Tag Archives: an empowered no

Enough already, stop falling down!

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Imagine this…

A toddler gets the courage to take a few steps and falls. Mom and Dad
clap with outstretched arms and help her up.
She’s quite befuddled as to how she got up in the first place and now
how she got down.
She accepts the help that comes with a provision of hugs and kisses
and the perfect family continues to play this game until she becomes
utterly exhausted.

Tucked safely in her crib, Mom and Dad begin to strategize about
tomorrow’s walking lessons.
“We’ll walk behind her and not let her fall”
“We’ll install handles all over the house so she will always have a
way to stand up straight.”
They continue with their plans and they remember fondly how the baby
next door, just walked effortlessly in one day.

They are pleased with themselves and go to bed.
A few weeks later, baby is still struggling and keeps toppling, but seems
to be enjoying the process of standing up and falling down.

They change up the game plan but nothing seems to be working. This is
taking much longer than is convenient for them.

One day, they both look at each other in exasperation and as baby holds
out his hand for help they say,
” Enough already, stand up!”

Are you appalled?

I was cringing as I was creating this, it is so awful!
What awful parents!
Call CPS!

But wait a minute…
Don’t we do exactly this to ourselves as we are learning new behaviors?

We try to stand up for ourselves and say “NO! I will not accept that anymore”.

The other person fights back and makes us feel bad and we give up.
We give up because it is too painful to keep trying the new behavior and                                                                                                  fall on our face then try to find the strength to start all over again.

We look at ourselves in the mirror and yell at our reflection. We berate
the small person inside that keeps trying to make a happier life for
the “mature” person staring back at us.

I give you permission to treat yourself as a tender toddler and keep trying.
Do you have mean friends who keep putting you down and trying to
influence you to give up?

Say this to them:

Enough already with the negativity! If you cannot support my growth
then we have to renegotiate this relationship.

Have fun falling down and getting back up. Practice makes better. Let’s kick
perfection to the curb. Have fun with your missteps.

 

Love & light,

Indrani

What’s your kryptonite?

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Do you all remember superman?

It used to make me cry when he was tricked into coming into contact
with kryptonite. Of course, back then I was but a mere child.
Why then, do I feel like a mere child when I get close to some of my
kryptonite substances?
Please allow me to explain.

I would say that most of the time, I am strong, confident and
secure. THEN, something happens and I want to fall to my knees and
stay in a fetal position.
These “things” that happen can be as simple as:
Someone giving me the silent treatment or the cold shoulder. I
immediately go into a tsunami of thoughts about what I HAVE DONE
WRONG.

When I am in this “I am such a loser” phase, I almost want to jump
out of my skin to make amends.
Make amends for what?

I stitch together instances of when I think I may have wronged them
and I try to find behaviors that would absolve me of these sins.
A lot of the time, it just looks like begging for forgiveness for the
errors of my ways, or completely forgetting my life’s dreams in favor
of whatever they want.

Recently, I had plans with a friend to do something fun. The day
before the event, I asked for timing details and was
promptly told, with a look of sheer frustration that the event was the
next week. I said “no, it can’t be! I will be out of town”.
I was stunned. I had this on my calendar since OCT 2011.
The person then turned and left the room without a single word. I was
surrounded by kryptonite.

I screwed up, I am a bad friend and I can never get dates right…

Then I rushed to my computer, found the email with the date that I
had saved and rushed to show it to my friend. They looked at it and
said NOT A SINGLE WORD. Not even an “oh boy, I should check this out”.

Of course I thought: I should cancel my trip and I should apologize to
the other parties involved. Until I screamed at myself, “YOU DID
NOTHING WRONG. YOU DID EVERYTHING RIGHT. PEOPLE SHOULD BE APOLOGIZING
TO YOU, DAMMIT!”

I had to walk away from my stinking thinking and hope that the
kryptonite didn’t creep up on me when I was asleep.

So, what’s your kryptonite?

Love and light,

Indrani

Angry, humorless or just plain bitchy

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“… strong professional women of all races are at risk of being classified as angry or humorless or just plain bitchy. Studies have shown that men who get angry are often rewarded in their career, while women who express anger tend to be penalized.” -Ilyse Hogue.

This quote hardly needs any more explanation… except for HOW to handle this in our lives and in the work place. The way we treat anger personally and professionally is directly related to HOW we were taught to react by our parents or guardians. I remember very clearly that shouting and screaming were par for the course in my family of origin, but only for the adults, we kids would get slapped if we said a word.

As I grew up, every time someone yelled at me, even though I was an adult I felt childlike and immediately clamped up. I evolved into being the shouter and the yeller until I realized that I was only harming myself.

It is quite easier to “control” ourselves at work, as the social norm is to go along to get along.

What happens if you do let loose and people start labeling you? Can you open the conversation with them about the labels?

Not really, BUT you can open the conversation about the labels they put on others. This way you are just creating a small crack in the social façade and your wisdom can shine a light thru the crack.

So try standing up for others and you will feel a lot better even if you don’t have anyone to stand up for you.

 

Love and light

Indrani

P.S. I did notice that people brought their problems to me to solve because I was that Bitch who wouldn’t take crap. Interesting, don’t ya think?

 

Sleigh bells ring you listenin’

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Are you listenin’? And I am not talking about listenin’ to a bombardment of holiday ads to buy, the sound of cash registers, the voices of people clambering around stressed out searching to meet the expectations that come prepackaged with the season.

Are you listenin’ to your true self and what you need?

Does that sound selfish during a time of year that is meant for giving? It is not, because only you know what you need and in order to give to others you need to give to yourself first. Carve out the time to give to yourself. That can be in the form of a hot bath, time to read, a much needed nap, or the ability to say I have done enough for today and not push through one more store. What if I told you that holiday memories can be made and you don’t have to go to Macy’s to find them?

Look in the mirror.

Invest the time in yourself to be happy, be healthier, be lighter in spirit and present your true higher self to the ones you love this holiday season. This would be a precious gift providing holiday memories of a lifetime. People would remember your warm embrace, your smile that lights-up the room, the song of your laughter in the air.

For those people in your life who cannot see this dearest gift of YOU, no box wrapped in shiny paper will warm their heart or bring them into the truest spirit of love and giving. Say a prayer for them, one of hope and joy that they will realize their true self which will bring happiness and peace to their life.

Stop this wheel…I wanna get off!!!

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It occurred to me this week that I have been on a hamster wheel. I really did not know when I got here, but I know how. Since the beginning of the year when I decided to change my profit business into a foundation, I have been pushing, spinning, looking for what to do next.

The social media has me going crazy. To tweet or not? To Face book or not?  How many blogs are enough to show that I am serious about my cause/ movement? How many newsletters are too little, or too many? I do not want to flood my readers, but I don’t want to lose them either. Can I tell one list about everything or do I have to split my message to fine tune my reach?

What to do when I find out that my newsletter provider, Mail Chimp gets upset and sends me nasty messages? How do I get my blogs out there so that my efforts are magnified without extra work?

If you have a business on the Internet you know exactly what I mean.

What if you don’t?

Does this hamster wheel thing still apply to you?

Well, are you working, inside or outside the home?

Do you have kids or a spouse?

Are you a single mom just trying to stay afloat?

Do you have aging parents who count on you?

Do you have siblings who don’t pick up any slack?

Do you have a job that drains you of your life force?

Do you have a boss from hell?

Shall I go on?

Ok then, do you have to leave your kids while you travel for your high profile job?

Has your husband lost his job and now resents that he is depending on you?

Ok, you get it, you really do get it.

What’s a girl to do?

Let me tell you about a wonderful coaching tool that Martha Beck taught me and uses relentlessly with her own clients.

It is called the 3 B’s:

Bag it

Barter it

Better it

 

Let’s start with bag it.

This simply means to let it go. Let it go if it does not provide anything that is useful to your family. Do you really have to scrub the tub every day? Do you have to fold everyone’s laundry? Do you even have to do everyone’s laundry? What would happen if your teenager had to wear clothes that were strewn on the ground because they did not know if they were clean? Who would care? If the answer is “yes, I would care” I must ask WHY?

Would you care because the school may think you are a bad mom? Would it mean you loved your child any less? Let me float something… would the world come to an end?

 

Ok let’s go to barter it.

Barter means to exchange something for something else. Are you a computer whiz? Do you have a friend who is pitiful with her computer but she is an excellent cook. Can you barter a few home cooked meals per week for some computer lessons? She might be so appreciative if you suggested that. Are you low on funds and cannot get those little perks like a haircut or an occasional manicure?

Can you approach the owner of the Salon and offer to Face Book her services and do some tweets so he can get some exposure? Do you get the picture? The other kind of barter is you exchange $ for a job you cannot do. At Christmas time I pay my wonderful handy man (my house hold husband) to take down the Christmas tree and to retrieve all the boxes from the attic. How does he know where it all is? Easy, he put them away last year. He actually knows more than I do about my Christmas stuff.

 

Now to Better it.

Better it means to make the experience a little (or a lot ) better by playing some tricks on yourself.

Let’s say you have to get a root canal and you hate the dentist. You cannot bag it or you will be in pain and your tooth will get worse and fall out. You cannot barter it, because no one can do it for you. How can you better it? You could take your iPod and make a play list of soothing music to help you through it so you won’t have to hear the sound of the dreaded drill. You could dab some perfume on your upper lip so you won’t smell that burning as much. You could go shopping after, or treat yourself to a massage right after the dentist and you could barter the massage for some social media exposure for the therapist.

I hope by now you are getting it. It just requires a little forethought. This little investment will reap huge results. Now I need to find someone to barter a full blown Thanksgiving Dinner… any takers? I am a really great coach, can you use some coaching for a home cooked meal?

Chew on that a while, no pun intended.

Love and light

Don’t touch that stove!

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Our mother’s told it to us, we have said it to our kids… don’t touch the stove! It is hot, you’ll get burned!”

Growing up, it did not take usually but one burn to realize yes indeed the stove is hot, and the pain ensues. We learned quickly. Once, maybe twice, but never again do we put our hand on the stove. Same lesson applied to open flames.

But why, oh why, do the lessons not sink in when it comes to the heart. Flames of the heart cause more enduring pain than a hot burner on the stove. Yet we do not learn.

We try from one relationship to the next hoping it will be better. Yet in retrospect the people who I thought would be the great love have many of the same traits of former greats. Why when we know we will get burned, hurt, scared do we seek out the same traits over and over again?

What lessons are we missing the first, second, third time around with people that prevents us from learning that injury is imminent and we should proceed with caution?

I throw these questions out there not with some new revelation that can prevent future pain, but as rhetorical. Food for thought.

Thinking this morning I just was considering the people in my life and the same traits they all hold when I initially thought they were someone different. Why can’t I learn this, when it only took one time with my hand on a burner to know not to touch a hot stove?

Which lesson was easier for you, the hot stove or a flame of the heart?

Surrender

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Surrendering does not usually have positive connotations. Recently I had been traveling a lot, meetings, obligations, running here, running there. Just simply overwhelmed. I would lay in bed exhausted not able to even sleep well.

I decided to start looking at my obligations, my schedule to see what I could eliminate. I started thinking what would happen if I surrendered. Not give up, but give in. Give in to the my mind, body and spirit which needed time to rest, recharge, and be still.

If I kept my hectic schedule and burden load I would only be running myself down more.

What would others think if I postponed my appointments with them? I worried that they would think less of me.

What would my loved ones think if I chose to take time by myself and not rush home to them? I felt guilty wanting to indulge myself in rest and rejuvenation.

I decided to surrender to my body, mind and spirit to get the rest and develop the clarity needed.

Once I made the decision to surrender, to give in, the healing actually began at once.

What can you surrender to, that would be for your well being?

NO NO NO NO NO… how to hold to your NO and respect the other!

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OK, here it is. Early morning call from a company that I had sent in a BIO to. I sent in my info because the offer said ” NO PURCHASE REQUIRED!”

The caller was delightful, she is from NY and so am I. She loves NY and so do I. She asked me lots of questions about my business, my career and hobbies and THEN

” Well Indrani, we have over 4000,000 members that you can network with so for $793.00 you can have a lifetime membership and you never have to apply again.”

I reply” I must speak with my business partner first…”

She continues” you know we have lost of people to speak to and if we waited for everyone we would never get the book published”

I say, ” In that case this is not for me”

We go back and forth, I get offered a 500.00 deal but she will throw in the add ons… NO

Again another offer, ok we have a 300.00…. NO

I say” Thank you for doing such a great job of giving me a wonderful chance to stand in my NO”.

She is taken aback but only for a moment ” I just want you to hear how great this opportunity is, 1000’s of people apply and we only accept a few…”

I say” I am hearing you, but you do not seem to be hearing me when I say NO”

I eventually complimented her on the great job she did for the company in attempting to convert me from a possibility into a paying client. She is a great employee. She had all her reasons down pat as to why I SHOULD buy her item!

I still may buy, but first I will do my research. I will not be squeezed into giving my money away.

Here is the anatomy of How to Stick to your NO

1. KNOW why you are saying NO.

2. Know what you are saying YES to when you say your NO.

3. Compliment the asker so they do not take it as a personal rejection.

4. Repeat your NO as OFTEN as it takes for you to be HEARD!

5. If none of the above works… then hang up/leave the room/close off your energy. And DO NOT JUDGE YOURSELF FOR BEING A BAD PERSON.

Love and light

Indrani