On the Crazy-Making Edge of What You Want

| LOCATION: On the sofa bed in the charming southern Paris flat of Morgane et Pierre-Etienne |

So. You’re on the verge. You’ve set out to create that massive step up–the huge leap in your career, publishing or launching your life’s work or a new business, the jump to leave your safe job and travel the world, or the moment of opening your heart to the relationship that could break it for real.

You’ve been preparing. You took each next step. You thought you were ready. And all of a sudden, you wake up in the middle of a Class-4 tornado. Everything is shifting, and fast. Your every day feels like earthquakes where everything you depended on as solid is suddenly swaying, concrete is rolling in waves–wha–?! Nothing is as it was. You can’t stay here one minute longer–and you can’t see what’s next! Make that jump? Into what?! Where’s the safe landing? Where is ANY landing?!!

Welcome to the external perimeter of your subconscious comfort zone. Like that? No? I’m not surprised. This is where you question everything. I mean everything. Is black, black? Is it raining or sunshine?–I don’t know! Do I love him? Is this really the city I live in? Maybe this is a Vonnegutesque dream where nothing is real…

Even your skin feels foreign.

It’s crucial right now for you to clarify. Ask your heart and intuition WHERE it is you want to go next. What you want is a feeling before it is actual. Tell your head to butt out.

What you want may mean money–a financial feeling. How much do you require as you take the leap, or maybe what you want coming in is the leap. You’re NOT in a place of having to scrap and shift. Let go of the poverty story when you’re on the cusp of what you want. It will screw things up. Let it go now. It takes real bravery to think Big and to hold onto that firmly.

The change you’ve set in motion can work FOR you if you access your deeper presence–use the tornado.

Be the tornado instead of being in the tornado.

You can do this. The feeling of instability, or the constant shift and challenge haranguing you, is part of the shift. Breathe. And keep breathing.

Your focus must be on the feeling and the new reality you are so clear that you want. WANT IT. WANT IT every single moment. This is where your bravery kicks in and you hold bravery in your hand like it’s a fist full of solid gold. 24 karat.

What you’re really confronting is the Imposter Syndrome–your Ego’s hail-mary-go-for-broke play to get you to stay where it’s comfortable.

Remember, you hold all the cards. Don’t suddenly think otherwise. YOU hold all the cards. And they’re your cards.

You are already equipped to do what you want to do on the level you want to do it. Do not sell out now. This is where you practice holding that gravity inside–that gut tightness of what you want. It’s showing up, it’s there. You can feel it even though you can’t see it. You can taste success, fulfillment, happiness, exhilaration. Keep tasting it. That’s all you. You can do it.

Once it’s happened, once you realize that dream or goal, you’ll look back and laugh–it wasn’t so hard or as big as it seemed.

…or maybe it was 😉 But you did it.

Sending my love and hugs and my total belief that “You’ve got this.”

WARNING: Carmell’s 2015

| LOCATION: Looking down at the Black Sea from 36,000 feet, flying from Indonesia back to U.S. after 3 months away. |

VISION.

I’ve been staying in Amed. A quiet hardly-touristed village on the upper eastern coast of Bali as 2015 ended.

I like to look at my year not in terms of what I’m going to change or better, but in terms of what I want to build, create, experience, support, and grow. The truth is, I really love who I am just as I am. That’s the life I want to experience.

I’d returned in Dec. 2014 from 3 months traveling Europe to open up the next chapter of my life (it’s what I do) and working as I went–a huge leap of faith outside my comfort zone. I had decided for 2015 I would complete my book, launch my international retreats, and begin taking my business global. …I had NO IDEA what was about to happen!

ADVENTURE.

This is what happened. #highlights

February:

Fell in love with a professional community of women entrepreneurs #eWomenNetwork
Decided on one February afternoon to go to India for the 1st time that May
Submitted to TED-x SLC.

March:

With a day’s notice, jumped into Bridget Cook Burch’s Inspired Writers’ treats. (thanks Heather Laughter)
Took on the NY Times Bestselling author Bridget Cook Burch as my book coach.
Began creating my international women’s retreats

April:

Major progress on my BOOK!
Forgiveness and Yoga Retreat
Emily London Miller photoshoot 2 days before leaving for India

May:

Spent my birthday in Frankfurt Germany with my sister Rachel Bessey
Attended the Women’s Economic Forum in Goa India with women from 25 countries.
Traveled alone without a plan in India (which it turns out is hard to do)

June:

Traveled the Rhine Valley in Germany.
Returned to the US and created the India Inner Journey Retreat for October 2015.
Family Reunion, Bear Lake Utah.

July:

Joined the All Ladies League as U.S. Chairperson for Travel and Influence
Performed marriage of Rachel and Mayk in SLC

August:

Had my first booth at the E-Women Network’s International Conference in Dallas where I launched my India Retreat (thank you Patricia Thompson!)
Performed marriage of Kate and Nick in Millcreek Canyon

September:

Worked with so many of my beloved friends and clients at the doTERRA Convention (this year, the largest convention SLC had ever held)
Created the SLC launch of Oprah’s Belief Series with Tia Walker (whom I met in India)
Booked the Rose Wagner Theater for the event I was producing!
Had my name on an ArtTix ticket with Oprah Winfrey!#didnotseethatcoming
Worked with documentary filmmaker Heidi Gress in creating a short doc of local people and their incredible lives for our Beyond Belief event

October:


Participated in the Parliament of the World’s Religions SLC
Interviewed ‘The Grandmothers’
Beyond Belief was an incredible success Oct. 19th. THANK YOU to all the amazing performers and people who worked to make it happen!!
Left 2 days later for 3 months to India and southeast Asia (packed in under 20 hours).
Amazing Success with my India Inner Journey Retreat!! (Thank you Mansi Mahajan and family!!)
Discovered I don’t move like a white girl #Bollywood 😉

November:

Diwali (largest celebration of the year) with my Indian family
Traveled to the Himalayas and to the southern beaches of Goa in India to begin restoring myself.
One night in Bangkok. (which was actually 2 nights)
Arrived in Bali.
Rode a scooter through the backroads of Bali, received the Blessing from the Water Priestess in the mountains, watched the Barong ceremony in Padang Bai.

November/December/January:

Bali. Finishing my book. Creating and launching my Bali Retreat. Spiritual adventures. Balinese family. Coaching young female Balinese entrepreneurs. Scuba diving for the first time (faced my fear). Restoring myself.

PERSPECTIVE.

NONE of this was on my radar a year ago.

If you’re quite serious about living a dream you’ve had, write it down and begin taking 1 action today toward opening the space for it to happen. Be willing to let go of where you are. When you jump, BOTH feet must leave the ground. It’s the only way.

Anything is possible from where I stand now. I just look at my year and decide what I want to create or make happen in it. Then let go of How and start with first steps. One at a time.

I focus instead on living today what I want to experience. Create what thrills me. Make a living at it to support living free, which really just means living from my heart. It truly is more simple than people realize. It’s just where we put our gravity.

If it’s on security, then that determines pretty much everything. The velvet handcuffs of my comfort zone. If it’s on living my heart’s desires, well… then it becomes easier to test the waters of risk and passion and learn how to swim in them.

The worst that could happen is I fail and have to start fresh. I’ve done it already. You’ve done it too. Not the worst situation we’ve been in…

I let go of all the “insurance” mentality because it’s all bull***t anyway. I get on a scooter and ride in Balinese town traffic or along cliffs without guard rails (I’m afraid of heights)! I head out to the other side of the world without a plan, but with a purpose. Start new big projects without having done them before. Ride in India traffic in tuk tuks and cars without seatbelts because there aren’t any.

There’s something in realizing the world doesn’t insure life, it just lives it.

A Sort of Balinese, Zen-Buddhist, American Thanks-Giving Prayer…

| LOCATION: Relaxing at Menari Coffee on the side of the road amidst rice paddies in Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia |

“May you laugh, even with your tears. May you be loved. May your smiles be returned, and the goodness of others flow to you. May your abundance bless even those you will never meet. May your life hold quiet fulfillment, and abounding joy in others’ successes. May you know those who can simply sit with you in your grief. May you see the dawn and remember the feeling of beginning life. May you see others with love, and in them, yourself.
-Carmell”

Years past, I read the poem of an aging Japanese Buddhist nun from 4 centuries ago knowing that the autumn that year would likely be her last.  She wove the careful words of her love for having lived 66 autumns, each unique and exquisite to her.  At the last, her quiet anguish broke through at how 66 seasons is so brief.

The memory of her poem has stayed with me. Forty-six autumns seems so few when I think of each autumn of my life. 46. It makes each one, and each day of it, more precious to me when I see it this way.

We celebrate Thanksgiving each fall, but I want instead to celebrate Gratitude. Even in my most terrified or private heart-wrenching moments, gratitude has brought me back to myself and opened my heart to life–magnificent and fleeting as it is.

So as I sit here near the equator tonight, the moon full and bright in the November Balinese sky, I am so thankful for each of you I share life with in one way or another. We are connected–and to me this immense gift both humbles me and utterly delights me.

It has made 46 autumns so rich and blessed.

Guilt Kills Gratitude and Self Respect

| LOCATION: My cozy flat in the Lower Avenues, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA |

I had an incredible session with a dear client this morning (the eve of Thanksgiving) and we spoke about her amazing Respect List: a list of personal statements that deeply affirmed and empowered her respect of herself at the next level of her life. (She’s seriously cool!)

She had listed, “I am not guilty” as one of her statements of self-respect, and it caught my attention. Guilt plagues us in both a full-on frontal attack, as well as subtly woven into something that looks good or innocent on the face of it.

I think guilt is my #1 killer of gratitude. And so…

Gratitude is my AMAZING discovery for transmuting guilt into something beautiful and useful.

Gratitude.

When I first discovered this years ago at my office, I was running late getting to my next client. I’d been doing a lot of work on guilt and as I walked over to greet her, instead of apologizing profusely for my lateness, I instead said, “I appreciate your patience! Thank you for being so gracious.” And I knew I meant every word. I felt Great, not guilty!! She smiled broadly and we got down to business.

This is true over and over, whether it’s something I’ve done, something someone else has done, or something just inside of me. Gratitude.

The moment I reach out and find gratitude, nothing held back, my guilt–or my need for someone else to feel guilty–vanishes and my heart is FULL.

Not surprisingly, I’ve noticed that in finding gratitude, I also let go.

Naturally.

I trust.

And I feel life move forward instead of sliding back which feels all kinds of good to me.

Hummingirl Jane

| LOCATION: …relocated |

I told the universe, “I’m DONE.”

And I meant it. I had had an unexpected and painful parting of ways with a new love interest who was also an old friend. My 3-year relationship before that had ended only a few months earlier like the last air of hope leaving a slowly deflating balloon.

Then, a few days ago, I was out running in the July evening in my neighborhood when I paused to take a phone call from a client. As I spoke with her walking down a street I never take, I paused for a minute, standing in the road.

Focused on my phone call, my gaze moved unthinkingly down to the pavement around my feet–and I was caught! By what?– My brain registered tiny eyes looking up at me from a tiny body. A hummingbird!

I excused myself from my client and bent down, carefully reaching out to her. She didn’t flinch. I softly picked her up in my palm. She continued to gaze at me, her delicate body breathing the fast regular hummingbird pace.

Almost intuitively, I realized she’d been absorbing the heat from the concrete as the evening grew cool. Finding her that way, she seemed stuck, somehow. I gently closed my hand around her to hold in her warmth.

I immediately looked to the neighborhood. What would I do with her? That lightning quick calculation that I had to pause my life to renegotiate everything for her in the next few hours–the next 24 hours… and how long after?… To see to her care. I knew I wouldn’t just deposit her in a tree and hope for the best.

But I didn’t know what to do.

“Well she needs to eat, Carmell,” I said to myself. “Hummingbird metabolisms require constant food.” In a surreal shift of reality, I walked across the street and into the yard of an arts and crafts style home with beautifully manicured gardens hoping to find someone home who might help me.

Along the drive were golden trumpet vines in full bloom and I thought to stop. I held my tiny soft bundle up to a buttery yellow trumpet flower and silently gasped. Her little tongue extended faster than my eye could track, snaking into the depths of the flower and drinking, pulling back into her long thin beak, extending again and again.

I never thought of a hummingbird’s beak as ‘a beak.’ A beak seems like a much more substantial, possibly-dangerous-to-humans kind of appendage and this was so damn delicate!

She sat, a tiny raja on my palm as I lifted her from flower to flower to drink the nectar. I watched her in awe. “Oh my god, I’m holding a hummingbird as she feeds FROM FLOWERS?!?!!…” I mean, really! Five minutes ago, I was discussing training possibilities with a client for her team, getting my run in, and heading back home to an evening of work at my desk.

Now I was in a garden, holding a juvenile hummingbird, remapping my foreseeable hours and days to support the little life sitting in my hand, bright black eyes silently observing me.

 

I fed her sugar-water every hour through the evening and late into the night. She perched on my finger under the warm lamplight as I sat at my desk. I’d dip my finger into the ziplock of sugar-water and hold it in front of her waiting beak. Her impossibly long thin tongue continued to lick out and suck the nourishment from my finger.

I was captivated. Captive.

I named her Hummingirl Jane.

She sat on my desk that night for hours, looking up at me with clear dark eyes and utter trust. No creature I’ve rescued has looked at me like that.

.

I left her under the heat lamp for a few hours sleep, getting up to feed her and check on her. The next morning I carried her in her clean cardboard restaurant take-away box, into the bedroom as I was getting ready. She suddenly took flight! And my ceiling fan was on!! I panicked, turning off the fan and luckily catching her without injury. Apparently she could fly.

This was simultaneously relieving–and a nerve-wracking new development in her care.

My little companion, that day. Feeding her calmly as I sat in video sessions with clients; her sitting contentedly on my left index finger as I wrote client notes with my right hand. She preferred being perched there, little head darting back and forth, taking everything in.

My heart couldn’t help falling.


>

I had located Wasatch Exotic Pet Care. They would take her and give her the proper proteins a juvenile hummingbird needs, before handing her to Wildlife Rehab who would make sure she safely re-entered her migratory pattern, her free life…

I drove her there, that afternoon; beautiful tiny Hummingirl Jane.

For less than 24 hours, my whole world had changed… And my whole world changed in less than 24 hours.

When I picked her up, I didn’t know what to do, what she would require, how long I would be committing to… I had a choice then. And I carried her home.

At the counter in Wasatch Exotic Pet, I held her perched on my finger for longer and longer as she looked trustingly into my eyes. Even the vet techs commented on her total attention with me. My heart actually ached to let her go. It seems ridiculous, maybe. Except it’s true.

Her empty box sat on the car seat next to me as I drove home. And then life–as it was. But not me as I was. We don’t know how long some magic will continue with us. And we’ll never be able to calculate how we will be changed forever after.

Sometimes, Life relocates us.

I say, Let go. Be relocated. Be soft and captivated and lost and unknowing. Just… be there.

Meaning of Life

| LOCATION: At the counter in the Kitchen of My Life, asking “What’s for dinner?” |

When people talk about answering the question of why they’re here, it always sounds like we expect it to be one thing.

Like, “I’m here to have dinner. Once I decide on, prepare, and eat that meal, it’s done and that’s all there is. I just want it to be “the RIGHT meal.” We put off grocery shopping or trying new foods, eating the same boring things every day or even fasting until we can decide on that One. Right. Meal.

A friend said to me today, “You seem to really know why you’re here. I’m so glad you figured that out!” with the implication that he was still searching and uncertain. I laughed. No matter how clear I get about why I choose to be here, I’m always still asking.

If we’re really honest, I think we always are.

I want to taste as many simple or gourmet, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ meals as I can fit into this crazy go on the planet. And to share them with a lot of people.

There’s a purpose in there somewhere. 😉

Adventures Are Not For the Faint of Heart

| LOCATION: On a cliff terrace facing the night storm over the Mediterranean, Vernazza, Italy |

I sat out on the quay today writing in the sun, for hours. I knew the storm was coming. The town was only half open–half alive, as though it knew to prepare for something the rest of us were foreigners to. My stomach was in knots–would I be able to show up?

I’d made 3 different backup plans for wifi for my session tonight. The clouds were alternately ominous and majestic as they ran breathless over the top of our little village. As the sun fell, the storms threw the sunset into sharp beauty. And still we all waited, the sky growing dark.

Shops were closing early. I bought wifi time at the only wifi cafe for my mastermind group tonight. And as the cafe closed up, I sat down on the cobbled street outside the door, under an awning, and logged in. The rain started, thunder and wind, as our group came online.

“Where are you?” I panned the webcam down the lonely dark street with lamps lit. “Is that Italy?!” Yes. A small village with NO cars–I can touch the houses on both sides of the streets when I stretch out my arms.

We had an incredible session as the rain pelted sideways and I had to wipe it from my screen. The faithful church bells called the hour, the half hour and the new hour. Looking at me strangely, people scrambled last minute to dry, lit homes behind shuttered windows. My focus was on the seven people on my screen.

I was numb from cold and sitting on cobblestone for nearly 2 hours when I (very) slowly stood up, packed up, and went in search of a last open cafe for a hot drink.

The storm had taken a small intermission.

After being severely warned of power outages, I was thankful to find I had electricity when I arrived at my terraced room on the cliff over the ocean.

I stand alone now in the dark doorway wrapped in a blanket and watching the Mediterranean rage below me as the rain whips across me unrepentently.
……………

And I leave on the early train tomorrow for Florence to prepare myself there for clients, then meeting up with friends I will stay with that I made on my trip 2 years ago.

Immediately, Wednesday morning, I fly to Madrid. The Prado awaits–a dream of many years.

A young woman with her friend on the quay this afternoon, traveling as students, said, “Traveling is really hard. You think you’re going to have this phenomenal time–and you do–but it takes so much to do it. More than you expect or think.” I smiled sympathetically as she said it.

I could relate.

Exquisite moments. Amidst lots of angst and effort and anxiety about where I will sleep tomorrow night… It’s the struggle that makes the journey powerful. It’s the effort to show up and experience everything we can, that opens wide the inner transformation.

Vacation is a reprieve from the daily routine. Traveling literally moves us from where we are to somewhere new–from the person we were to the person we become.

We meet the unexpected. We put ourselves over and over right into the center of the unknown and ask boldly or timidly for what comes next… But we ask.

I love to weave the magical spell with pictures and words of all I am experiencing. And it is all that! And so much more… But the webs that bring the magic together, often quickly dismissed or overlooked, are the struggle and the questioning–the anxiety and stress inherent in not staying in one place longer than a few days, not knowing where we will sleep tomorrow. Trusting life with the next step.

Something incredible will be there.

Fake Outrage

| LOCATION: Tulie ~ French Bakery off of 9th, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA |

How will you feel in 30 years about the stuff you’re posting/commenting now? 🙂

Have any of you suffered from Fake Outrage*?

Years ago in my 20s I had an epiphany one night as I came home from work, made dinner and sat down in front of the TV to watch my favorite shows.
I had absolutely nothing that I valued to show for the time I sat there each night.

I thought, “This is my life! But there’s no ‘fun’ or creativity or true inspiration happening for this time I’m spending.

And I stopped watching.

Just like that. And I started figuring out each night what I wanted to do with this time that was my life.

I had conversations–good ones. I spent time with people. I read. I headed out the door. I took my dog out to run more. I saw sunsets. I got rid of cable, eventually got rid of my TV, and in this… I felt my life return to me.

I tell this story to illustrate a new point. Not so many years back, I found a new addiction that gave me nothing I valued in place of the time I spent. And worse, I was pulling myself into arguments that hinged on my being right or being agreed with rather than on real connection, understanding and personal enrichment.

This addiction was Fake Outrage*. My drug?

The comment threads on social media.

And it was bad.

I started on MySpace (remember that?) and moved to FB. And before long, I realized how awful I felt every time I chose to be sucked into a No-Win debate that devoured hours and hours of my life that I would never get back and left me feeling empty, angry, vindicated (that’s the ego right there, that is…), or self-righteous.

What a waste.

You see, Fake Outrage is where we choose to upset ourselves in a forum in which nothing we do can have actual impact. We invest our energy and time for no real return. We relinquish accountability to instead feed our egos (even our well-intentioned egos 😉

I immediately disentangled. I pulled my fingers out of the sticky, messy, addicting dough and cleaned up. I would catch myself getting hooked by a thread or a comment.

Sometimes I still begin typing a reply and realize where it’s heading for me. I delete it. Or I change what I say to reflect my truth of common human dignity and respect for people. And before I hit “Post” …..

I LET GO.

It is amazing that my social media experience is so positive when I hear so many bemoaning how negative theirs can be. But it’s also not surprising.

There are two sayings that have been especially crucial and necessary for me:

“We receive according to what we Allow, what we Stop, and what we Encourage.”

“Small minds talk about others.
Mediocre minds talk about events.
Great minds talk about ideas.”

Let’s raise the bar for ourselves, and consequently for those we influence by engaging in positive support and ideas. Let’s put all that energy into actual service to the causes that work for what we value, and not dead-end negative entertainment online.

Would we rather go to bed at night feeling right––or wronged? Or would we rather go to bed feeling Connected, expressing the best inside of us, lifting others and believing and expecting the best from all of us?

Would we rather feel like we’ve made a real difference?

*Fake Outrage, the term, comes from The Minimalists on this blog that I HIGHLY recommend 🙂

http://www.theminimalists.com/outrage/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theminimalists%2FHztx+%28The+Minimalists%29

Do I Want to Be Right or Be Understood

| LOCATION: On the train heading home to Salt Lake City, Utah USA |

“Life has a way of putting us into the places we don’t respect.”

This came a decade ago from one of my clients.

One of the most difficult things we face in relationships is the breakdown in communication when our feelings are hurt and we want to be heard. As we argue our point to the other person’s arguing theirs, the divide between us deepens, hurt feelings get worse and worse.

I have thought a lot about this. My art and my work are communication. I am passionate about it. But while I may communicate easily with nearly everyone I encounter, life has unerringly put me in a few places that I did not respect.

And I’ll be honest, at moments it’s made me utterly crazy.

A couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend having a communications struggle with a partner, and I wrote a note to myself. “Is it more important for you to be right, or to be understood?”

I thought I knew what that meant. But in an entirely different situation I found myself looking at that question in a new light.

Do we try to be understood as a way of being right?

Passionate communicator and connector that I am, I realized that yes, in fact, I have used my efforts to be understood as a way of asserting my blamelessness. Asserting blamelessness means that someone is to blame, and if it’s not me then it must be the other person. How awful this must feel to the other person. Creating a tacitly hostile situation, we digress in any number of ways, losing the confidence and connection of both people. It sucks.
It takes a giant leap to choose respect for ourselves in those moments of hurt, to take a deep breath, step back and say, “I love you. I respect you. And I want to understand you.”

Then listen.