“What makes you think you can paint?  You’re not an artist.  You’re kidding yourself!”  This is Judy Fuller’s inner voice at two a.m., when she wakes up churning about a painting she’s working on.  Judy is a self-taught artist whose extraordinary, luminous landscapes of the Florida wetlands are sold for thousands of dollars at an upscale gallery in my neighborhood.

Judy’s bright smile, twinkling eyes, and obvious success might suggest that she never hears a mean-spirited voice like this.   Not true.  Like the rest of us, Judy is human.  Like the rest of us, her mind can spin out of control.

“What do you do when you hear that voice?” I asked.  We were both at a party in the gallery, and by chance, happened to begin chatting.

“I just tell myself that I’m tired, that I worked hard today, and that I deserve to rest now,” Judy tells me.  “I remind myself that I’ve worked through blocks like this before, and I remember how wonderful it feels when I finish a painting and it pleases me and I just know it’s beautiful. That’s the truth.  The voice in the middle of the night isn’t.  And I get up the next morning and go to work again.”

“I have a post-it on the studio light switch. ‘The painted ponies go up and down.’ I see it at night when I turn off the lights.  It prepares me to remember the truth if the voice comes in the middle of the night.”

Judy’s not only a self-taught artist; she’s also a self-taught coach, who coaches herself when she hears the nagging, nay-saying inner voice that keeps so many of us from our dreams.  She gently reminds herself of the truth.

Here’s exactly how Judy stops her mind-chatter from stopping her:

1.  Pay attention to what is happening. Judy didn’t avoid the voice. She didn’t surf the internet or eat a quart of Chunky Monkey ice cream straight out of the container.  It’s important not to distract yourself at this point.

2.  Be compassionate. She spoke to herself gently and kindly.  She didn’t make herself wrong for having the thought, and didn’t berate herself further.  In other words, don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up.

3.  Find “the why.” Judy found reasons why the harsh voice was acting out.  She was tired.  She had been working hard.  She had an artistic problem that was unsolved.  She was discouraged.  You can similarly ask yourself: why could this voice be speaking out?  What’s it afraid of?  What’s it trying to tell me?

4.  Find evidence that the critical message is untrue. Judy reminded herself that she’s heard from this voice before, that she produces many beautiful paintings and loves what she does, and that her work in on display in galleries and is purchased by others.  This kind of specific, detailed, truthful evidence is exactly what we need to find when we are disputing the mind chatter that threatens to derail us.

5.  Acknowledge the real truth. Judy remembered what is true for her and what that truth feels like–when she finishes a painting and sees its beauty, she feels it, too.  In those moments, there’s no doubt.  She knows she’s an artist.  When you land on the real truth, your feelings will shift.  It feels so much better.

6.  Give yourself an immediate, healthy solution. “I tell myself to rest, that I can come back to the painting later, that I’ve worked it enough for now,” Judy said. Taking a break from a problem is a proven strategy for moving through it.  So is resting.  Three slow, gentle breaths, a walk outside, or a bath with lavender oil are remedies that work, too.  With experimentation, you can find what works for you.

7.  Don’t give up. The next day, Judy went back to her work.  She didn’t believe the voice and didn’t let its message stop her.    You don’t have to, either. You don’t have to believe everything you hear, even if it’s coming from inside your own head.   That critical voice doesn’t mean you should give up your dreams–just go back to work.

It’s a fantastic example of masterful self-coaching.  The proof?  Her beautiful art exists on canvasses, not as unfulfilled dreams, existing only inside her head.

So, the next time a voice inside your head says you can’t have what your soul yearns for, remind yourself as Judy does, “The painted ponies go up and down.”

Does she have an Inner Nag?

Over and over, I’ve been asked the same thing about my recent trip to Africa: what was the best part, the most important thing I learned, my biggest “aha”?  The people, the animals, the landscape, the country, and the African STAR workshop enriched my life in so many ways.  Did one thing stand out?

I puzzled over this, and then it hit me.

The biggest lesson for me was this–I went.  I didn’t take the advice of the whiney chorus of nagging, nay-saying voices in my head intoning “NO-O-O-O. Don’t go.  You shouldn’t do this,” somber as a criminal court judge handing down a life sentence without possibility of parole.

“You don’t have the time,” the clockwatcher crisply noted.  “You don’t have the money,” begged the voice of lack, convinced it’s the only thing between me and a life spent living under a bridge with my worldly belongings in a shopping cart.  “You didn’t plan this far enough in advance,” clucked the practical one as she studied the lists on her clipboard. “The long plane ride will wipe you out,” implored the hand-wringer that thinks danger and injury lurk around every corner.  “Everyone will think it’s foolish/be jealous/won’t like you,” pleaded the approval-junkie that desperately wants to get along well with others.

Is she looking for approval?

I’d heard them all before, cautioning me not to seize other opportunities in my life.  I’ve listened to their advice many times.  This time, I realized they were just the voices of limiting thoughts that weren’t true.   So I thanked them for their efforts.  And I ignored them.

Oh my stomach still did loops when I gave the airline agent my credit card information.  But I knew my feelings were coming from thoughts fueled by my Inner Nags.  So I bought the ticket.

And I had a fantastic trip with absolutely no regrets.  I was enchanted.  I learned.  I grew.  I shared amazing sights and transformative insights with fabulous people.  I had an adventure.  It felt light and airy and magical and free.  And it still does.

He doesn't seem to be worried about his future.

The Buddha taught that you can always know the sea because it always tastes of salt and you can always know enlightenment because it always tastes like freedom.

I can recall so many adventures that I’ve passed up because I chose to believe that chorus of hyper-cautious, sensible voices.  This time I listened to the deeper, wiser voice inside me.  “Go,” it whispered.  “This is an opportunity of a lifetime.  Don’t pass it up.  Go.”

Recognizing and listening to that still, quiet voice of truth is the greatest lesson I learned.   And it’s delicious.  It tastes like freedom.

Each dawn we bundle up and sleepily climb into an open Range Rover.  We pull thick wool blankets across our laps, gratefully tuck our hands around the hot water bottle nestled inside, and head out across a network of dirt trails traversing gently rolling hills and grassy fields.

We pass leafless tree-skeletons

and quiet ponds ringed with vibrant green marshes.

It looks very much like the open lands in the Colorado foothills, with one very significant exception.  Londolozi teems with an incredibly diverse array of animals and birds not found in the wild in North America.  Nyala, kudu, duiker, impala, hare, vulture, eagle, bat, heron, mongoose, monkey, warthog, baboon, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, elephant, water buffalo, hippopotamus, lion, leopard, rhinoceros, hyena, crocodile, duck, stork, lizard, guinea fowl, lilac-breasted roller–the list is endless and in short time, we see them all.

And it’s up close and personal. . . .

We sit motionless, spellbound by the antics of lion cubs pouncing on their macho but indulgent father.

We’re awed by the sublime

And the ridiculous

We’re even charged by this grumpy, one-tusked bull elephant.  Our adrenaline was running so high, I missed the photo op.

He’s probably responsible for snapping the tree limb here, so luckily he only wanted to chase us off.  We happily indulged him.

The full moon is shinier and fuller and more beautiful than ever before when sitting atop a termite mound.

And just as we were getting used to the idea that we really were in Africa, that we really were seeing the African land, the African moon, and that the animals really hadn’t escaped from the zoo, it was time to leave.

Toward the end of the week, a couple of folks in our group voiced their dread of returning to “the real world.”  Which raises a fascinating question—which one is the real world anyway?  Is it the one at home, with careers, relationships, fashion, television, mortgages, the internet, and animals who eat from cans?  Or is it here, in the African bush?

1.  The electric drill breaks in the middle of a big project that you had set the whole weekend aside for. You:
a.  Tell yourself the drill shouldn’t break because it’s not that old.
b.  Curse the drill, the traffic on the way to the home store to buy a new drill, and the long checkout line in the store.
c.  Tell yourself and the person next to you in the checkout line that it’s a rip-off that drills cost so much and don’t last long.
d.  All of the above.

2.  Your printer is feuding with your computer when you need a document pronto for an important meeting.  You:
a.  Tell yourself that the printer should work because it was working fine a minute ago.
b.  Hit the print command over and over.
c.  Tell yourself you are an idiot for waiting for the last minute to print the document, and worry about losing your job.
d.  Tell yourself that bad things always happen to you
e.  All of the above.

3.  You leave late and hit a huge traffic jam on your way to your dental appointment.  You:
a.  Tell yourself the traffic shouldn’t be jammed at this hour.
b.  Grab the steering wheel tightly, clench your teeth, and curse the traffic.
c.  Think up dramatic excuses to tell the dental receptionist, the dentist, and everyone in the waiting room about why you are late.
d.  Complain to everyone in the waiting room that you have way too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
e.  All of the above.

4.  You are remodeling your kitchen and the granite you ordered doesn’t arrive on time, requiring your contractor to postpone the installation of your counters and new sink.  You have a big party at your house Saturday night, and you were planning to show off your new kitchen.  You:
a.  Chew out the contractor about how he missed an important deadline.
b.  Cancel your party and tell your friends (and yourself) how stressful it is to remodel.
c.  Get in a huge fight with your partner who doesn’t want to cancel the party, and who just doesn’t get it.
d.  Spend the afternoon crying.
e.  All of the above.

If you chose a, b, c, d, or e, it’s called arguing with reality, and it’s an argument you will lose.  Always.

Here’s the truth:  drills break, printers don’t print, and traffic jams happen.  Refrigerators and washing machines break, too, usually when they are full.  Kids forget to take their homework to school, granite doesn’t arrive on time for your party, and your last pair of contact lenses rip as you take them out of the container.  No matter what you are endeavoring to do, sometimes there will be glitches, delays, foul-ups, screw-ups, and mess-ups.  Count on it.

Now, answer one more question:

You are in the middle of something and a glitch, delay, or foul-up happens.  You:

a.  Accept reality
b.  Respond with a peaceful heart
c.  Find your sense of humor
d.  All of the above

How is this situation right?

How is this situation perfect?

What difference is there between the two questions?  What is the difference in the answers you got?

This is a powerful way to get honest and to see reality from another perspective.  For me, it cuts right through all of the noise and clatter of self-righteousness and victimhood and blame and excuses.

I find that when I do this, I get all of my icky judgmental thoughts exposed to the light.  What’s left is honesty.  Sometimes that honesty still hurts.  But it’s a very different, clean hurt that I can allow myself to feel and move through.

The shift can be amazing.  Try it.  See for yourself what happens.

I’m up early, 4:30.  I put on Christmas music, light a fire in the fireplace, and pour the first cup of freshly brewed coffee.  I get out the card stock printed with a poem from Martha Beck’s book Steering by Starlight. I have bought a stamp of cascading snowflakes, an artsy ink pad and glitter to add a touch of magic to the insert for my Christmas cards.

I stamp the first poem. Hmmm. It doesn’t look so special. Hmmm. I add some glitter. Oh **!!??!!!**!! I blobbed. That looks stupid! I try again. I blob again! I take my finger and try to artfully smear my blob. Oh !!!XXX******1?!! I have tons of these to do!! Pull yourself together girl! After all you are an artist. This stuff, these stupid stamps and dumb glitter, is for kids for goodness sake!

I notice I don’t feel so Christmassy. My faced is screwed up. My shoulders are tight.  As I’m holding the glitter bottle, I notice that my hand and my teeth are clenched. I yell at my cat when he comes onto the table and attempts to relax amongst the craft supplies and just hang with me. Damn cat! Damn Christmas cards! Damn, damn, damn!

I move, to brood, in front of the fire. My journal is there beside the couch. I pour a second cup of coffee and write: “What are you thinking girl?”

“The inserts look stupid. I thought this would be fun. I thought they would be special. They’re not good enough.  I want people to like them, to think that they are special. I should have gone back to the place where I bought those bookmarks last year. Everyone really liked them and I got a lot of compliments.”

Whoa! Hang on one minute.
THEY aren’t good enough? Is that true?
That’s a really special poem you’ve got there.

“ I want the insert to be special. I’m giving it as a gift. I want it to be something people will like and appreciate and value.”

Sounds pretty demanding to me. Sounds pretty manipulating. You send it, and they will what?,  do what you want? be how you want?  Reminds me of a ransom note, Do this, or else… How do you feel when you think the inserts aren’t good enough?

“I feel like throwing everything out. I feel like trashing the cards, like throwing them in the fireplace.”

Doesn’t sound like peace and goodwill to me.
.
“I want people to like them.”

Like them? Tell me where I’m wrong here, but it sounds like it’s about you – about whether people like you. You want people to like you, isn’t that what’s true here?

“Okay, I do want people to like me. But, I want people to like the insert in the card. I just don’t think the inserts are good enough?”

You think, the INSERTS are not good enough?

Hmmmmmm. “Maybe I’m thinking I’m not good enough!”

What could you send if you felt, “I am good enough.”, or,  “I Am enough.” ?

“I could send love. I wouldn’t even need to send cards, I could engage every person on my card list in my heart and send them love. Or I could send love, that I’m actually feeling, with each card.”

How do you feel when you think, “I can send love.”?

“Good! I feel happy and open and Christmassy. I feel loving.”

Okay. Lets start again                                            :
Martha passed along a gift, pass it on.
Where did the gift come from?

“Hmmmm, The Source. The Source so loved the world a gift was given….
Hmmmm. The African people received the gift and passed it on.”

Good. Martha received a gift and passed it on…

“I received it and I pass it on.
The card insert receivers receive it and… that’s their business I stay out of it.”

Good! How do you feel now?

“I feel unwound, happy, relaxed, I feel Christmassy. I can feel the warmth of the fire, I can hear the beautiful Christmas music and I realize my cat is snuggled up beside me as I journal.”

How do you feel about the stamping and the glitter and everything now?

“I look forward to playing with the stamps and glitter. Really playing, joyfully playing, imprinting each card with joy and love and goodwill, blobs and all. I receive and I pass it on….I’m going to live while I’m alive!”

Live while you are alive…
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit
Learn to free yourself from all things that have molded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road…
Never forget that love
Requires that you be
The greatest person you are capable of being,
Self-generating and strong, and gentle -
Your own hero and star…
Be grateful for life as you live it,
And may a wonderful light
Always guide you along the unfolding road.

Here’s what I’m wondering: what if the statement, “It is easier to be joyful when I am away from my daily routine” is itself a painful story?  What if “when I am in my normal routine,  joy eludes me” is simply another version of it?   What would happen if you exposed those statements to our Truth questions:

What am I feeling?
What hurts?
What is the painful story I am telling myself?
Can I be sure this painful story is true?
Is my painful story working?
Can I think of another story that might work better?

What might you discover?

This week our joy diet focuses on relationships, and encourages us to be truthful in them to maximize our joy.  Although we’re encouraged to begin with small steps, I got a bigger opportunity, right away.

Last night I worked with a group of coaches-in-training and got caught up in my own “stuff.”  Blindly.  Unintentionally, to be sure.  But to be honest, I steered the session they were coaching in a direction I wanted it to go.  In other words, I got attached to the outcome.

This violates a fundamental rule of good coaching.  I was there as their mentor, a Master Coach, doing the exact opposite of what I’m there to help them learn.  And the joy diet principle of playing at work so that it becomes more like a game, where the outcome is less important than the process?  Let’s just say I forgot about that too.

In the discussion that followed the coaching session, I was initially bewildered by what one of the participants said:  “You wanted it to go in one direction and I had a different direction in mind.”  Ouch.  What made her statement painful was its truth.  She was absolutely right.

As we talked further, I recalled an earlier moment in the session when a remark the coaching client made touched an old sore place within me–something I thought had healed and resolved long, long ago. I wasn’t even aware of it until we began de-briefing the coaching session.   And there it was, open and oozing again, this time right in front of my students.  And being recorded as well.  I suddenly felt very defensive.

And then I got it.  I woke up to what had been going on inside me.  And I told my students the absolute truth—that I had a personal agenda.  Because my old judgments and hurts had been triggered.  We call this coaching in our blind spot.

Once I saw what had happened and opened up to my students, my confusion and defensiveness melted right on the spot. Immediately, I felt such a profound connection with these wonderful people.  I felt such admiration for the woman who’d spoken up to me about my pushing.  That took amazing courage.

The trainee who was getting coached by us had been discussing a very personal and painful topic in her life. She graciously emailed me after the class and I want to share her words because they demonstrate the awesome power of truth in our relationships:

“Thank you for your coaching tonight but most of all for being so TAO [transparent, authentic, and open] with us. I understood (intellectually) . . . how important it is but tonight I felt how important it is thanks to your sincerely being transparent, authentic and open with us. It will totally effect my coaching as well as my life.”

Tears welled up in my eyes when I read this.  I felt so honored to have screwed up in a way that helped her.  And helped the group. And helped me enormously.  I’ve struggled mightily with my perfectionism.  Last night, there was almost no struggle, as my perfectionism exposed its soft, pale belly to the light.

And you know what?  I think even if I had a chance for a re-do, I wouldn’t change a thing.  It was so much better this way.

My deepest thanks to all of you on the call last night.  You are awesome coaches!

Evy wrote about it in a newsletter of the Canadian Holistic Healing Association: “I couldn’t pinpoint just when the shift occurred, but one day I noticed that I had no negative thoughts about my body. I could look in the mirror at my naked reflection and be honestly awed by its beauty. I was totally at peace, with a complete, unalterable acceptance of the way my body was – a bowl of jello in a wheelchair.”

Although she had been given only a year to live, Evy ultimately made a full recovery from the disease.  In writing about her process, which you can read more about here, Evy stresses a point we have discussed at length in our Joy Diet class: she let go of outcome in her quest to accept herself.

She suggests this as a step in the healing journey, a step we can all wisely follow, no matter what kind of healing we are doing:  “Release all expectations of how it will turn out. Your body may heal completely – or not at all. You may find that a wheelchair, cane, walker or crutches becomes an integral part of your daily life. That does not determine whether or not you live in a state of wellness.”

Our wellness, indeed our wholeness, then, does not depend so much on whether we lose the weight, heal our knee, or find the perfect career.  We become well and whole when we make peace with all of us.

Our jobs then, as joy seekers, is to make peace with our overweight bodies, our strained backs, the times we yelled at our kids when we were tired and angry, the unkind things we said to ourselves, marrying the wrong person, failing the test, and on and on.  When we can accept all that we are, all that we’ve done, all the decisions we’ve made, all with an open and loving heart, we become whole.

The only thing that’s stopping us is the our failure to see the truth about our beauty and our magnificence.  Luckily, as joy dieters, we know the steps to get there.  And we’ll keep taking them.

A friend from out-of-town and staying with me, called to say she was at work, an hour away, and she’d forgotten something critical for her day.  She couldn’t leave, and asked if I had the time to drive it to her.

Of course I didn’t have the time.  No way.  My mental to-do list immediately popped into my consciousness.  I’m teaching a joy diet class in a few hours, I’m in the middle of writing a blog post, my email is piling up, and there are a bunch of phone calls to make…. The list is endless, limited only by my ability to dream up things to add to it.  Besides, it’s rush hour, and it might take two hours.  Or longer if there’s an accident on the expressway….

Being on the joy diet, though, I noticed the discomfort I was feeling.  A quick assessment of the Truth revealed that I will never complete that to-do list, and I had an opportunity to be a real friend in need.  I told her I would do it.

I took a few extra minutes to assemble some Treats for my journey–a cup of hot tea and some lyrical cds for the road.  I also reminded myself to expect the traffic to be heavy, and not to be surprised or get upset when it actually was slow-going or there was an accident.

The extra few minutes for Treats was well worth it.  I enjoyed the drive and used it to do my 15 minutes of Nothing, and the rest of the time just to goof-off.  The tea and music were delightful, too.  And the look of relief on my friend’s face was priceless.

I drove home, finished preparing this morning’s class, and let the rest of the list wait.   Sometimes that’s what joy is about.