Detour

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

I just got a voice text from my dear client and friend on the road who hit I-15 closures out of St George, Utah on her way to Thanksgiving the next day. Taking the detour and backtracking, she messaged me with tears running down her face as this literal detour brought her to the very edge of her frustration with the loneliness and detours of her life.

My heart broke because I know this place. I wrote her back:

Darling…

Be soft and sweet and gentle with yourself. Life is detours.

Maybe we need a different word so that we don’t keep thinking that we are off-track. As painful as it feels, you are exactly where you are supposed to be, and the resistance you feel inside to that–to being exactly where you are right now

–comes from your heart hurting, being heartbroken.

The only thing to do is to go down into that beautiful heart of yours and be soft and gentle and sweet with her.

Listen to her, hold her, and understand her. She knows that you are on the right track. And she knows your desires because your heart is where those desires come from.

It’s in the places of total unknowing, and being with the sadness and loneliness, that you truly trust the path that you’re on and… open in REAL un-resistance to the future that fills all your heart is longing for.

Something in you knows better than what you think you know.

And when that something takes the driver’s seat, it usually looks like detours.

Trust yourself, trust life with your whole heart. Let the tears come and let go and trust. It will be better than you could ever imagine

…surprising and thrilling you just like it has before.

#trustyourheart
#detour
#itsexactlyright

A Year That Answered

| LOCATION: Alive and happy on the corner of 3rd and N Street |

Six years ago.

Moments like this saved my life. It’s a simple picture with the biggest loss of my life happening like a raging underground river barely beneath a very thin surface.

We think we know who we are, what we are doing, where we are heading…

But what we know is just the safe zone we call “right now.” We can pretend we are one thing. We can try valiantly to remain who we think we are. We can be so clear on where our life is taking us or where we want to go.

We are not a book to read the same stories out of to ourselves at bedtime. Even our history changes as we change.

The truth is, life is a mystery living itself out from inside our bodies and souls. Simultaneously heartbreaking and exultant, the victor and the loser.

We are all blind authors.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”

Rilke wrote, “Learn to love the questions, and live them…perhaps someday you will find yourself living into the answers”

I love the woman named Carmell sitting here in this sunny Sunday morning bed, and looking back at my own tragedy beneath the surface of six interminably short years.

I am sure that is an answer.

The Truth of Who We Are

| LOCATION: Nashville Airport staring out at the most beautiful Southern sky |

I’m sitting in the airport in Nashville having just completed an intense 3-week rollercoaster of business failures and successes, amazing relationships and connections with people, training and coaching from my core genius more than ever before, and… reflection with myself.

I watch so many people I meet struggling in a certain relationship or life circumstance—struggling to be present in their lives. I’ve sat talking for longer with so many because we are all giving so much to life… and at times that giving can be heartbreaking.

I’ve asked myself, why do we find it so hard to let go? Why do we resist moving down into our hearts, and trusting–ourselves, other people or Life itself–in those crucial moments? Why do we stay locked into the tight cages of our comfort zones when what we most long for is to be free?

I’ve gotten the reputation from so many of you who have coached with me or simply conversed, of causing people to cry 😉 I will own that even though I don’t try to make that happen. Yet it does. And as I sit here in Nashville today waiting to board my plane, I’ve begun to try to put words to why tears come when we connect.

I believe it’s because I love you so much. You know you don’t have to BE anything—just yourself, finally. In your eyes, I see that undaunted beautiful soul figuring him/herself out like I am. Like we all are.

So why does this cause us to cry together sometimes? I know it is because you are seen, appreciated for simply being, understood as magnificent, and finally because all BS is ripped away. No excuses. No hiding. No playing small. Just the real stuff. The stuff that matters between us. The truth of who we really are that words can never fully express.

That truth whispers, “…Life is happening RIGHT NOW!” Getting hung up, resistant, untrusting, dissatisfied in our comfortableness is trying to stay far away from the raw joy and sometimes the pain of being fully alive right now, nothing held back.

I feel the incredible men who are secretly afraid they are not enough. They love so much and work so hard for those they love, yet feel so distant from the moments of love that connect them to those they are wholly committed to.

I ache for the powerful women who give and give every minute of the day to make life work better for everyone, yet who can’t feel the deep truth of peace in themselves—who are afraid what they give won’t be enough for the happiness and thriving of those they love.

So when we talk, I feel this. And I know the truth. Gently, I expect you to stop, to listen to your own heart, and to know the same. I know that life is simultaneously intensely joyful, beautiful and grateful,… and heartbreaking—if we’re really honest.

That relief brings tears.

Cynicism, anger and fear shut the heart off from the brain. My first mentor said to me nearly 2 decades ago, “Tears are sacred.” She said this to the woman (me) who had resisted crying for so long believing it was weakness.
It is not. It is honesty. It is an open heart. It is sacred.

It took me awhile to stop being afraid of my own tears, but once I did, I found a paradoxical gift. I could sit with others and truly see them—in their most secret hopes as much as their deepest despair or shame. And not be afraid.

I thank you for who you are, for your truth, and the honesty of your tears. May you be free. May you be blessed.

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.

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.