Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change – this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress. ~ Bruce Barton
I got an interesting e-mail the other day. It was one of those mass e-mail things that happen when you subscribe to somebody’s newsletter. The newsletter in question was from Marie Forleo. Without any interest in going into much detail, we’ll just say I have a weird relationship with Marie Forleo. I love the insight she shares. The bigger part of me is suggesting to leave it there. And so I shall.
When people say, “you are absolutely in love with yourself” and then say, “I don’t mean that in a bad way”, I guess we believe somehow that being in love with ourselves is a bad thing. I’m sure there’s a sordid history behind it.
For those of you who have spent any length of time on this here blog, you know that I’m a big fan of authentic living. The entire reason I started this blog was to be honest with myself and you about all the ways my life NEEDED to change– out of necessity that the stuff I was doing wasn’t working. Then came all the ways my life was changing because of the different things I put into play. I’ve said this probably a zillion times before. My own version of the “Eat, Pray, Love” journey I chronicled on this here forum was the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s just as true now as it was just shy of 4 years ago when this whole thing started. I’m utterly amazed at how far my life has evolved. I look back to where I was. So lost. So alone. So afraid of being in my own skin. And now, to have a new Good Day colleague (I’ve been on Good Day Philly every Tuesday (and one Thursday) for the last 6 weeks) who couldn’t know me as well as you do–affirm my process–by saying “you are absolutely in love with yourself”. AND my taking that as more of a compliment than “wow, you are so pretty.” Is a major inner work coup. I’m just saying.
When people say, “you are absolutely in love with yourself” and then say, “I don’t mean that in a bad way”, I guess we believe somehow that being in love with ourselves is a bad thing. I’m sure there’s a sordid history behind it. I’m positive it has something to do with the egomaniacal a-holes who’ve walked the planet in full arrogance mode, with little reason to be as self-absorbed as they walked with. That’s narcissistic self-loathing, cloaked in insecurity, passed off as self love. Self love is a whole other mind state, that comes from living and being true to one’s most authentic self.
I remember giggling a little at the notion that someone other than me would notice my self love. I don’t know why. We’ll suppose I’m just giddy that way. When I really think about it, finding an authentic love for myself was exactly what I’ve been working these last 3-4 years to accomplish. To walk in triumph and awesome because that’s exactly how I was designed. To be fully present and accepting of everything I am already–work in progress and all. If I don’t love me–from the cracks on my heels to those one or two peeking grays on my temples (that I do dye honey, please). Who outside of me will? If I don’t view my very life and the skin I walk in as a sanctuary, where outside of me will be safe for me? Where will I find solace and peace? Think about that for a second. Everywhere I go, there I am. I can’t hide from myself. That’s all I am and can be. Myself. If myself isn’t safe, where is safe then? Again, if I don’t love myself, who outside of me will?
Everywhere I go, there I am. I can’t hide from myself. That’s all I am and can be. Myself. If myself isn’t safe, where is safe then? Again, if I don’t love myself, who outside of me will?
The lot of us, spend a great deal of time believing that everything outside of ourselves is safer than we are. We’re told that our bodies aren’t safe. Our sexual desires aren’t safe. Everybody outside of us knows us better than we do. Everybody knows “the secret” but us. Our lives are designed to suck. The very idea that we were born from sin, makes us believe that we are the shit of this planet and how can we ever walk in love for our very selves that way? Oh, right. When somebody saves us from ourselves. Pfff. These years I’ve spent upleveling my thinking, believing in my talents and finding the love of and in me that has been here all the time– has been such a beautiful, beautiful experience. Living an authentic life–honey–there is nothing like it. To tell the truth–whatever it is– and see how it also helps others uplevel their own lives, is amazing. I have greater friends than I ever have. I am walking in my spirit daily, growing, loving the adventure my life is and I’m confident now more than ever that my life is for a grand reason. My story is valuable. My journey has roots in something magnificent.
I say all of that because the e-mail I mentioned earlier was about a Life Class Oprah is producing in the near future and Marie Forleo sent that mass e-mail to solicit our stories for that show. When I first looked at the e-mail, I all but blew it off. Plus, the kinds of stories they were looking for, I didn’t see myself participating. It was about how thinking positively instantly changed our lives. I reasoned, thinking positively didn’t change my life instantly. It was a looooong process. It was like training for a Tough Mudder (sort of). It was a lot of cleaning out the gunk and junk I was walking with, trusting the process and walking in gratitude. I didn’t say, “I’m thinking positively now!” and POOF! my life changed. It was a lot of work to get to this place where I can say “I LOVE myself and this life I’ve crafted”. It was a lot of work to be and live authentically. I don’t buy into that “microwave life change” people think exists. Magical thinking, bedazzling and glamouring only works for vampires on unsuspecting humans via True Blood (and not on Sookie btw). But then…
As I was driving (hours later) all out of the blue, I saw an interview with Oprah happening in my head. I was there. She was talking to me, asking me questions about my journey. How changing my mind, changed my life. I probably never mentioned this, but I had a vision several months back where Oprah actually came to be on my new radio talk show, The Envy McKee Show (weekdays, high Noon-3p on TheFNRadio.com). She was on the show, she came to my office, we were talking about how I managed to put together a Tough Mudder team of over 100 people for this coming June, the Vote or Dumb campaign and all this other stuff. I forgot all about THAT vision until yesterday’s vision spurred me to answer the call, via that mass email I almost didn’t read. What didn’t dawn on me was that even though my path to this life I’m in now wasn’t an overnight transformation, my life was transformed as I changed the way I view myself. Literally, changing how I think of me, changed me.
Magical thinking, bedazzling and glamouring only works for vampires on unsuspecting humans via True Blood (and not on Sookie btw).
Last Sunday, Dr. Beckwith (Agapelive.com) talked about how as a society we spend a lot of time focused on causes and effects. We see symptoms and want to fix those, but we spend very little time working on the original conditions that caused the problem to begin with. Symptoms are the results of something deeper. The symptoms aren’t the problem. The problem is the problem. Duh. You may have a cough and it may be annoying. But taking cough syrup only masks the cough, not what’s causing it. Here’s a good one. We’re unhappy. Rather than figure out the source of our persistent unhappiness, we self medicate–drink, pop a pill, have all kinds of dastardly sex, etc. Endorphins may rise and such enough to walk around with a smile on our faces, but once the high ends, so does the smile. The lot of us like to put band-aids on cancer because it’s easier. Very few of us ever get to the source of the problem. We want it fast. We want it easy. Meanwhile, real life transformation is a process. Depending upon how entrenched we are with being in our own way, determines the time change takes.
My journey, without even knowing it, was more like that. Being in the way a lot. It was a long road of surrendering to the actual truth about a lot of different things. Facing them, forgiving them, allowing them to heal, and then working through another and another and another until I was able to look in the mirror and say, “Hey, wow! Look at you, you sexy thing!” Meanwhile, my sexiness hadn’t a thing to do with my exterior. It had everything to do with not needing another soul tell me I was okay. I was broken down to my barest bones and had to rebuild everything including muscles and skin. I’m here right now because I changed the condition that was causing my life to persistently suck so badly. Let’s be clear here. I’m a work in process. And yet, I’m present enough now to be able to say with some amount of emphasis what I know for true. The condition I was suffering from, was faulty thinking. When I changed my mind, my life literally changed with it.
Funny that I didn’t recognize that straight away. I mean, I knew it. But it’s been so long since I’ve started. Yes, I walk in gratitude every day. Yes, I have a semi-consistent meditation, study and yoga practice. Yes, so many things that I’ve wanted for my life have happened, Yes, yes, YES! Funny though, because I was noticing that I’m still driving my raggedy car, and that I’m not in the financial bracket I aspire for all this work I’m up to. Funny that because even though I’m triumphantly single and oh so comfortable in my authentic skin that I’m able to say out loud that I DO want a life partner and I’m open to all the possibilities therein (without settling). Funny, with all of that said, I couldn’t see through the longness of my journey– that the stuff I have or don’t have isn’t an accurate measure of my actual abundance. I almost forgot where I came from.
My story is no different than yours. My story is a page in a really big book we’re all designed to write in. My story is the greatest fairy tale ever told because I’m living it. I don’t have to count on some fantastical princess or wizard from somebody else’s imagination to set my life on course. I am my own princess and wizard. I tell my own tale.
I came from a place where simple peace of mind was steeped in sobs and brain riots. I came from a place where the tiniest things would lay in my spirit like termites ready to take the whole structure down. I came from a place where everyone around me was in some way, shape, form or fashion abusing me and taking my kindness as weakness and I was the victim, constructing a revolution because “they” all are so bad and “I” am the hero here. To get through all that cleaning and restructuring of a house that was built on “the bullshit” is no easy fete. I began this upleveling process in a recession and in order to get to the place where my self-government works according to my more modern view of things, I had to reconfigure my very foundation. No. All of that didn’t happen instantly. But it did happen. The shifting happened for me in phases. It wasn’t overnight, but it was nonetheless. Funny, I was willing to deny the basic premise that I began this journey with because the physicality of what I think goes with it hasn’t yet materialized. Wow.
… I do know, everything that has happened in my life thus far has been preparing me for the next phase of my purpose. I know all this because I’ve lived it.
I haven’t the foggiest what my Oprah visions are about in the higher sense. I don’t always claim to be a psychic. Although my show co-host Joey Capers does call me Cleo (as in Cleopatra Ninja, not Miss Cleo the wackadoodle). Consequently, I’m not entirely sure my visions serve a bigger purpose than to remind me of what I’m here to do. Of where I’ve come from. Of how all of what I’m doing right now came to be. I do know that my life is not the same life I used to walk in. I do know I’m here to be MORE. I do know I have value and that the work I’m doing is valuable beyond what I can ever know. I do know something is working in my life that couldn’t have worked before based entirely on how I once saw myself. AND I do know, everything that has happened in my life thus far has been preparing me for the next phase of my purpose. I know all this because I’ve lived it.
My story is no different than yours. My story is a page in a really big book we’re all designed to write in. My story is the greatest fairy tale ever told because I’m living it. I don’t have to count on some fantastical princess or wizard from somebody else’s imagination to set my life on course. I am my own princess and wizard. I tell my own tale. I hand craft my life based on what turns me on. That’s how the process works. You think it, you see it, you write it in the ether and then you live it. Change your mind, you change your life. Or as Dr. B is known to say: “Your Law, Your Life.” It’s that simple AND that hard. What is your law?
While you’re answering pressing life questions and such, make sure you check me out on Good Day Philly on Fox 29. I’ve been on weekly for the last 6 weeks and they keep asking me back, so I’ll keep sharing what I know. Yes, you can watch live from the comfort of your own computer. I’m also thinking, there should be another phase after the “LOVE” phase in any “Eat, Pray, Love” journey. Ending at “LOVE” wreaks of anti-climactic. It’s missing some zing. There has to be a phase that cultivates all we learn in the first three phases, right? Hmmm. Maybe it’s “LIVE”. Yes, that’s it: “Eat, Pray, Love, LIVE”. Just like *snap* that, I’ve just changed the title to my next book. Look at God.
The moral of this story? Zero idea. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant “changing your mind, really does change your life” blessings!
