by Pamela Slim

If you have ever watched the Discovery Channel, you have seen the fury of a mother bear defending her cubs from the video lens of an over-eager nature lover. With fangs bared and claws ready to attack, she focuses all of her power and girth at taking down the potential threat.

Such intensity almost matches a creative father who adamantly defends his miserable career as a network administrator since he “has to” pay for his children’s education.

Or a young college student who “has to” answer her overbearing mother’s calls, even in the middle of a date.

Or a mother who “has to” feed her children only organic carrots fertilized with vegetable compost blessed by Tibetan monks.

Or an executive who “has to” work weekends and vacations in order to stay competitive.

The fact is, we don’t have to do anything. We choose to do things with specific consequences. Different choices = different consequences.

This slight distinction has huge implications for your sense of personal power.

But releasing these ingrained “have tos,” also called your “personal religion,” is not easy.

To get you started, here are three short exercises:

1. Body Compass:

• Close your eyes and deeply relax. Vividly recall an exceptionally painful or unhappy experience. Notice how this memory is making you feel, not emotionally, but physically. What bodily sensations or symptoms are connected to the negative event?
• Name this sensation with a word or phrase.
• Assign a score to this negative feeling from 1-10, with the worst possible score being a 10.
• Repeat this process, thinking this time about the very best time of your life. Notice your body symptoms, name the sensation, and assign a score.

Once you have this valuable information about your “body compass,” you can use it to understand how you are really feeling about a situation. When you think a thought or ponder a decision, what do you feel in your body? Is it your “best” or “worst” feeling? What is the score?

2. Think of some things you have had to do lately that made you uncomfortable, sad or angry such as:

1. I had to lend my brother $250 (again) so he could pay his rent
2. I had to attend a boring all-day meeting
3. I had to enter my credit card items in Quickbooks to prepare for my tax filing
4. I had to attend a dinner party of a neighbor who I don’t particularly like
5. I had to do my laundry
6. I had to fire an employee
7. I had to take my son’s car away after he had an accident
8. I had to call a client and tell him we were behind on his project
9. I had to decline a weekend away with the girls since I didn’t have enough money
10. I had to walk the dog in -20 degree weather

Using your body compass, assign a number from -10 to +10 to each item, based on the way your body reacts to each item.

3. Take the item with the worst score and examine the belief.

Belief: I have to lend money to my brother.

Why?: Because if I don’t, he will get angry and call me selfish.

What will happen if he gets angry? He may stop talking to me.

How will you feel if your brother stops talking to you? Crappy. Unloved.

What do you really want? I want my brother to love me.

Since you can’t control anyone else’s thoughts and emotions, what do you want? I want to feel loved.

What is another way you can feel loved? I can love myself. I can surround myself with people whose love is not contingent on loaning money. And I can love others.

Suddenly, your steadfast belief that you have to lend your brother money loses its power. You learn that you can choose not to lend the money and still feel good. And if you choose to lend the money, you will do so freely and without the expectation of anything in return.

You can apply this framework to any one of the above scenarios and see how it changes your sense of obligation.

Original thought: I have to stay in this job to pay for my kids’ college
Underlying desire: I want my kids to get a good education.
Question: How can I help my kids get a good education?

Original thought: I have to answer all my mother’s calls, no matter my personal situation
Underlying desire: I want my mother to know I love and respect her.
Question: How can I demonstrate love and respect to my mother while still maintaining my independence and privacy?

Original thought: I have to feed my kids 100% organic food at all times
Underlying desire: I want my kids to be healthy.
Question: How can I help my kids be healthy?

Original thought: I have to do my laundry
Underlying desire: I want to have clean clothes
Question: How can I get my clothes clean?

All this boils down to realizing that you have unlimited choices about how to live your life. When you own your choices, you feel more powerful and are more able to act in your best interest.

Let’s try something: If you catch yourself saying “I have to … ” this week, stop, pinch yourself and say “I choose to …” If you don’t like your choice, make another one! You may be surprised at how free you feel.

Can you share the results of your experiment here in the comments?

by Pamela Slim

When I was younger, I went crazy for Salsa. I don’t mean the kind involving chopped tomatoes and chili peppers, I mean the sexy, sweaty Latin dance variety.

Nothing, nothing, made me feel better than being whipped around the dance floor to the intoxicating rhythms of salsa music. While dancing, I felt like a combination of a Hollywood temptress, prom queen and Jennifer Beales in the finale of Flashdance.

My passion for salsa dancing was a little problematic since as an Anglo wannabe Latina, I didn’t have too many friends who shared my enthusiasm and were willing to go out dancing with me. Showing up as a single blond was not always recommended, as it was akin to putting a “cheap floozy looking for quick fling” sign on my chest. But my love for dancing overrode any fear of embarrassment.

Salsa dancing is one example of things in my life that make my essential self scream YES.

When I do it, I lose track of time, feel absolutely present in my body and have an involuntary silly grin plastered on my face.

Finding the things that delight and enthrall you is a critical step towards finding a life that not only fits you but thrills you. It helps you make complex decisions like whom to marry, where to go to college and whether or not to quit your job to start a business. It also works for simple things like which restaurant to go for dinner on Saturday night or which color to paint your toenails.

In my last post, I led you through an exercise about identifying your inner NO from Martha’s book Finding Your Own North Star that was sure to leave you drained and unenergized. I made you imagine a scenario where you were being judged by people you didn’t respect on things that you hated to do. I swear, I was not trying to chase you into the arms of a therapist, I just really wanted you to experience what it felt like when your essential self screamed NO.

Today, thank god, we get to swing in the opposite direction, into the people, places and things that make your essential self shout YES from the rooftops.

EXERCISE

This slightly involved but very powerful exercise is lifted directly from Finding Your Own North Star, starting on page 38. There is a lot more detail in the book and some hilarious examples of each question, but this stripped down version should still give you enough information to be effective. Take out a pencil and paper, or click on this link to open a Word template: just-say-yes21 You are going to identify a number of ways in which your essential self says “yes.”

Exercise

1. Nuclear energy.

List three things that can always get you moving (Examples: “The family New Year’s party,” “Playing pickup basketball,” “Going to the mountains.”)

Energy-inducing person, place or thing #1: ________

Energy-inducer #2: ________

Energy-inducer #3: ________

Look over the list and circle the response that makes you feel most enthusiastic.

2. To Your Health.

Try to remember three times when your health seemed better than usual. What was going on in your life at that time?

Situation #1: ________

Situation #2: ________

Situation #3: ________

Circle the situation that has the most positive associations for you right now.

3. Memories, Light the Corners of My Mind ...

Where’s your supermemory? If you can’t think of anything, you’re probably overlooking the obvious. Ask some friends and loved ones what they ‘ve noticed about your ability to pick up certain categories of information. List these categories below.

Info-type #1: ________
Info-type #2: ________
Info-type #3: ________

Circle the type of information that interests you most. Be honest; nothing you enjoy is stupid or trivial.

4. Time Warp.

Write down the types of activities that make you forget what time it is.

Activity #1: _______
Activity:#2 _______
Activity #3: _______

Circle the activity you find most absorbing.

5. Emotional Intelligence.

Name three people who make you feel socially adept and confident, people who seem to understand you and enjoy spending time with you.

Person #1: _______

Person #2: _______

Person #3: _______

Please circle the name of the person who makes you feel most comfortable and relaxed.

6. Magnetic Attraction.

List times when you felt strangely drawn to a person, place or thing. You may have temporarily become unable to concentrate on anything else. What was the object of your desire?

Urge to merge item #1: _______

Item #2: _______

Item #3: _______

Circle the thing that brings up the most positive feelings.

7. A Natural High.

List the last three times you experienced a wonderful mood, particularly if our good mood came at a strange time or from an action other people may have criticized.

Good-mood setting #1: _______

Good-mood setting #2: _______

Good-mood setting #3: _______

Circle the situation that makes you feel the happiest.

Summary

Step 1:

In the spaces below, list the answers you circled on the exercises.

List your:

A. Most high-energy activity: _______

B. Person who makes you feel most relaxed: _______

C. Best-health situation: _______

D. Information you remember most easily: _______

E. Activity most likely to make you forget the time: _______

F. Item that created the strongest Urge to Merge: _______

G. Best mood setting: _______

Step 2

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate response.

Your Own Best-Case Scenario

It is an incredibly beautiful day. The air is clear, the scenery dazzling, and you’re setting out to do (A: Your most high-energy activity)

_________________________

with (B: your favorite person)

_________________________

You’ve got no other responsibilities, no immediate deadlines, and no major problems weighing you down. You feel great, even better than you did back when you were (C: your best health situation)

_________________________

In fact, you are in the best physical shape of your life: strong, lean, robust and full of energy. You’re having a great conversation about (D: the information you remember most easily)

_________________________

When a message arrives for you. It’s a letter from the president, saying that you have been chosen to receive a lifetime of financial support for doing (E: the activity that makes you forget time)

_________________________

This will require you to spend a lot of time with (F: the person or situation that creates the Urge to Merge)

_________________________

You feel just the way you did when (G: your best-mood setting)
_________________________

happened, only more so. Lie back for a minute, take in the scenery, and enjoy knowing that this is basically how you’re going to spend the rest of your life.

Step 3
As you did with the “worst-case scenario,” read over your “best-case” story carefully. Picture the images as vividly as you can, and notice how you feel. There’s considerable evidence that just visualizing this scene greatly increases the likelihood that you’ll experience something like it at some point in the future. In fact, no matter how impossibly wonderful it may appear, the scenario above is only a pale shadow of the splendid realities you’ll find on the path to your own North Star.

What does it feel like to you, this sense of your essential self saying “Yes! Due north!“? How would you describe the sensation– or is it a sensation at all? Many people experience their true path not as something that happens to them but as the simultaneous loss of self and complete connection with the universe. When the essential self is really in its element, you may be so involved with the work at hand, the people around you, and the things you’re learning that you won’t be aware of yourself as separate from them. This state is the goal of many mystical practices, both in Western religious tradition and in the East. It’s been described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “flow,” by anthropologist Joseph Campbell as “following your bliss.” What do you call it?

Identifying your inner YES, along with last post’s inner NO, are critical steps in fine tuning your internal navigation system that will lead to better decisions and a more joyful life.

I ask you, maybe even beg, to take the time to complete the exercises. Please share what you learn here, as well as the questions that pop in your mind about what’s next.

In the meantime, pardon me as I take a spin around the dance floor.

(Update 10:24am PST: comments work now, please share your thoughts!)

by Pamela Slim

As promised, we have migrated to a new blog platform (on Wordpress for those who take note) that is housed within the newly designed Martha Beck website.

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