The Dream Midwife: Falling in Love with Your Life One Dream at a Time

It Does Work if You Do it!

2009-10-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

A while ago I wrote that it doesn't work if you don't do it. One of my students sent me this letter soon after that post, confirming that it does work, and it works quite profoundly and quickly, if you DO it, whatever the "it" is for you.

I teach a Human Potential class every term for our local community college. To get an A, my students needed to move there bodies, wire without censoring (free-writing) or tap (EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques,) and read something inspirational.

I did not tell them they needed to spend a certain amount of time each day. I wanted them to build a habit of doing these three healthy activities and also to practice keeping a promis to themselves.

Here is the relevant part of her note to me, shared with her permission:

Hi Vicki,

In the two weeks that I had to try tapping, reading, and moving the body, I found out a lot of things that I did not necessarily know about myself. First of all, I have become a lover of reading. I have never enjoyed reading until recently, I started reading a book called "Don't stress about the small stuff, and it's all small stuff" this was an incredible book. It was laid out in a fashion where I could read one section a day, and I began to really love reading. It was interesting reading information that helps motivate me in my daily life.

During this two weeks I also did the free writes in the morning, I did not throw them away, however I read back through all of them yesterday and realized that many of the things that get to me in my everyday life are not worth the stress. As the free writings went from day to day, I could tell that I was becoming more joyful and things in my life were more in tacked. From day one to the last day of free writings my life had done a 180. I wake up with a smile on my face and look forward to the day, as two weeks ago I dreaded getting up and dealing with what life was throwing at me.

Along with reading and writing I began to move my body. I started attending the gym. I love being active, it is a great source to relieve stress. Being able to go into the gym and take my mind off of all the other things in my life is a great escape.

I believe that the combination of writing, reading and moving my body has created a new person in me, life is truly great right now. I tried the tapping, however I just could not get into it. I found myself being very distracted. This two weeks has been life changing for me, thank you for the awesome class!

Have a great summer,
K B

EFT: Not Wanting to Tap

2009-06-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

If EFT is new to you, take a look at tryitoneverything.com and bradyates.net for more information. What do you think? The perfectionist in me is howling.. My next tapping video will be on perfectionism, the not so silent killer.

It Doesn't Work if You Don't Do It!

2009-06-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

It Doesn't Work if You Don’t Do It!

We all find activities that make a big difference in our lives. If we write gratitude lists every day, we notice an increase in our enjoyment of life. Or if we walk on a regular basis we notice we have more energy and our mood is uplifted.

Then, for unknown reasons, we quit doing what we know improves our lives. It doesn't cost much, doesn't take much time, and greatly increases our ability to appreciate our gifts and deal with our challenges, AND YET WE STOP DOING IT.

What is this about? Most of us know this phenomenon. "Yes, I was doing those things and was feeling better. It was easy, but then I stopped. I don't know why. Huh. That's interesting."

I think we stop doing what serves us because these insidious thoughts creep into our minds and take over: "This is too easy. This is too little. Such a small behavior can't make a profound effect on my life. I don't need to do this anymore. I need to find something newer, sexier, harder, more complicated."

So we stop doing what supports our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. Then we wonder why we find ourselves right back where we were when we started doing those things that had been improving our lives.

Here is what interests me: We brush our teeth everyday, twice a day, even though we don't have a huge effect from one brushing. We brush our teeth because we know it benefits us in the long term. We don't debate every day whether or not we are going to brush our teeth; we just do it.

People who grow up in the Culture of Poverty do not take care of their teeth and they lose them. A deep belief in the Culture of Poverty is that what we do doesn't matter. It’s all about luck anyway -- so why bother with boring little things such as brushing our teeth?

I think most of us have a bit of this Culture of Poverty in our brains. This is what stops us from writing, walking, tapping, singing, dancing, stating our appreciation and gratitude and all those behaviors that take so little time and produce such great results.

How Do We Help Ourselves Keep Doing What Works?

Here are two ideas:

1. Connect a new behavior to something you know you will do, such as brushing your teeth. For example, always tap before you brush your teeth. Putting the new behavior in front of the already established behavior ensures you won't forget. You get to feel very proud of yourself every time you do this. Your self esteem skyrockets.

2. Install ringtones on your phone that remind you of what you are committed to doing regularly. Every time your phone rings, you get a fun reminder of who you want to be. Impress your friends. Contact me and I will make one just for you: (Suzie, wake up! Suzie, wake up!)

You have to commit to staying in the game. Set up a system to support you because you know your tendency will be to stop doing what works. Then plan for regular evaluation times to catch anything that has fallen off your "I Do This Reality List.”

It is not, as they say, rocket science, but it does take persistence and means we need to stay awake. I'm working on my version of a parody of “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.” Maybe this song will help us all keeping doing what is working for us.

Waking Up is Hard to Do

Inspired by Scott at http://www.scottsongs.com/

Don't take this pain away from me.

My comfort zone is my misery.

It's too scary. You know it’s true.

Waking up is hard to do.

I remember when I felt so fine.

Walking writing – I had plenty of time.

Then I “forgot.” You’ve done it too.

Cuz waking up is hard to do.

They say that waking up is hared to do.

Now I know. I know that it’s true.

Don’t say I don’t’ get to pretend.

It’s too hard. I give up. I don’t’ want to wake up again.

My energy feeds my fear.

I get batter at this every year.

The Law of Attraction turns out to be true.

Waking up is hard to do.

Chorus

Leave me alone. I don’t want to try.

I have plenty of good reasons to cry.

Mind your own business. If you don’t I’ll sue

Waking up’s too hard to do.

Follow the Fun

2009-04-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

Learn to Trust Fun and Change Your Life Forever

When I was a high school English teacher many years ago, I would often wake up in the middle of the night fraught with anxiety. I was failing to reach my students, failing them horribly I feared, even though I was doing all I knew at the time to help them succeed and create a great life for themselves.

Twenty years later I know the truth was I had been failing them miserably, but not through any fault of my own, but that is another story.

This is the story of how I got tired of feeling horrible, sick to my stomach with dread at the thought of going to school in the morning. Instead, I transformed my teaching and my life in one session with my best friend, my journal.

The Power of Dialoguing

In my Journal Writing for Teachers class I had been taught a journaling technique dialoguing. You can dialogue with anything, I learned, including aspects of a dream or even voices inside your own head.

I decided to dialogue with that Voice inside my head that was waking me up at night and this was one of the first times I ever faced my shame, the fear that I was a disgusting mistake which needed to be eradicated, wiped from the face of the Earth.

Brave, indeed, I was when I picked up my pen and wrote:

• Me: Okay, Voice That Wakes Me Up at Night. What is it you are trying to tell me? I want to know everything.
• Voice: You are a failure as an English teacher.
• Me: I know. Why am I a failure? What should I be doing?
• Voice: Your students should be writing essays with footnotes.

Note: As a college graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English, I had never written a paper with footnotes in my life.

• Me: Okay. What else?
• Voice: Your students should have their papers publish.
• Me: My students should write papers with footnotes that are published in academic journals, Right?
• Voice: Right.
• Me: And then that would be enough, I would be enough?
• Voice: No, of course not. These papers would be written about Beowulf, the Old English classic. Your students must read in the original Old English.
• Me. Right. My students in my Mass Media class should be reading Beowulf in its original Old English and writing scholarly papers, which are published in academic journals. Is that all?
• Voice: No. You and your student should win some awards, some national awards.

Perfectionism Kills

At this point I realized for once and forever that I would never please this Voice inside me. Every time I succeeded, this Voice would just up the ante and I would be a failure again.

A Vow to Follow the Fun

So, I sent this voice to Hawaii for a vacation and decided to have fun instead. From that day on, no kidding, my goal has been to have fun. If I am not having fun, I change what I am doing. I am willing to work hard, proofreading this essay is no walk in the park when you are legally blind, but it is still fun, even if I am occasionally frustrated.

Taking a Stand for Fun at Work

Once when I was an elementary school counselor, I was leading a musical, life skills assembly. The students were rowdy and I could not get them to quiet down. "I’m not having any fun," I said. "I’m working too hard. If you don’t settle down we will have to stop the assembly and try again some other time."

They did not quiet down and, with a smile on my face, I said, “Okay, the assembly is over. We will try again some other time when you are able to listen better."

My students were shocked. I'm sure the teachers and parents were shocked. I even shocked myself. Wow! I had taken a stand for fun and I stood my ground firmly and cheerfully, even in the face of mass disapproval.

I never had trouble at an assembly again. I had credibility with my five hundred students and, more importantly, with myself. I could count on me when I was being invited to do something that was not working. I had learned to Follow the fun.

Trusting Fun

So now I follow the fun. I trust Fun. Fun happens when I am living in the present and when life is juicy and creative. Because I follow the fun, if I am struck by lightening in the next second, I will have no regrets. I have not spent my life worrying and flurrying, fussing and fretting.

Since that day in my backyard, sitting in the sun out on my weedy lawn, that day I faced the Voice of Shame within me and sent her packing, I have been more creative, effective, and happier than I was when I was allowing Shame to dominate my life.

Desmond Tutu invites us to Follow the Fun and save the world. He is full of laughter and is a Nobel Prize-winner. If you don’t believe me, you can certainly trust him

So there.

Laugh Now: It's Lighter Than You Think!

2009-04-13T08:15:00.000-07:00

Laugh Now: It's Lighter Than You Think!

How can we escape the myriad of invitations to despair? Aren't these the worst times in history? Aren't we all doomed?

Our brains work better when we are not practicing fear. When we have a sense of humor about our troubles, we can find joy in the moment and create innovative solutions. So, why not swim naked and laugh until you cry? Why not fly to Bali and fall in love. Why not go creative, write songs bad or good. Why not live your dream, live it now, live it now.

How Silliness Saved Murray: Cock-a-Doodle-Do!

2009-04-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

Introducing Murray, the Sweetest Man I’ve Ever Known

My husband Murray's parents came from Poland. They were Jewish and barely escaped being killed by the Nazis.

Murray is an Occupational Therapist who speaks "kid" as a first language. He is magic with children, finding ways past their problem behaviors, so they may more fully enjoy their lives.

When Murray worked on the Psychiatric Ward in our local hospital, he was used as an assessment tool. If one of the patients couldn't get along with Murray, the Assessment Team figured the patient probably needed their medicine adjusted.

The Big Lie Turns into the Big Fear

I tell you this because it will help you understand what a waste of joy it is for Murray to suffer from obsessive fears, as he does every day. He has coped with his fears by taking martial arts for over thirty years. He has guns and knows how to shoot them. (They are safely locked up; I assure you.) He keeps a bat under our bed and I think he even had a knife handy for many years we were together, without telling me about it.

Murray grew up in Los Angeles and suffered violence close up and personal. That was one reason he moved to the Northwest in 1992. But now he lives in one of the safest places in the country, Corvallis, Oregon. Neither of us has ever been physically threatened, much less injured here . We've had some vandalism and minor theft, but nothing violent. No one has ever tried to break into our home or the home of anyone we know.

Still, he is plagued by these fears. Though I have known about his fears for the fourteen years we have been together, it is only recently he let me inside enough to see how much of every day my sweet Murray spends protecting himself and me from being dragged away and slaughtered.

He knows his fears are understandable but not rationale. Still they dominate his thinking and steal much of his joy. Then I listened to The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge.

A Silly, Effective Solution

From this book I learned that our brains are plastic and whatever we practice grows. Practicing being afraid is like sledding down a hill on the same path: the more you do it, the deeper the trench gets and the harder it is to take any other path.

In order for Murray to build a new Path of Joy and Gratitude in his brain, he needed to get out of the content of his fears. Arguing with himself about how he needed to stop thinking about death threats is like trying to talk a stalker out of hounding you. All your conversation with a stalker gets turned into: "She cares! She really cares!”

All conversation with your worries, anxieties and doomsday scenarios just gives them more mass to crush you.

Sing a Silly Song of Sixpence

When Murray gets a fear thought now, he starts singing aloud.. The song keeps adapting, (He is singing Itsy, BitsySpider like Mick Jagger as I type this,) but it started out like this: “Row , row, row your boat gently down the stream, Mary had a little lamb, Cock- a- Doodle- Do!”

His singing serves at least two purposes:
1. He is letting me know that at that moment, just when he is watching television with me an rubbing my feet, his Fear is attempting to kidnap him. Instead, he sings silly songs, so he can come home to himself and me.

2. He is taking energy and strength away from his fears and putting them into joy and gratitude. He is rewiring his brain and his life.

Result: increased intimacy and joy.

Your Silly Shift

If you are wanting to stop doing something destructive and replace your pain with joy, try doing something really silly when you are tempted to fall into a Bad Habit Trench. Instead of getting mad at your little sister, for example, go blow bubbles. Stay out of the content of how annoying she is. You know where that trail leads. You’ve gone down it enough times before.

If you are afraid we are headed for total economic collapse, the end of civilization as we know it, do a little jig every time this thought enters your head. This behavior will be good for you and the world.

Can you imagine if you were walking down the street and people passed you singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star like Kermit the Frog, or did little bouncy steps as they smiled at you? We would all be reminded to practice falling in love with our lives one habit at a time.

By the way, a fearful brain cannot find creative solutions. A fearful brain condemns us to a future of self-fulfilling icky encounters.

So say yes to Silly Singing!

Song: Beauty Like a Rock

2009-04-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

Honoring the Beauty within You

2009-04-07T10:23:00.000-07:00

Note: This is an example of my Magical Muse-ical Listening. A dear friend is having trouble talking nice about herself. I woke up this morning with this conversation in my head.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!
Let it be known that we are gathering for a
Loving Meeting with Our Creator
Before the Final Meeting with the Creator at the Pearly Gates.
This loving intervention is for Our Daughter of the Universe, Deborah Spring.

God: Deborah, are you here?
Deborah: (Looking at the ground.) Yes, Inspirer of Beauty, I am here.
God: Beloved, Deborah, look up. Let your face gaze upon my face.

Deborah slowly raises her face and opens her eyes.
God: Do you see and feel in every cell of your body the Love and glory in my face.
Deborah: (Tears streaming down her face) Yes, Beloved Creator of Beauty, I am bathed in the Cosmic Love that nourishes the Universe.

God: Good. Now look carefully. do you see your face in my face?
Deborah: (Sobbing now) I do! I do see my face in your face. I'm there! I'm part of You!
God: Yes, Deborah, you are a part of everything that is holy. You are an Instrument of Love for Beauty on Earth.
Deborah: (Radiant, fully accepting the Truth.)

God: Deborah, Vicki has brought it to my attention that you sometimes say mean things about yourself. Is this true, my Daughter?
Deborah: (Crying again.) Yes, it is true. sometimes I feel so unworthy. I feel I have failed you and failed myself.
God: Deborah, have you ever heard "What you do to the least of me, you do to me as well"?
Deborah: Yes, I have heard that many times.
God: when you are cruel to yourself, you are spitting in my face, which is your face as well.

(Deborah has fallen to her knees now, sobbing.)

God: Rise up, Beloved Daughter. Rise up and promise me that you will Honor the Beauty that is within you and never speak badly of yourself ever again.
Deborah: (Face beaming now.) I promise. I promise to honor the Beauty within me. I do not promise to be perfect. I may slip and be mean to myself again.
God: Yes, you are only human, after all.
Deborah: But I promise I will listen for my dishonoring talk and I will correct myself and love myself when I speak or think ill of myself.

God: And remember not to be ashamed for failing to love yourself all the time. You will blow it. You can count on it. Just shake it off and step back in your Glory, the Glory that your are by Divine Right.
Deborah: I promise. From this day forward I will honor that I am on a Cosmic Learning Curve. I will get a little better every day. I promise.
God: You please me, Beloved Daughter, but you have always pleased me. go in peace and love now. I have other fish to fry.
Deborah: Thank you, thank you so much. I'm going to honor the beauty in me from now on.

Here Ye, Hear Ye!
Here ends our
Loving Meeting with Our Creator
Before the Final Meeting with the Creator at the Pearly Gates.

We will be back!

It’s a Crying Shame

2009-04-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

Our most debilitating feeling is shame, that emotion that sweeps over us and fills us with the desire to be no more. We want to be invisible, put a sack over our heads. We yearn with an aching that is so fierce it threatens to split us in two for a chance to change history. Why can’t we take back that word we just mispronounced to hoots of laughter or back up and walk over the parking divider instead of tripping over it and falling flat on our face?

But shame, as horrible as the feeling is, isn’t the problem. Shame about our shame is what brands our problems into our skin and into our souls. We feel so horrible about feeling shame, that we want to keep it a secret from everyone, especially ourselves. We doom ourselves to unconscious, fear-based reaction. We chain ourselves to our fears; condemn ourselves to a life spent avoiding situations, which might produce shame. Our lives shrink to fit the amount of courage and awareness we are able to muster.

Even if we experience enormous worldly success, our inner shame can keep us from enjoying any of it. We have tricked the world, but we cannot trick ourselves out of our shame, that deep belief that we are wholly and completely unworthy of being loved.

Shane is what we feel whenever someone says something to us that says we are an idiot. This can be in the subtext as in “You are an English teacher and you think the word develop has an “e” on the end of it?” Unspoken, but ringing through our ears and our souls are the words, “You idiot.“ Less subtle is the derisive laughter, the mocking tone that so ably communicates contempt. “You are beneath me. You disgust me,” their laughter says, and if others join in, adding their voices to the cruelty, our spirits can be broken forever.

Singing Down the Drain

This spirit-breaking behavior is often practiced in our families. One high school boy I worked with had given up his singing because his brother had taped him unselfconsciously singing in the shower and then played the tape at a family gathering. Everyone laughed. Ha-ha! There goes your singing! If he isn’t careful, he will grow into a man who shames the joy out of others as it was shamed out of him.

It is shame that makes us feel we have fooled people into loving us, tricked our employers into hiring us. Shame masquerades as milder emotions, so it often escapes our knowing it for what it is: an invitation to obliteration of our hopes, dreams, and our ability to love and be loved.

Here are some of the tricksters, those emotions we feel that stop us from allowing our dreams to be born: Embarrassment, Defensiveness, and Humiliation.

• Embarrassment. Notice the “bare ass” part of embarrassment. We will sometimes go to any lengths to avoid being embarrassed. The more we take a stand for avoiding embarrassment, the smaller our world becomes. I invite people to dance at almost all of my presentations. Some people have obeyed the whip of embarrassment so completely, so often, that they cannot move their bodies and feel enormous discomfort at even watching other people move theirs.

• Defensiveness. When we feel defensive, we are saying to ourselves, “You have made a mistake! You are looking like a fool! This can’t be so! Make it go away!”

Some people get very clever and hide their defensiveness in a cool logic; I am very good at this. I can respond with no emotion in my voice or on my face when I’m feeling defensive because I am ashamed of being defensive and I don’t want anyone else to know I’m feeling defensive.

If someone accuses you of being defensive and you are feeling shame, you might get even more defensive or go on the attack. “I’m not the one who is being defensive. Y ou are the one who is being defensive.” You might say with heat and anger in your voice and on your face.

Curiosity Saves the Cat

A non-defensive response is always curiosity, “Really? I seem defensive to you? Huh. Let me go inside and see if I’m feeling any shame or fear.” Do you see the freedom in this response? You are in charge of deciding whether or not you are defensive. If you are being defensive, that is okay because as long as you aren’t ashamed about being defensive, you can get to the roots of what is causing you to be defensive.

It might sound like this: “You are right. I am defensive. I can feel it in my tight chest. Hmmm. I think I’m feeling scared that if you are right about this and I am wrong, I will have to give up something that is really important to me.” Now you can have a conversation that moves truth forward. You can discover new solutions and create more joy and intimacy.

If you stay in defensiveness or shame, though, you are stuck with the problem, perhaps for life.

If you get curious about your defensiveness, you might discover that you have been attacked. This is good information, especially for good girls and boys who do not like getting angry.

Feeling defensive is just a feeling. It is information. That’s all. It is not a sign that you are an unworthy piece of excrement.

• Another shame-inspired feeling is humiliation. Humiliation is much closer to the real feeling of shame. If we feel humiliated we are unlikely to ever step out into the open in a way that makes us vulnerable to that feeling again. If we write a song and someone tells us it’s stupid, we may give up songwriting, or singing, or writing, or laughing, or telling stories, or getting enthusiastic. We may give up much of what it means to be fully alive so as to avoid feeling that feeling again.

Joy Recovery Works

If we don’t go into Shame Recovery or Joy Recovery, we may become a person who shames others to keep them in our comfort zones. Some work cultures and some family cultures are dominated by shaming bullies. They will run the show, they will determine what is allowed to be said and felt. If no one understands what is happening and takes action to create an environment that brings out the best in everyone, then slowly joy, delight and wonder will be replaced by anxiety, depression, and mockery.

Sometimes it is necessary for us to leave our jobs and sometimes to divorce our family members in order to recover our sense of who we are and who we were meant to be in this world. We sell our souls to belong, even though that belonging costs us our salvation: our joy, our integrity, our gifts, our truth, and our authenticity.

All of us have been shamed and all of us have shamed others. It is often called “teasing.” Someone tells us that we look stupid in our favorite blue shirt. If we let our hurt be known, we might be shamed with the words, “I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke?”

Too much of what passes, as humor is anger leaking out, shaming others, and stealing our joy and our talent.

Shame Recovery Examples:
1. You publish something on the Internet or in a newsletter and you find you have made some obvious errors. You proofread your work several times! How can there be mistakes? Shame starts to inhabit you. You recognize the feeling of shame, tell yourself or someone else you are feeling shame about the errors you made, and then you go on with your life. You will make more errors. Count on it. Celebrate it. There is no authentic living without lots of errors, so make them with aplomb.

2. You are scheduled to give a big presentation, which would be no big deal usually, but right now you are feeling enormously vulnerable. The Voice of Shame enters your body and says, “You call yourself a motivational, inspirational speaker? You don’t seem very uplifting right now. You phony. You have fooled people all along. This is who you really are, this week Pretender of Wisdom. Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!”

Note: Most of the messages of the Voice of Shame are to shut up. Stop taking up space and stealing oxygen from other, more deserving people, which is everyone else. Stop pretending you haven’t made a mistake; you are a mistake and now everyone knows and will know forever.

3. If you do not desert yourself, it doesn’t matter whoever else deserts you. You are the only one who can abandon you. If you resist the Voice of shame and let the feelings of embarrassment, inadequacy, and humiliation just flow through you, you will get stronger exponentially. No one can take you away from you except you. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Don’t accept anyone’s invitation to feel inferior.

My Shame Holes

1. I don’t like to admit that I’m tired. There is a part of me that doesn’t think it is okay for me to be tired, and it’s especially not okay for me to look tired. If someone says to me, “You look tired,” my first response is “Oh, no! I can’t look tired! That is terrible to look tired. I’m motivational speaker. I need to be uplifting all the time, every second.

Then I realize this is my shame talking, so I speak it. “Ooh,” I say, “it’s hard for me to admit I’m tired. I feel some shame about that. How interesting.”

2. I also do not like to admit that I am not at the top of my game. (This, you might notice, is closely related to “tired.”) It’s okay for me to not be at the top of my game for an afternoon, a day, possibly even a week, though that is stretching it. But when I returned from Bali after being there for two months, I was not at the top of my game for two whole months. For two whole months I could not think of one fun thing to do. I watched a lot of television, went for walks, talked with friends, even wrote a song, but as soon as a joy moment was over, it was really over. There was no residual effect.

I would feel a little jolly, and then back to the Slough of Despond for me. For two months! I knew it wouldn't last. I knew my job was to experience this transition time and let it be what it needed to be, let go of control and accept. Either I trust everything, including having no enthusiasm, or I don’t. Picking and choosing when I would trust is bargaining and ultimately very unsatisfying.

When I visited my dear friend Genai in a Naples, Florida and she remarked that I looked tired and I had to admit I was not at the top of my game, I felt shame and I spoke it. Speaking it didn’t shift my tiredness, but naming and speaking my shame allowed it to flow through me instead of building up in my system like so much spiritual cholesterol. OOOh, I like that term: Spiritual Cholesterol. That is what shame is exactly, Spiritual Cholesterol.

Shame is the wormhole that lets death seep in and extinguishes life. There is nothing more important you can do than learn to recognize shame in yourself and in others. You simply cannot know the terrain of your life if you do not recognize when someone else is trying to obliterate you or when you are trying to obliterate yourself.

Some people, most people, are unaware of how much shame impacts their lives and the lives of those they love. Once you start noticing how much shame is in the world, you may feel like a stranger in strange land for a while. That’s okay. You will be able to feel more compassion for yourself and others, you will be able to have more creativity and courage, and you will be able to give birth to the best that is within you and help others is do the same. You will become a Dream Midwife for yourself and everyone you meet. We can form a club!

Taking Action

1. Start noticing when you or someone else has been shamed.
2. Start making sure you are not shaming others. We all have bad habits. Don’t’ shame yourself about having a bad habit. Notice it, apologize, and repair what you can and go on.
3. Let yourself and other people you feel safe with know when you feel shamed. Shame is not the problem. Feeling ashamed about feeling shame is the problem. If we can admit to ourselves and others that we feel shame, we make it safe for other people to be who they are, and we let our bodies feel the shame and let it flow out, making space for another feeling, such as self-confidence, to fill us. When I admit I’m defensive or feeling shame or feeling like I want to put a bag over my head or feeling completely inadequate to the task in front of me, magic happens.

The feeling of shame and doubt that was just completely occupying all of my body and all of my brain now melts and flows away. I feel strong and proud, in a good way. The Dinosaur within me that wants me to live small lost another round. The Lion in me that wants me to step into my greatness has more muscle, more experience, and it is more likely that I will be able to admit my shame the next time.

A Sample Conversation with a Dream Midwife

2009-04-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

What is a Dream Midwife?

2009-04-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

I am blessed with a kind of perfect pitch. I can hear and even smell what is out of tune, out of alignment, out of integrity. Sometimes when I touch people, such as when I give them a shoulder rub, I get visions that are fun to play with.

I call what I do Magical Muse-ical Listening because I listen with imagination and heart that often combines with a coyote-like sense of humor. I don’t make pronouncements – that would feel too arrogant and serious. Instead, I offer my impressions and sometimes song lyrics in in an effort to help give birth to what is inside other people clamoring to be born.

Because of this kind of intuitive knowing, I can help people identify what is in the way of their moving forward. I help people remove obstacles so they can joyfully manifest their bravest dreams.

You Are in Charge

Sometimes this is a fun process, full of belly laughter. Sometimes tears come. Sometimes a stubbornness born of shame rises up in someone I’m working with. It’s like an emotional No Fly Zone, an unspoken “We will not talk about this anymore.” I hear this unspoken request loud and clear. I honor your Stop Signs, but I don’t forget they are there. I know how to stay with you and soften what is supporting the shame or the fear until we can venture together with love into territory formerly off limits.

Your inner emotional obstacles are like a logjam in your dream stream. I know how to find just the place to put a little pressure to get the logs to break up and get your life moving again. If you trust me, we can shift anything that is blocking the embodiment of your passion and allow your dream to be born.

It takes courage. It takes trust. It takes commitment. But if you stick with me, I will stick with you and together we can give birth to the best that is in you, the reason you were put on this Earth.

Speaking My Dream into Creation

Let this or something better manifest this year:
I want to teach a song to Oprah’s audience. I want the book I’m writing to go all over the world and create invitations and opportunities for me to contribute my greatest gifts to meet the world’s greatest needs. I want enough abundance to flow through me, so that my husband Murray and I can take our gifts globally and have abundant support to manifest all of our creative ideas to empower people all over the globe.

No Excuses: It Doesn’t Matter What has Happened to You

How's that? I've done a good job of manifesting what I set out to manifest. My mother and sister both dropped out of high school and I have a Master’s degree in counseling. My family did not vote, travel, or discuss ideas. I have been all over the world singing and teaching, getting people on their feet, and believing they can do anything they believe they can do. I got myself to Bali, Africa, Dubai, Europe, South America, Central America, Mexico, Canada, and even Florida.

If I can do it, you can do it, too. Let me help you help yourself be more than you ever imagined you could be, do more than you ever thought you could do. It will be fun and everyone will win.

Manifestation Tip

I’m going to end each section with a tip.

What I Say to Myself to Help Keep Me Keepin’ On

• I get to go anywhere I want to go anytime I want to go.
• Either I trust everything or nothing. I don’t get to trust only when Life is feeling good. I need to trust it all, especially when I do not feel positive, optimistic, hopeful, or safe.
• I want to work with people who want to work with me.
• I want to work less and earn more.
• I want to have a lot of fun, help a lot of people, and make a lot of money.

Until next time,

Vicki