Manzanita Village and the Five Changes » Transformational Coaching

Secrets of a Great Relationship

Caitriona Reed — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:19:36 +0000

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. Ralph Waldo Emerson

I meet people in the course of my work, some of them outwardly extremely successful.

Almost without exception, they tell me that without a healthy and emotionally sustaining relationship their life is unfulfilled and empty.

I also work with many people who are in a relationship. Sometimes, because of misunderstandings, expectations, beliefs they have about themselves, and old hurts that they may have suffered in the past, the relationship is painful, draining, and debilitating.

Humans are social animals. We do best when we are in contact with others, and most of us do particularly well if we have one person with whom we can engage in that ongoing creative dance we call a relationship.

More important than a relationship with another person is the one we have is with ourselves. Our first obligation is to transform our old hurts and habits, so that we can listen better, see, respect, and respond to our partner better, with increasing degrees of skill and flexibility.

Whether or not we are currently in relationship, our first responsibility is to heal ourselves in order to stop hurting ourselves and others by repeating the same old mistakes.

Unless we do so, our first mistake is in who we choose for our mate, who we find attractive.

Learning and developing our skills of empathy, communication, awareness, behavioral flexibility, understanding will not only allow us to sustain a powerful and fulfilling relationship, it will also have a positive effect on everything else we do in life.

Perhaps your relationship sometimes seems to have run aground, though you still have the will to reignite the love and passion, if you only knew how. Perhaps you are looking for your ideal mate but are wary of disappointment.

Join us for the upcoming teleseminar for help with your relationship – whether it’s a current relationship or future relationship.
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=16126266

After Mindfulness?

Caitriona Reed — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:29:07 +0000

Mindfulness has become synonymous with Meditation,

insight, the discipline of sustained awareness. It is your capacity to extend non-judgmental attention to the world around you, as well as internally, to your various responses to it.

Given the distractions we encounter every day, the discipline of mindfulness, with or without formally sitting quietly in meditation, would seem a worthwhile skill to develop. But is it enough? Or is it just a skillful way to keep distractions at bay?

Mindfulness alone is not enough!

Let me ask you …

What if you were able to never repeat the same mistake twice?

I’m talking about several kinds of mistakes:

Mistaken perceptions that lead to self-defeating emotions; resentment, fear, self-judgment, judgment of others, anger, stubbornness, pride.
Mistakes in communication, failure to communicate with others, and the myriad ensuing misunderstandings.
Mistakes of omission, mistakes of impatience or pride, and the unskillful actions that follow.

We can certainly learn from our mistakes. But what if we have already learned the lessons, but keep on making the same mistakes? What would it take to change the things that have had us keep on making those same mistakes long after we have learned that they don’t serve us?

Mindfulness is not enough. It’s a great start, and it complements just about anything you do, from having a conversation, starting a business, to playing sports.

But any skill can be used wisely or badly. You may have heard the saying that for a person with a hammer every problem is a nail. Sometimes a hammer can do a lot of damage; sometimes it just weighs you down, carrying it around all the time.

What other skills can complement Mindfulness? Here’s a few.

Mindset

Attitude and the ability to change old self-limiting beliefs about what may or may not be possible for you to accomplish.

Energy

Energy is supported by good health, and good health is supported by your being in agreement with yourself. Enthusiasm, loving what you do, doing what you love.

Flexibility

Adaptability, the willingness to experiment with new strategies. Curiosity.

Gratitude

Hey! whatever’s going on your life is miraculous! Your eyes, ears, mind, body, friends; all of it miraculous.

Trust

Faith in the unfolding process of your life, intertwined with mind and intention in inexplicable ways. Your generosity as it emerges from that realization.

The list goes on.

Mindfulness is a good starting point, but mindfulness alone is not enough.

Meditation’s not enough

Caitriona Reed — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:28:52 +0000

There’s a story about a dedicated spiritual practitioner who was challenged every day by a stranger who passed by and would always ask, “What are you doing?”

Each day the spiritual practitioner would attempt to do a more authentic practice – praying, studying, chanting, doing difficult yoga poses, visualizing, meditating.

Each day the stranger would ask the same question, and when the spiritual practitioner replied he would say, “Oh, only that, why not go deeper?”

The spiritual practitioner would take on ever harder practices until there was nothing else left to do. Where could she go from here? How could she go deeper than she was already going?

§ § §

The point is that what you do is not as important as what you are.

Nor is it what you’ve done in the past, or who you know, or what you know, or where you’ve been, or what you’ve seen, or what you posses. What matters is what you are.

How do you discover that?

That’s the question!

What you are means what you embody. Everything you do and say comes from that embodiment, that being..

What you are is your essence, it’s what’s expressed through you after the work of transformation. What the work you did is not important. The question is how you embody the work now, and who you have become.

The work is never finished. So what you are is also how you continue to embody that work, that living.

Another way to describe this is that you become congruent. Your values are congruent within themselves, and with each other. Your conscious and unconscious mind are congruent with each other. You ‘walk your talk’… You are embodied.

Another, even easier, way to say it is that you are happy, joyful, and present to whatever you are doing; not distracted by what is or isn’t about to happen, and still on purpose, even if the purpose is no more significant than looking out of the window, or smiling at a stranger.

Simple. Maybe not easy to arrive there. But simple. And we’ve all tasted it at some time or other, otherwise none of this would make sense.

What’s more exciting than this …

Caitriona Reed — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:59:53 +0000

When people ask what we’ve changed I say, “We became more passionate than ever about guiding people beyond any imagined limitations.”

Change is possible. More than we sometimes understand. Someone once said that our ability to imagine doing certain things actually makes the doing of them possible. That’s an outrageous statement. Because it puts all our dreams within our grasp.

Helping others to recognize and embody this, is an act of love.

When you’re ready to make important changes in your life, it’s best that you go ahead and make them – so that you begin to live at your highest capacity – in greater joy – with greater positive impact in the world.

I keep thinking of a quotation from the Japanese poet Basho,

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.

Go ahead, seize the moment, imagine if you were to fully embody all that you can be. None of this has to do with belief systems or world-views. It has to do with your own values, as well as how you value yourself, and your ability to live in deep agreement with yourself … and with the universe.

Get the Life You Want

Caitriona Reed — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:25:56 +0000

Unless you are new to Manzanita Village and The Five Changes you know that we’ve been making some changes over the past year or two. We are rooted in the Buddhist traditions of personal transformation, but now less attached than ever to specific methods for effecting that transformation.

We have been testing and adapting other tools for personal change, social engagement, and global perspectives for some time. Some of these we have been using with clients for years.

Now we ask, “Why not teach these in a broader context? Why just help people feel comfortable with their limitations, when we can teach them to obliterate those limitations altogether?”

It may sound like a wild claim, but there are skills, which in the right hands, can do in ten minutes what meditation may not accomplish in ten years. I was shocked when I first discovered it. These skills don’t lessen the power of meditation, they enhance it. And your subsequent capacities are enhanced exponentially.

If you have attended a retreat within the past year you will know that we have begun teaching this new integrated work. The work includes several approaches to meditation, as well as an array or other skills that we absolutely guarantee, if you are ready to use them, will change your life – or any part of your life – to allow you to become more effective, positive, flexible, creative, inherently intelligent, inherently joyful . They will, to coin a cliche, knock your socks off!

Do you know what 'Spiritual' means?

Caitriona Reed — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:55:07 +0000

Well, of course you do! Or at least you give a meaning to the word, based on experience, memory, aspiration, and trust in your own deepest instincts, values, and ability.

I must say though, I am always puzzled when someone determines that something is spiritual. I am never quite sure what they mean. And spiritual compared to what? After all isn’t life a miracle? I mean, every last part of it!

And if spiritual is implicitly good what about the things that aren’t spiritual? What do we call them … mundane, useful, known, limited, bad? I don’t know. You tell me. If everything is interconnected, as we know it to be, then isn’t calling something spiritual missing the point?

And if the point is that our big lesson is to realize the implicitly boundless, marvelous, and yes spiritual nature of everything – then we might want to use the word sparingly, bring our focus to embodying the spiritual in everyday life,and celebrate like crazy the sacred miracle of this life we live.