Why Your Intentions Aren’t Manifesting (and What To Do Instead)

Certain times of the year - January, back-to-school time, Mondays (if you’re like many of us) - are when we begin to think about how things are going and what we’d like to see change. 

This year, 2021, is no exception.

The vision boards get made, the resolutions shared and the new journals filled with our personal and professional goals. 

So why don’t they usually happen?

Why Your Intentions Aren’t Manifesting

In my own life, and with my clients and colleagues, I’ve seen a number of things get in the way of intentions manifesting.

Folks report: 

• My resolutions have been too audacious and not realistic. 

• I don’t spend much time thinking about why I want these things to happen. Maybe that has something to do with it.

• It’s scary to say something aloud.

• Being extreme - like quitting alcohol, sugar, carbs and exercising all in the same day - always knocks me off my game.

• I don’t want ANYBODY (not even my subconscious!) telling me what to do! 

• Even though I know creating accountability and getting support is helpful, I hate feeling like I’m disappointing myself and others if I don’t do it perfectly.

• When my To-Do list is too big, I get overwhelmed. Less is definitely more. 

That’s in addition to the very real question of access and proximity to resources. 

Let’s be real: it’s a lot more realistic to fulfill your intention of writing a book this year when you have time, a reasonable amount of financial support, a great writing coach and accountability partners than when you don’t have any of those things. That’s not to say it’s not possible - just that proximity and access to resources can make manifesting many kinds of intentions more easeful.

How to Create Intentions That Do Manifest

There are a number of elements that make it more likely that your intentions will manifest. 

Here are just a few:

• Focus on the feeling you want. Rather than create an intention of losing 15 pounds to feel more confident (and let’s face it - that almost never works), focus on the feeling of being confident now at your current size, shape and weight. By focusing on feeling confident right now, you’ll begin to take the actions that a confident person would take.  

• Create intentions not from your ego, but from your Highest Self. Whenever I’ve created intentions from my ego (“I want to look great in a bathing suit and make that bastard, my ex, suffer!”) even when I’ve gotten what I wanted, it didn’t satisfy me. In fact, it’s like a food addict reaching her hand into a bag of chips saying, “This’ll be the last one!” and not stopping til the whole bag of salt and vinegar Kettle chips is annihilated (not that I’ve EVER done that, ahem). Take the time to connect with your spirit, Source, God, the Universe, your Highest Self, inner leader or whatever you call that part of you that is more than your small ego. Let it guide you. 

• Don’t spend too much time wondering how your intentions are going to manifest - just do what you can to get clear on what they are. At this stage, let your creativity - and your heart’s desires - become clear to you. Let go of the ego’s desire to control and know how it is all going to happen. This is where the mystery and power of the Universe is here to support you. When your vision is aligned with your Highest Self (see above), it’s easier to go with and trust the flow of life to bring you the people, places and things you need to thrive. Your job? Surrender, Dorothy. 

• Look at your life holistically. If you’re reading this blog post, I already know two things about you: you care about mastering resilience to stress, anxiety and trauma AND you want to have a more meaningful impact in the world. Rather than focus on the one thing you’re certain will make you happy - like finding a partner you can truly be your authentic self with in all circumstances - look at your whole life. 

A great tool that I share with my private and group coaching clients that can help with this is this Wheel of Life. 

Wheel of Life Snapshot Assessment 

Draw a big circle - the messier the better. (Who needs more perfectionism?!) Now drop one line from the top to the bottom, another from left to right, and then two diagonals. You should have a Wheel with eight sections. 

Now make a snapshot assessment of some of the key domains in your life in these eight sections: health, friends & family, work/vocation/activism, significant other/romance, physical environment (your home, car, where you live, etc) money, spiritual/personal/creative growth, and fun & recreation. You might need to play around with categories that resonate better for you so feel free to split these up or create categories that are more aligned for you(like you might have a nine in satisfaction with your friends but your family is more like a three).

Now rate each of these sections of your pie in terms of your levels of satisfaction, zero being you are totally miserable in this area of your life, ten being you are completely fulfilled. 

The key to the exercise is not focusing on what it looks like to others - but how satisfying this area of your life is to you. 

For example, you might be an attorney working in private practice. You have a prestigious job and make a decent living. But you hate what you do and would rather be spending your time writing that noir novel you’ve always wanted to. So you give your career a low score of say, 3, even though to your friends and family it appears it might look like you have the best job ever. 

Where You Might Get Stuck

But what if you can’t get clear on what you want to manifest? 

What if you have no idea what your intentions are, you just know you can’t stand the way your life is now?

Don’t worry - it’s much more common than you think.

In my own journey, I found that healing trauma was the key to getting greater clarity about my heart’s desires. When I was at my lowest point after witnessing a car bombing while working as a diplomat in the Balkans, I had no clarity whatsoever about my intentions. All I knew was that there was a still, small voice inside of me that demanded a life of greater authenticity. The pain of trying to be the character my ego had brilliantly created was too much to bear. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted (and could never in a million lifetimes have imagined the life I have today) but I was clear that I didn’t want to be who I had been til that point in my life anymore. 

As world-renowned psychiatrist and trauma-expert, Bessel A. van der Kolk the author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma notes, trauma is a loss of imagination - and it’s incredibly important: 

“Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word—all the things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities—it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships.”

Even if you start by getting clear on what you don’t want anymore, that can be enough to get you to make the changes that will bring more satisfaction to your life. Spend time outside in nature, explore art, join a group of like-minded folks with similar values, read children’s books, or whatever you can to spark your imagination to start including elements that might make your Wheel of Life rounder, fuller and more fulfilling. 

The Bottom Line: There’s Good News

The bottom line is that, with the right kinds of intentions, accountability and support, you are far more likely to manifest the life you’ve always wanted. It might mean letting go of some old ideas and habits (like the way-overrated rugged individualism narrative that has harmed so many of us) but it is possible. Grab a pen and your journal and get started. 

Ready to create your most resilient and intentional year yet in 2021? Get the motivation, accountability and support you need. Check out the Mastering Resilience Small Group Coaching Program with social justice pricing.

When a Man Cries in Public

In Paris last week. A man and his phone. 

His sobbing could be heard only faintly amid the din of conversation and beeping digital devices that contributed to the on board cacophony.

He was a tall, dark haired man, probably in his late 20s. There wasn’t much that was particularly noticeable about him: the T-shirt, shorts, flip flops, wristwatch all were standard issue.

In other words, there were no external signs that this young man’s behavior might not conform with the expectations of public behavior and decorum in our society.

And yet, here he was, on a flight halfway between Phoenix and Albuquerque, faced turned downward and towards the window, sobbing.

Rarely have I seen, if ever, a man sob that way, especially not in public.

It was the kind of body shaking that was more like that of a howling, wounded animal than of a human, perhaps more like a woman in labor than what sexist and outdated cultural norms demand of men.

He convulsed and shook, and tears rolled down his face.

And all of this he did, with minimal sound. It was almost eerie how quiet it all was, except for the muffled noises as he seemed to fight between his own need to sob, and knowing what public expectations demanded of him as a man.

My head was buried, ironically, in Huston Smith’s Why Religion Matters, part of my intention to fight against the tendency so prevalent in our world to stay at the surface of life and thought exacerbated by the ubiquity of technology. I was longing and hungry for more time to be spent in the depth and richness of deep contemplation underneath the realm of our ordinary diurnal tasks, where meaning is made, and this book was simply one of many such oft-foiled attempts.

Huston, one of the greatest religious scholars of the 20th century, writes about how a pseudo-scientific understanding of the world (what he calls scientism) has ripped away our common sense and traditional ways of knowing about things that are not proven by science in double-blind trials. Again and again, he writes about the realm of meaning that is valid and deeply worthy of respect, and which is all too often dismissed as not being factually based. A bias as crippling as the biases which Galileo and Copernicus had to face, too. 

I was captivated by the depth of the book and so grateful I had escaped the surly bonds of social media for long enough to actually read this way again. 

And here I faced the struggle that I find gets the better of me and many of us all too often: to say something to the young man sitting just a few inches away, or to keep my head buried in the book in fear of what might happen if I do?

The reality is that, in so many ways, our common experiences of compassion and tenderness towards those who are suffering are radically limited to safe spaces where we have permission to be with people in sometimes intimate ways. I make up that hundreds of years ago, if you saw someone sobbing right next to you in the orchards where you were picking apples or on the farm where you were milking cows, you wouldn’t think of not reaching out in compassion. That the imperative of being civilized, respectful and always decorous, actually prevents us from exercising our natural impulse to authentically connect with and be with those who are hurting.

I contemplated the dilemma in front of me: reach out to my brother or respect the rules of modern society which value privacy and individualism far more than they value connection, and risk making it worse for him and, potentially, me.

Eventually the impulse to care for another human being got the better of me and I had to say something.

But what?

What the hell could I possibly say to this man I didn’t know in a public place whose body language clearly seemed to signal that he, like a wounded animal, wanted to be left alone?

With whatever courage I could muster, I decided to wait for a pause in his sobs when he finally had to look in my direction.  After several minutes, with red eyes and a splotchy face, he glanced up.

And I heard this come out of my mouth:

“Do you want to talk?”

He nodded no, silently, but his eyes spoke of gratitude

He put the palm of his hand to his chest in that well-recognized gesture of being touched emotionally, and mouthed,  “Thank you”.

I nodded, as if to say, OK, and went back to my book.

Here it was, two perfect strangers in a public space, having a deeply authentic and private moment.

I had no idea why he was sobbing and noticed my analytical mind trying to find reasons why:

Had his girlfriend broken up with him?

Was he on his way to his father’s funeral?

Did he lose his job?

But none of that actually mattered.

What mattered was that this human, an American male no less, sitting in seat 8A, was hurting amidst dozens of other people. And he was courageous enough to be showing it.

How many others on that flight though were holding their pain to themselves?

Holding on to the idea that, in our culture, it is weakness to show emotion or to need others, medicating themselves with everything from food to obsessive social media, prescription drugs to sex?

I had no answers only more questions as my eyes went back to my book.

But over the past month of travels on more planes than I can count - from Oslo and Prague, Paris to London - I’ve been noticing more and more how much harder it is becoming for us to authentically connect. And how especially tough that must be for men, who still have even less social permission to publicly express emotion and vulnerability than do women.

We look down, get on our devices and check out of communal spaces as soon as possible. And then we wonder why we feel lonely, disconnected and frazzled.

Instead we could take a risk to look up, to each other and to what lies within us. 

The yearning to authentically connect with others is as common in Paris and Papua New Guinea as it is in Poughkeepsie and Pasadena. And for those of us living in the undemocratically elected Reign of Technology, leaning into a mindful and authentically meaningful life takes great intentionality and care.

It also takes a community to remind us of its value and necessity.  

And it takes a willingness to make ourselves vulnerable to those across the aisle - whether on an airplane or in the halls of power - to make us feel human.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to keep trying. Even if it does get a bit turbulent at times.

Want to connect more authentically with those around you? Sign up for a free coaching session and start building the life you truly want today. 

A Gift of Birthday Presence

It's my birthday today, dear ones. 

And I want to thank you. 

Serving you, connecting with you, being inspired by you and the ways you show up in the world each day are a few of the reasons why this year, notwithstanding great pain, grief and loss, has also been one of the most remarkable in my life.

You have taught me so much about what it means to live well in the world. And because birthdays inspire us to give presents, I'd like to share with you a few nuggets of wisdom I have learned along the way that may inspire you to live more mindfully and authentically in your own life. 

Call it a gift of birthday presence. 

Greeks have always been lovers of wisdom, as we all know. More importantly, each and everyone of us can tap into that place of inner wisdom with a little practice, no matter where we come from or where we are going. 

And now, in no particular order, a few things I have learned on my journeys around the sun:

1. The antidote to loneliness is authentic connection. 
2. With great power comes great responsibility.
3. Yogurt with fat in it is better than yogurt with chemicals. 
4. The Golden Rule always applies. Always. 
5. To have scars means you have survived. Wear them proudly.
6. The word religion comes from the latin, religio, meaning "to bind together". When we are together, we are stronger. This has nothing to do with dogma, it is simple fact.
7. To be a lover of wisdom means one is a philosopher, not some stuffy shirt in an ivory tower. I'm a philosopher and hope everyone else is, too.
8. To love means to take a stand.
9. Technology is not the boss of you. You are the boss of it. Don't forget that you control the POWER button. Use it!
10. The most precious gift you can ever give to your child or another human being is to love yourself.
11. Taking small, sustainable actions consistently over time is how your life changes. Anybody who tells you anything else is underestimating your intelligence and the power of the ego.
12. Whenever you walk into a new situation or group of people, pre-empt the ego mind's habitual thinking of separation and division by forcing yourself to ask the question, "How am I like these people?" not, "How am I different?"
13. Eat breakfast. 
14. Be kind to everyone on the way up. They might be the ones to cushion your landing on the way down. 
15. One conscious breath can be as transformative as a year on a meditation retreat in the Himalayas. Do not underestimate the power of the sacred pause.
16. Go to Greece at least once in your life and get in touch with your own inner philosopher. 
17. To intentionally abuse another is harmful. To neglect another is just as harmful. Be present to your loved ones. 
18. Remember where you came from. 
19. Exercise every day - and that means a single yoga pose or 5 minutes stretching counts. Honor your temple because it helps you serve others. 
20. Clean up your stuff with your mother, whether she is alive or has passed. It is the most gut-wrenching and rewarding work I have ever done. Get support, do what you have to do, but do it.
21. Tell your partner what you appreciate about her or him. Tell your friends and co-workers what you appreciate about them, too. Do you get enough appreciation? They don't either. Be generous with your gifts of esteem to others. 
22. Tell the truth. The one from deep, deep down in your bones. Not the one that is convenient. The one you don't want to tell. That is the truth that will set you free.
23. Express gratitude for what you have. And for what you don't. 
24. Attachment is the source of all suffering. 
25. You exercise your physical muscles to help you continue to move, be flexible and strong. You exercise your spiritual muscles so that you can be still and know. 
26. Cherish your friends. They are your family of choice and need to hear it once in a while. 
27. Spend the first hour or more of your day in some form of centering practice. Read, write, pray, meditate, do yoga, take your dog for a walk. Cultivate your being this way so that your doing in the world is more skillful and serene. 
28. Give what you have. Teach what you know. Share what you want the most. 
29. Pick up the phone and call someone. Tell him or her you've been thinking of her and just wanted to say hi for no reason. 
30. Make eye contact and smile. If you've ever been sad or depressed, you know the power of a single smile from another human being. 
31. When there is chaos inside of you, look to the cosmos for answers. The stars and galaxies and planets that have been in place for billions of years might put your problems in perspective. 
32. A wrinkle, stretch mark, or belly is not a sign that you are a failure. Nor does a six-pack mean you are a success. What you do with your equipment is what determines your joy, fulfillment and contentment in life.
33. It is an act of humility to acknowledge your own strengths and weaknesses without apology.
34. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. 
35. Learn to honor the law of cause and effect: karma. Virtuous actions have virtuous effects. Harmful actions have harmful effects. 
36. Go to bed early.
37. Let your freak flag fly one in a while. There is nothing more beautiful than authenticity. 
38. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an astronaut, the editor in chief of Time Magazine and a fashion designer. I even planned to design an astronaut's costume made of marble and lined with creamy, ivory silk shantung. It just goes to show you that some dreams make it and some don't. Move on.
39. Circumstances can make you bitter. Or they can make you better. Choose your response accordingly. 
40. The best anti-depressant is a walk in nature. Use it often and preventatively. 
41. Loving relationships require the risk of being known. Intimacy requires risk. Vulnerability requires risk. Creativity requires risk. Tune to your internal GPS (Guiding Principles) for guidance on increasing your tolerance for risk. No risk? No reward.
42. Your true nature is love. Everything else is conditioning which can be released. A dirty rag wrapped around a beautiful gold nugget does not change its fundamental nature. 
43. Wear strappy heels while you can. You'll thank me for this. 
44. I once met a man who was being yelled at by a group of people in a hot, summertime parking lot. He had left his dog inside the car for a moment to go into the laundromat to pick up his clothes. There was no handicapped parking space available and the people yelling at him weren't interested to know that not only did he have special needs, but that he was also newly homeless. I followed him into the laundromat to see if he was ok after being publicly flogged for his transgression of leaving the poor dog in the hot car for a few moments. The look on his face - of gratitude for the compassion and mercy being shown to him - has never left my mind. Compassion is always, always, always the sane response to another human beings shortcomings. Including our own.

It's been a pleasure serving you, dear reader. 

I can't wait for what the next revolution around the sun will hold for us all.

Now I'd love to hear from you: what do you find inspiring and hope to bring forth on your next revolution around the sun? Let me know in the comments below. 

The True Cost of Intimacy

I loved these little guys on a recent trip to the Lavender Festival in Cherry Valley. It seems much simpler for them to be intimate than it is for our species. Could it be that they don't have the same egos we do? Hmmmm ... 

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how lonely we all are.

We are on our devices. On social media. On our phones, iPads. Some people even have landlines, I’ve heard.

It seems that we are all in these situations of trying desperately to connect with others. To know we matter. To be seen.

And yet the more we try, the lonelier we feel.

Some of us just give up. We throw our hands in the air and say, “Screw it. I can’t do it anymore.”

We take refuge in substitutes for real connection.

Shopping.

Chocolate.

Sex.

Books.

Exotic vacations.

We post images on social media of our idealized self-image (you know, the ones taken at the best angle and in the best light so that your newly found wrinkles don’t show and your second chin is well camouflaged?). We talk to our partners about the historic political speech on the television rather than how hurt we feel that we aren’t truly seen by them anymore. We play nice at work even though we see people doing things that violate our standards of ethics, decency and dignity. We ignore it when a loved one comments about another woman’s looks and feel ashamed at our own lack of courage to say no to the objectification of women of any size, age, race or color.

Yes, in so many ways, we sacrifice our desire for true, authentic connection and settle for the saccharine after-taste left by these transactional interactions, masking as relationships.

Recently, a beloved client of mine, blew me away when she was faced with such a situation. I was so deeply humbled to be a witness to a sacred act of courage she shared with me.

Rather than keeping quiet and accepting the status quo, lashing out in attack or running to substitutes of connection, she did something most of us rarely do unless we are extremely spiritually fit.

She made a million dollar gamble. And paid a heavy price of letting go of her ego, the part that always wants to protect and defend against the things like love and connection we know we crave the most. 

And with a knot in her stomach and faith in her heart she performed the single most important act one can ever do to create a meaningful and authentic relationship with another human being: she took a risk and spoke her truth.

Not the truth he might have wanted to hear.

Not the truth that it would have been easy to share.

Not the truth that would have kept her tightly-managed self-image intact.

But the truth that came from the depths of her soul. That most vulnerable and sacred part of herself as a spiritual being was shared with another person: her truth.

And by taking that risk, not only did a remarkably positive thing happen in the dynamic of her relationship with her partner, but something different happened deep inside of her.

Building a massively fulfilling life isn’t about what other people do or how they respond. It’s about how we show up, honor and live our own values. By speaking up in service of her authentic values, she created an enormous boost to her own self-esteem. And from that place of truly authentic power, anything that comes to us from the outside – affection, approval, validation, love – is simply a bonus. It’s nice to have, but isn’t what makes all the difference.

It’s choosing the road less travelled which does.