Archive for month: January, 2017

Do You Have a Healthy Attitude About Death?

Steve Jobs’ last words, spoken with great delight, were, “Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!” What was he seeing? Perhaps what those returning from near-death experiences consistently report — a sense of moving through a dark tunnel beckoned by a compelling bright light, feelings of peace and well-being, the knowledge of being outside of the body, what some call an intense feeling of unconditional love, and encounters with beings of light. This piercing of the veil of “the other side” unwaveringly suggests that “passing over” is a beautiful experience.

In stark contrast to these images, we live with a cultural consciousness about death that personifies it as “the Grim Reaper” or “the Angel of Death.” Not knowing when or how our time will come, many live in fear of the unknown and uncontrollable aspects of death with a sense of a foreboding encounter with darkness and evil. Nowhere is this more vividly demonstrated than in an Internet image search of the word “death” that yields haunting black-and-white images of skulls, crossbones, and the Grim Reaper. I encourage you to take a moment and do an image search now. These portrayals demonstrate the power of the death taboo on both our conscious and unconscious awareness.

Among the top 10 images, several date back to artwork from the 1300s during the Black Plague when half the European population was wiped out. The plague was considered a form of punishment by God. Symbolically representing death — with depictions of skeletons, skulls, and crossbones — was a common way of mocking it in order to reduce feelings of helplessness and anxiety. People wore these death symbols on their clothing as a way to fool Death into thinking that they had already been touched and should therefore be left alone. If these images are indeed a valid reflection of the collective consciousness about death today, it is no wonder that so many live in fear of death and treat it like the unspeakable elephant in the room.

As children, we could run to the comfort of our parents with our fears. It is a sad commentary on our society that as adults so many of us silence and suppress our own fears about death’s unknowns, concern about unmanageable pain, the loss of control over one’s own life, and the possibility of being isolated from loved ones at life’s end. Rather than sharing our beliefs, thoughts, fears, and concerns about dying and death, we suffer in silence having no idea how to wrap our brains around the reality of death or to even broach the subject with our loved ones or doctors. Far too many of us, including terminally ill patients, put a smile on our face and silently suffer in emotional isolation. The death taboo interferes with our ability to have a healthy relationship with death.

The good news is that since the 1960s, momentum has been building to transform our culture of death. Among the most apparent changes and influences:

    • Beginning in the late 1950s, the conversation about human mortality and the American culture of death moved from academia and religious institutions to the general public — raising the topic from our unconscious to conscious minds.
    • The hospice movement came to the U.S. in the 1970s, exposing the dying and their families to healthier role models of how to relate to death.
    • The sharing of accounts of near-death experiences in popular literature began in the mid-70s, consistently offering beautiful new images of death.
    • Philanthropic funding led by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation began in the 1980s, and focused on changing theculture of death in America through legislation, public engagement, and changes in the fundamental philosophy of death in the professional education of doctors and nurses.
    • In 2011, the 79 million baby boomers began turning 65 at a rate of 10,000 each day. This will continue for another 17 years.
  • A 2009 Newsweek poll estimated that 93 million Americans (30 percent) self-identify as “spiritual but not religious,” saying they are deeply spiritual but claim no specific religious affiliations. This group has doubled in size in the past decade and is a driving force of change in social rituals around birth, marriage, and death that are not rooted in religious doctrines.

Buoyed by the confluence of these forces, this is an exciting historical moment where matters of our beliefs and values regarding life and death are concerned. Both culturally and individually, we have a great opportunity to rethink our most fundamental definitions of “birth” and “death.” Our physical and spiritual understanding of these terms must be reconciled in the process. Here are some questions to ponder:

  • When does life start and when does it end?
  • Are these terms specific to the physical beginning and ending of life or are there other dimensions of our existence that precede and follow what we commonly refer to as a lifespan?
  • Is the physical birth and death and lifespan of an individual all there is?
  • Or, is there more than meets our eyes?
  • Is the start of life “good” and the end “bad” as reflected in current social attitudes?
  • Or, is this a matter of interpretation?
  • How does the fact that the personhood you commonly know as yourself will die inform the way you live your life?
  • When a loved one is dying, are you able to bring your authentic self to the situation and be a comfort, helper, and to communicate your loving fearlessly?

Never has there been a time when we had a greater opportunity to reevaluate our beliefs and values regarding life and death and to hold ourselves accountable for the quality of our relationship to both. Let’s talk about this. Please share your thoughts below.

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There Are Many Ways to Say “I Love You”

Each February, we are bombarded by commercial proddings to prove our love to our sweetheart with the obligatory greeting card, roses, and candy.  For some, the ante is far more expensive and raises year after year.  I think the really lucky sweethearts are those who don’t buy into this external pressure, but rather find little ways to express the love they feel inside for their sweetheart and other loved ones as a way of life.

I’m the kind of person who loves spontaneous gestures of affection – a phone call from a friend who is missing me, or a beautiful bouquet of flowers on a random day from my partner just because he knows I will be delighted.  Don’t give me an obligatory diamond bracelet.  I’d much rather you make it a priority to share quality time together on a regular basis.  Stoke the flame of our love and friendship – invest in our relationship by being a caring and thoughtful partner and communicating your love and needs.  No amount of money spent can do a better job of warming the cockles of my heart.

It is so easy to be consumed by to do lists, work, and other activities and not have much left for those you claim to love the most.  It takes intentional effort in such a complex and busy world to make the expression of your love a priority.

Rather than trying to follow the commercial prescription of how to be a good Valentine, try something new this year.  Make a list of the people you love and treasure most in your life and take the time to think about what gift of love would be most meaningful to each of them.  Do you have an aging parent or dying friend who might treasure some time with you?  Perhaps you have a boss who has been a wonderful mentor and you would like to say “thank you.”  Who has given you your most treasured gifts of friendship and love?  Do they know how much they mean to you?  Don’t make this a one time project, but rather set the intention to improve the quality of your relationships by injecting more of your love into them on an ongoing basis.

There are many ways to say I love you.  The best ones rise out of simply paying attention and allowing creative expressions to emerge from your heart.  The very best ones touch the other person’s heart – the gift is authentically received.  Here’s one of my favorite expressions of “I love you” that I ever experienced.

Hide The Lizard

I don’t recall how the game began.  But, I do remember finding the lizard.  For several of my mother’s final years, we indulged in a few weeks of beachfront July living on the Jersey shore where we had both vacationed as children.  One late afternoon, walking up the beach to the cottage, my feet kicked up a tiny rainbow colored plastic lizard in the sand.  With no visible potential child owner in sight, the inner child in me delighted in my newfound treasure and I accelerated my pace up to the house to show my mother.

After returning to our year round home in a renovated barn in the Hudson Valley of New York, the lizard found its first home with us on a small wooden ledge on the first floor.  At the time, my mother’s mobility was in a period of marked decline and I took on more and more simple daily activities to compensate as seamlessly as possible.  I didn’t want her to do without anything that mattered to her that she could no longer do for herself.  But, she was a proud woman, and as with many of us facing physical decline, it was important to her not to be any more of a burden than necessary.  While, in my snarkiest of moods, I did feel burdened and impatient, mostly, it was a privilege to care for her.  Reluctance to let me know her needs and desires actually made things a bit more challenging for me – not only did I have the new activities to do but, I had to first figure out what they were through careful observation.

There are many ways to show someone your love.  Helping my mom with her daily activities was one, but far more important, was tending to her emotions and sense of self-worth and dignity.  Little things matter a lot for someone who is facing a loss of autonomy.  Hide the Lizard was a spontaneous response to being aware of this with my mom.  It was a game that came into existence and survived simply to say, “I love you very, very much.”

And so, Hide the Lizard was born.  One of us would hide it somewhere in plain sight on the first floor of our home and notify the other that it was her turn to find it.  Sometimes it would be uncanny how something inside you would guide you right to the lizard.  Other times, it might take days at feeling increasingly inept at this invented game while being ever more determined to find the damn lizard, knowing it was right out in plain sight.  Finding it always brought triumphant delight, shortly followed by the challenge of finding a cleaver new home for the lizard.  We giggled, we felt smug when we stumped each other, and thus we comingled our hearts.

There are many ways to say I love you.

I wish you the joy of abundantly expressing your love this Valentine’s Day and every day.

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Are You Letting Your Heart Sing?

As a mentor, I often find myself working on the same bottom line with clients — are you letting your heart sing? This is a powerfully loaded question that deserves some unpacking here.

First, let’s look at what it means to let your heart sing. Think of a time or times when you have been in your glory. It could have been a particular meeting, job, relationship, a song you sang, a book you wrote, or just a humble yet essential moment in your daily life. These moments typically engage a person in the flow of creatively expressing something they are deeply passionate about. It’s as though your body, heart, mind, and soul are in a personal harmonic convergence and you can feel your heart smiling. There is a fulfillment — a sating of a piercing hunger that has been building in your soul.

I’ve come to recognize that my heart sings best when I am experiencing a loving oneness with another — whether someone close to me, a client, or a total stranger. For example, I can be walking down the street and have my eyes meet deeply with the eyes of a stranger for the briefest of moments and zoom past all the things that normally prevent such an essential connection from occurring. My heart also sings when I am effectively being of service and when I am able to communicate well. What about you? What makes your heart sing?

Once you have identified one or several strong examples of you at your best, ask yourself some of the following questions:

  • What did it feel like in your heart? Soul? Mind? Body?
  • How did you know you were in your zone?
  • What were the characteristics of the experience? For example, did certain people, circumstances, forms of expression, or heightened experiences facilitate your reaching the point where your heart was singing?
  • What specifically do you need to be, do, or have to make your heart sing?

Notice the question isn’t is your heart singing? It’s are you letting your heart sing? In this crazy world we live in, very few hearts simply sing anymore. It’s not that it is not important, but rather that we are too busy giving our attention to other matters. We need to make our lives conducive to allowing our song to emerge — even within the simple moments of our everyday lives. So, if your heart rarely or never sings, here are some things you might want to do:

    • Listen deeply to yourself: When our lives are filled with stress and more activities than time, our focus tends to be outward rather than inward. We need to deeply immerse ourselves in quiet contemplation and focus on the urges of our heart and soul. In the absence of such inner grounding, we are likely to live our lives hoping that this person or that job will somehow bring us greater happiness. In other words, we give over the power to yield our happiness to others and we become the recipients of whatever they happen to give to us. This kind of passive living rarely makes our heart sing. It is far more likely to get us to focus on manipulating this other person or situation to yield that nebulous and ill-defined happiness we seek. Our heart’s song comes from a deeper place within us that we must visit and become familiar with to create the pathway for its expression.
    • Be mindful of living from the inside out: In the business of our lives, it is very easy to lose track of our essential self — the part that imagines and dreams about creating, promoting, and allowing our inner yearnings to manifest in our lives. Too often, we find ourselves at the end of our lives with a voluminous bucket list of unfulfilled dreams and desires. If something deep within us keeps seeking our attention and we keep ignoring it, it eventually gets drowned out by the drumbeat of daily life. Then in the quieter days of our life’s end, we have too many regrets. So, take time to listen deeply and to create an energy flow that moves from deep within you outward into expression in your life. This could be as simple as wanting a particular color in your environment or taking the time to call an old friend. We must not only listen to our inner yearnings, we must honor them through action so we can bring them to fulfillment.
    • Dare to sing: Letting your heart sing means making that a priority. It means going for “it” — daring to give expression to your heart’s desire and best vision of what your life could be. Get in the practice of doing at least one thing each day that evokes your soul’s expression. Make that important enough to make it a habit.
    • Set clear intentions: Seeking a vague sense of being happier yields only disappointment with the present. If you want to create more health, wealth, happiness, and inner fulfillment, then you have to be specific with yourself about what exactly you need to do differently to move in the right direction to fulfill your dreams. This year, for example, I have set four very specific intentions for what I want to bring forward in my life. Every day, I affirm those intentions morning and night and challenge myself to spend as much of my time as possible bringing those intentions into reality. If you want your heart to sing, be very clear with yourself about what that involves and don’t try to do it all at once. Set manageable, doable intentions that affirm your willingness to do what it takes to bring them forward in your life.
    • Focus your attention on your intentions: You must breathe life into your intentions through action every day. Don’t wait for someone else to magically appear who will recognize what brings out the best in you and allows your heart to sing. Take ownership of your own life — get in the driver’s seat and go for it!

There is only one you. So, please give voice to your most beautiful inner song and share it with the rest of us.

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A Celebration of Value & Symbolic Wedding Rituals | Judith Johnson Wedding Officiant on Chronogram

I recently spoke with Chronogram on exploring unique ways couples can incorporate their deeper values into their wedding celebrations. Read the full article here.

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The #1 Key to Living and Dying Well

Some of the greatest life wisdom is articulated by the dying.  In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware shares what she has learned about the dying by serving as a caregiver to many.  She notes, “of all of the regrets and lessons shared with me as I sat beside their beds, the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common one of all.  It was also the one that caused the most frustration, as the client’s realization came too late.”

So, what does it mean to be true to yourself?  A lot of people throw around the term ‘authenticity’ to describe it.  On some level this term suggests that there is a truth that resides within each of us that is unique to our specific being.  It also implies that there is an opportunity to somehow maximize the experience of living our life and meeting our death that involves being attuned to that truth and living a life that is a reflection of that truth.  But, how do we do this?  How is that different from simply living and doing the best we can?  What does it look like?  What does it feel like?

In the process of living, we come to know things about ourselves – experiences we love and those that leave us unengaged.  We discover certain talents, abilities, and inclinations within us.  My favorite food group will always be chocolate, for example, that’s simply not negotiable.  Each of us will have different preferences from the same menu in a restaurant – or the de jour offerings of a given day.  As time goes by, if we pay attention – if we listen to that pure, inner voice that simply says an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ or an emphatic ‘no!’ – we come to learn that that voice seems to have our best interest in mind.  It is not the voice of our ego preferences or greed.  It comes from a far deeper place than that – I sense mine in the area of my solar plexis.

The real challenge is that there are other voices that we hear too and our inner voice of truth often gets lost in the shuffle.  Our insecurities and fears speak to us.  Our wants and desires demand our attention.  Outer influences, norms, and authorities seek our allegiance as well.  What do you do when your parents or teachers – the gods of your youth – are steering you in a direction that doesn’t match your fragile and emerging sense of self?  When outer authorities or social norms insist you do or be something that is in conflict with your sense of who you are, what do you do?  Do you trust the outer authorities, perhaps out of fear of the consequences of not doing so, or do you somehow hold to your inner truth, in spite of the judgment, rejection, and ridicule that might bring upon you?  I know a man who paid a heavy price for following his passion to become a concert pianist when his father insisted he stay in Idaho to tend the family potato farm.  What must it be like for a child who knows he or she is gay to survive and find a path through a family or world that will judge and reject them?  What do you do when you know that how and what you are is likely to never be favored or acceptable to your family or the society you live in – even though you are a good person?

It’s ironic that it’s just not that easy to simply be yourself.  But, maybe therein lies the secret to living and dying well.  The real prize in life is to come to know your very own truth and to learn to be obedient to that truth in a way that does not harm others.  They may not like it, but if we are lucky, we teach them how to love us in spite of our differences.  We teach them to respect our ways of being and to let us be.  You have to be willing to claim the privilege of being yourself in a social context.  It’s not an easy path and typically takes dedication, devotion, endurance, and sometimes the willingness to proceed without the support and understanding of those we love.  It requires listening to inner truth and figuring out how to honor it.  It takes time to develop this inner attunement.  But the prize is a peacefulness, an experience of being who you are rather than resenting yourself and others for what you didn’t get to do or be or have that was essential to you.  To know that you are living your life with obedience to what you know to be your truth may be as good as life gets – especially when you find a community of support of others who are walking to the beat of their own drums as well.

Take a look at your life and ask yourself these questions:

  • If I were to die tomorrow, would I have any regrets?  If so, explore what you could do right now in your life to prevent yourself from reaching the end of your life with those regrets.
  • Is there anyone in your life with whom you are not at peace?  If so, what are you willing to do about that either within yourself or in relationship to that person?
  • Are you at peace with yourself?  If not, what changes could you make to bring yourself to a state of inner peace?

As long as we live, it is never too late to be ourselves and to make peace with our choices and the people in our life (past or present).  So, if you want to live and die really well, befriend, honor, and love yourself madly and deeply.

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Picking Up Your Life

I recently came upon the expression “pick up your life” in a talk given by John Morton, the spiritual director of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. This simple phrase captures the idea that we always have the choice to move our life to a higher level of expression. Whether you dream of being an Olympic star or simply see areas of your life that you would like to improve, it is your choice whether or not you take it upon yourself to lift yourself higher. Is it time for you to pick up your life? What might be possible for you?

It is so easy to pass endless days and years of our lives in a kind of stupor on autopilot spending and losing ourselves in the routines of daily life and to-do lists that get us nowhere. Sometimes life simply exhausts us and we lose sight of our dreams, our potential, and passions. But there is a heavy price we pay for stagnation and complacency. We become stalled out and stale and sometimes bitter. We lose sight of the power we have to choose to live our lives differently.

We are meant to evolve through learning and growing. These processes take place within us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We all have areas of our lives where we feel stuck or unfulfilled at times. That’s not a problem — it’s perfectly normal, and often the irritation required for us to choose to pick up our life.

So, how do you break out of a repetitively unfulfilling life or an irritation? The answer starts with believing that it is possible. Until you believe in the possibility of change, it simply cannot occur. Belief opens the door to taking action. It is the accelerator out of stagnation — beyond all the excuses and rationalizations that have kept you doing what you have always done, getting what you have always gotten. This is as true about small personal changes as it is about global issues. Momentum comes when you choose to do what it takes to manifest what you have come to believe is possible. You take ownership of your life and do something radically different. Radical need not be earth shattering. It is sometimes best to start with a baby step like making your bed each morning because you have come to believe as my friend, Lisa says, “making your bed each morning is the cornerstone of civilization.” Now, I appreciate that you may not hold bed making in such high regard, but sometimes the smallest change can make a world of difference.

While belief is the door opener and initial accelerant of change, momentum and eventual success come by taking consistent, appropriate actions in a clearly defined direction. Action is taken in the context of a vision of success and a plan of action. For example, over the past year I have been overcoming a lifelong challenge with excess body weight. Every single thing I have put in my mouth or chosen not to eat has been a conscious choice. In time, temptations receded, new habits formed and I began to have a love affair with vegetables. Who knew that was possible? Every step of the way I kept my eye on my goal and reinforced my belief that long-term success was possible and in the process of happening. I also chose to celebrate my mini-successes along the way to the momentum of gratitude. Someone once told me about an interview with Jack LaLanne, dubbed “the godfather of fitness.” The interviewer said “Jack, you must really love exercise” to which Jack abruptly and passionately responded “I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I do it for the results.” When we believe in something, whether it is sustaining a healthy body or laying down our lives for a cause we passionately embrace, success comes in the followthrough.

So, here are some questions for you. Do you have any secret dreams for yourself that you have let slip by the wayside? Are you settling for less than you know you have in you? Have you given up on yourself or told yourself it is too hard or too late to change? I encourage you to come out from behind your excuses and disillusionment and pick up your life. Imagine what is possible if each of us believed in ourselves enough to manifest our greatest self-expression. Imagine if we believed that we all have that responsibility and accelerated our best selves into manifestation.

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What is a Wedding Officiant?

What is a wedding officiant?

A wedding officiant is the person who leads your wedding ceremony. They must be legally recognized to do so by the state in which your wedding takes place. If you are having a religious ceremony, your officiant will need to be qualified in the eyes of that religious organization as well. Some religious groups specify where your ceremony must take place as well. For example, the Catholic Church requires that your ceremony take place within the church building.

The legal responsibilities of the officiant vary according to state laws. Generally speaking, your officiant’s signature on your marriage license signifies that he or she knows of no reason that you are not qualified to be married in that particular state. For example, you are of age or have parental consent, you are not currently married to someone else, or seeking a same sex marriage in a state that does not allow them. Their signature also means that they have witnessed you sharing your wedding vows and have officially pronounced that you are partners in marriage in the presence of witnesses (one or two of whom will also be required to sign your license).

In the past, most weddings were conducted either by religious clergy or civil officiants such as judges, justices of the peace, and ship captains. In recent years, it has become popular to have a friend or family member be your wedding officiant. This is accomplished by going on-line to sign up for ministerial credentials with a religious group such as the Universal Life Church that offers them without any requirements of training, dogmatic beliefs, or religious/spiritual practice. Their only requirement is that you ask to be ordained. According to their website http://www.themonastery.org/ordination they have granted over 20 million ordinations to date. On-line ordinations take advantage of the separation of church and state by limiting the legal right of the state to challenge the religious organization’s authority and rules regarding to whom they grant ordination credentials. Some states and local jurisdictions, however, are beginning to challenge the legitimacy of on-line ordinations, so be sure to check out any controversy in the jurisdiction where you plan to be married.

In addition to the legal and religious/spiritual considerations regarding who you choose to have officiate at your wedding, it is important to think about what is and is not important to you about your wedding ceremony. For example, what does it mean to you that you are getting married? Do you need to take into account anyone else’s point of view on the matter? Are you looking for an officiant who you are comfortable with? Do you need someone with enough experience to know how to assist you in your ceremony design, as well as to conduct both the rehearsal and ceremony itself?

Whether you are choosing to have a friend or family member officiate or are looking for a seasoned officiant, be sure to consider how their personality style, personal beliefs, and understanding of their role will influence your ceremony. Typically, your wedding officiant will have the greatest influence in setting the tone of your ceremony, so choose wisely.

Many couples are clueless of where to start to find a qualified wedding officiant. Here are some suggestions:

  • Check out regional wedding websites that list wedding-related vendors in their area.
  • Ask your wedding venue contact person. Usually, they have a preferred vendor list or will give you personal recommendations based on having worked with certain individuals in the past.
  • Ask other vendors such as your photographer or musicians who their favorite officiants are to work with.
  • Read reviews and testimonials on the websites of the officiants you are considering or on sites that provide regional listings of vendors.

Above all else, your wedding officiant should be able to serve as your go-to person for all your questions and concerns about your ceremony. Choose someone who can serve you well and help you keep on top of all the details. While your ceremony may last only fifteen to twenty minutes, there are a myriad of big and little details that when handled well can add up to exactly what you wanted, but when overlooked can result in a clumsy and disappointing event.

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7 Steps to a Fabulous Customized Wedding Ceremony

Do you want to create a ceremony that clearly reflects your unique values, beliefs, and life circumstances?  Do you know how or what is required? A good place to begin is to check out any requirements that the state has where the ceremony will take place.  Most states want you to speak your vows in front of at least one witness who then signs the license, to meet the requirements for marriage in that state, and to have a qualified officiant.  Beyond that, if there is no religious authority involved, you start with a blank sheet of paper.  Don’t worry – I’m going to make this easy and fun for you!  Just follow these steps.

 

Step One:  Make sure you are both onboard to personalize your ceremony.

Remember there are two of you involved and the ceremony should be the best match for the two of you possible.

 

Step Two:  Decide to have fun with this process.

Even though this is probably the first wedding ceremony you have ever designed, it is a wonderful opportunity to create a celebration of your union in rituals and words that will create beautiful memories to carry forward with you.  Remember that this is your wedding and while family members and friends may have strong opinions about your ceremony – you two are ultimately in charge of deciding what is just right for you.

 

Step Three: Separately answer the following questions in writing and then share your responses with each other.

The best ceremonies truly reflect both spouses – so don’t let your partner cop out and say whatever you want is fine.  Here are the questions:

  • What is important to you about the tone, content, and duration of your ceremony?
  • What, if any, specific ceremonial elements do you want to include or exclude from your ceremony?
  • Are there any spiritual, religious, or heritage traditions or elements that are important to you to include on your own behalf or that of your family?
  • Are you open to writing and saying your own vow provided any concerns you have are satisfactorily addressed?
  • Is there anyone, living or dead, who will not be present at your ceremony who you would like to mention or in some way pay tribute to in the ceremony?
  • Who, if anyone would you like to do a reading?  Any particular text?
  • Is there anything else that you know you want to include, exclude, or avoid in your ceremony?

 

Step Four: Consider the following guidelines:

  • Trying too hard to be unique can easily result in a ceremony that is cliché or offensive to some of your guests.  Here are two examples:
  • You might want to have butterflies released during your recessional.  However, a couple I married did this and when the guests opened their cardboard containers, half the butterflies were dead.
  • One groom decided to surprise his bride by serenading her during the ceremony with his heavy metal band.  This mini jam session left many traditional guests horrified.

 

  • You need to find an experienced officiant who is on the same page with you and is resourceful, helpful, and supportive of your wishes to customize your ceremony.  Remember, most ceremonial texts are spoken predominantly by the officiant.  Use your officiant as a resource and agree to a timetable for drafting and editing your ceremony for the spoken word – in other words, always read it out load to decide how it will sound.  Keep your officiant in the loop – no surprises.  Remember they are the expert.

 

  • A great ceremony strikes a balance between personal expression and tradition.  Be careful not to throw away all the elements of tradition.  For example, the traditional sequence of ceremonial elements provides a logical sequence of events that allow the ceremony to reach a crescendo with the sharing of vows, the ring exchange, final blessing and pronouncement, and the kiss.  I recommend that you put your signature on the content of the elements you choose to include rather than in their sequencing.

 

Step Five: Do your research.

There are wonderful books and websites available to give you great ideas of what works, what doesn’t, and how other couples have successfully customized their ceremonies.  Of course, I simply must tell you that my book, The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day is actually the bestselling book on wedding ceremony design for both clergy and couples.  If you choose to use it, I hope it’s a wonderful resource for you.

 

Step Six: Keep it short and simple.

You can create a beautiful and memorable ceremony that takes no more than 15-20 minutes.  In my experience, a ceremony that goes much longer runs the risk of creating fidgety, bored, and impatient guests.  For example, you may lose the attention of your guests by including more than two readings.

 

Step Seven: At your ceremony – breathe, relax, keep your sense of humor, and be present in your loving.

No matter how carefully you plan your ceremony – there will be surprises.  When the ceremony begins, all you really need to do is to look into the eyes of your beloved, breathe deeply, and feel the joy in your heart.  What a magnificent moment in life and what a shame to miss it because you are worrying about some detail or find yourself overcome with nerves.  The greatest gift you can give yourself and each other is to be fully present in the loving that brought you both to this moment.  You can only focus your attention on one thing at a time.  So, let it be the joy, loving, and gratitude you feel to be joining together I marriage, rather than worrying about whether or not the caterer got your message about the olives.  Just breathe, smile, and feel the loving.

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Are You Suffering Unnecessarily?

Do you often find yourself saying “It isn’t fair” or thinking you have more than your share of suffering? Do you play the story of “what happened to you” over and over in your mind like a hamster running in his wheel? Consider the possibility that there IS something you can do about that. The place to start is by distinguishing between unavoidable suffering that is a necessary part of life and the kind of suffering that we create for ourselves.

“Necessary suffering” seems like a strange concept to most people. But, consider the fact that no one gets to escape some form of pain in response to the trials and tribulations of life. You fall and skin your knee – ouch! A friend lets you down or disappoints you in some significant way – sadness. Someone you love and treasure dies – deep grief. In other words, there are the kinds of suffering that come with the territory of being alive. Perhaps you have also noticed that these kinds of unavoidable suffering can become steppingstones to greater wisdom and understanding if you look at them in the right way. Otherwise, you may obsess about them or they become a constant irritant like a stone in your shoe that you don’t realize you can remove. The necessary suffering of life also has a way of getting us to draw closer to one another and to comfort one another in ways that are deeper and less common than we find in everyday life when everything seems to be moving along beautifully.

According to psycho-spiritual teacher, Robert Augustus Masters, the unnecessary kind of suffering is the kind that is a direct result of the stories we tell ourselves about our painful experiences. Unnecessary suffering happens when we get so caught up in either focusing on our necessary suffering in our minds or telling our tales of woe to others. When this happens, we cause ourselves to suffer more than we need to because of the fact that we are intensifying our suffering by focusing our attention on feeling the pain.

Masters advises that we can minimize our suffering by entering into the pain that comes our way and moving through it rather than replaying it over and over like a broken record. To illustrate this distinction, imagine the difference in experience of a birthing woman who is actively working with her breath to move through the pain of her labor versus the one who is busy resisting her pain and screaming about how much it hurts. The path through our pain is to accept its presence rather than to resist it by trying to get away from it. Ironically, we create unnecessary pain by the very act of resisting pain. In other words, through resistance, we focus upon our pain, draw it to ourselves, and attach ourselves to it.

Our point of view – our attitude toward suffering makes all the difference in terms of how much we suffer. In a TED Talk, BJ Miller referred to perspective as “that kind of alchemy we humans get to play with, turning anguish into a flower.”

So, next time you start throwing a pity party for yourself, change your point of view so you can change your experience. Try one of these methods:

1. Expand your perspective to entertain the good news that is coming with the bad. In other words, appreciate the half full part of the glass you are only seeing as half empty. My friend, Barbara Sarah, the founder of the Oncology Support Program at HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley in Kingston, NY shared a list that one of her students in a Constructive Living program made of all the people who she was grateful to for helping her care for her hospitalized husband. 105 people! As the list grew, so did her gratitude to people like the person who supplies the “lollipop” mouth moisturizers, the pre-admission secretary who greets you and sets up your test schedule, the gardener who cares for all the plants in the public areas, and the staff who buzz you in the surgical ICU. So make a list of all the things in your life that are also true blessings while you are suffering and see if you don’t find yourself becoming so grateful that you forget a bit about your pain. This is about finding and restoring balance inside yourself.

2. Give yourself a deadline to finish your pity party. Give yourself 5-10 minutes to really get into all your complaints and suffering. Exaggerate the immensity of your pain and feel really sorry for yourself until the timer goes off. Then, choose to shift your focus onto doing something really thoughtful or supportive for yourself or someone else. Don’t allow yourself to start grabbing onto your pain again. If it hurts, breathe into it and keep going. Ask yourself, “Is there anything constructive I need to do about my pain?” If the answer is “yes” then do that, if it is “no” then make the choice to place your focus elsewhere.

3. Pray for your highest good. Prayer, in its highest form, is about trust and laying down your burdens – surrendering to that which is beyond our comprehension. This kind of prayer is beyond personal preferences or judgments of what “should” or “shouldn’t” be happening. It acknowledges that there are forces present in our lives that are beyond our understanding. By praying for the highest good in whatever the situation is, we appeal to the benevolence of whatever forces are at work in our lives and surrender our burdens to these forces. In other words, we acknowledge that what will happen is beyond our control and we accept that and go on about our business of living the best we can.

4. Decide to make fabulous lemonade out of your lemons. My spiritual teacher, John-Roger always advised using everything for our upliftment, learning, and growth and that advise has served me very well in the hardest of times. This is a matter of choice. We have the option of shifting the message we send ourselves about our suffering from “poor me, this is terrible” to “I wonder how I can work with this to lift myself up, to learn, and to grow.”

The bottom line is we have far more power over the degree of our suffering than most of us imagine. When we stop accentuating the negative, we make more room for better options to be the focus of our attention.

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How Did You Get to Be the Way You Are?

One of the fundamental themes I weave into my work with coaching clients has to do with fully embracing and focusing upon what hurts in them and how they have learned to deal with or avoid their suffering. This is usually the antithesis of where they want to look. Usually people perceive the source of their suffering to be ‘out there’ in the circumstances and relationships of their lives. Most get lost in their stories about what is happening to them out in the world and they want to find a strategic solution to achieve their desired success. Many operate under the assumption that if they change the outside, the pain they feel inside will go away. This is true when you have a nail in your shoe, but when your pain is emotionally driven, external changes never yield permanent results.

Those seeking external solutions are typically residing in what I call “the land of if only’s.” It sounds like this: “if only so and so would change in the way I think they should, then my suffering would be relieved.” Or, “if only I could lose twenty pounds, then . . .” Or, “when such and such happens, then I will be really happy.” These are all forms of emotional hunger and wishful thinking.

There are several key problems with this approach:

1. The imagined happiness, if achieved at all, will be temporary at best and the hunger will return.

2. Attempting to sate emotional hunger displaces our focus away from the present into an imagined future that we then attempt to create.

3. We fail to examine the real source of our hunger, thereby forfeiting the possibility and opportunity of knowing what is really going on within us.

Emotional hunger runs far deeper than we imagine. For many, it expresses in addictive behaviors. As in the examples above, our hunger takes the form of present yearnings and cravings for something that we imagine will make us feel fundamentally better than we do. The fact of the matter is, the satisfaction of our hunger does not lie outside ourselves, but inside in the form of unresolved wounds from the past coupled with our early reflexive responses to pain and suffering that have now become autopilot reactions.

Consider the fact that when we are infants, in the absence of language, we are socialized to communicate our perceived needs by crying out to let our caregivers know what’s going on with us – “I’m hungry.” “I need to be touched and comforted.” “My diaper is dirty.” It’s a very effective way to get our needs met. However, if in adulthood we continue to empower others to determine our sense of well-being, we will live as victims rather than as authentic, self-empowered creators and participants in our own lives.

Most of us have been emotionally wounded as a child – often without anyone realizing it. If we have not healed that wound, we develop emotional baggage and adaptive behaviors that unconsciously seek to get the outside world to give us what we didn’t get emotionally as children. The impulse is to heal, but we go about it the wrong way. If we continue to cry out and make our problems other people’s problems and/or to see ourselves as powerless victims of circumstances or the behavior of others, we never learn how to handle our emotional challenges in a healthy way.

If you are in a persistent state of emotional hunger or dissatisfaction, you may need professional help in getting to the bottom of your own particular pattern, but personal observation can also yield amazing results. If you really want to sate your emotional hunger, you need to understand what beliefs are driving your experiences. Here is a process that should help you get to the bottom of it:

1. Pay attention to your own self-talk. If you repeatedly hear yourself saying things like the ‘if only’s’ listed above or some other statement like ‘I never . . . ‘ or ‘I always . . . ‘ recognize that every time you reach that conclusion you are claiming to believe that to be the truth. For example, if you have a belief that you never get what you want – guess what! You will make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.

2. Take ownership of the fact that you hold such a belief. Write it down and make a conscious choice to change your belief.

3. Pay attention to the ways that you repeatedly affirm your belief by creating, promoting, and allowing experiences that are consistent with that belief. Write down every example you see with enthusiasm and neutrality and never with self-judgment. Remember you are in the process of healing this pattern instead of remaining an unconscious victim of it.

4. Play detective gathering evidence of how and why you make the choices you make that keep bringing you what you do not want.

5. Pay attention to and document how it feels inside of you (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc.) when you do not get what you want.

6. Challenge your belief. Pose ‘what if’ questions to yourself of what might be so if you let go of your limiting belief. For example, if you hold the belief that no one will ever love you, be creative in breaking down that belief. Use affirmations that claim your worthiness – do them in front of the mirror with great enthusiasm – “I am lovable!” Play the ‘act as if’ game of behaving as if you are lovable, smile at total strangers and start letting other people in – open up to the possibility of being loved. Love yourself!

Remember that your beliefs are powerful self-fulfilling prophecies. The bottom line of this is that if you change your beliefs, you will change your experiences. You are not a victim unless you choose to be. Health and well-being in adulthood is not achieved through the accumulation of external successes, but rather through cleaning out your internal emotional closets.

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