go of, and the number of truths about myself and the universe that I’ve had to accept.

If that sounds difficult, then I didn’t describe it properly. It can be brutal.

But in the end, I finally found a point where I have the self that I can trust. The me who I know now is so different than the me I believed that I was. It doesn’t mean that I’m perfect right now, very far from it, but it means that I can trust myself to be honest in all of my decisions. That might mean accepting that I’m doing something out of fear, or it might mean recognizing that I have the strength to do what it is that I want to do.

Most of all, it means that in all things, I know why I’m doing it.

And I’m honest enough with myself to be okay with that. That has required me to let go of a lot of stories, or to reinterpret them in ways that strengthen me rather than make me feel good. I’m learning to live with the reality that where I am is where I am, and to work on letting go of the judgment against myself for that. On the start of this journey I blamed the world, in the middle of it I blamed myself, and at this point, I realize that things just are.

Judgment gets me nowhere; now I try to observe, reflect, decide and act.

In the end, whatever peace and happiness I find in my life will come not from an external source, but from making peace with and learning to trust myself.

Because once you have that, you realize just how little you need to get through everything else.

So the question is – do you trust yourself?

— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings