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8/29/2018 Comments

You are not your story

What do you want to create with the precious time you have left in life?

No thinking...just answer the first thing that comes to your mind.

Ok, now write it down on the top of a piece of paper.

How does it make you feel?

Do you feel excited?
Anxious?
Irritated?
Frustrated?
On track?
Depressed because you don't think there is a way to create what you wrote down?

How you feel about your answer will help determine the work you'll need to put in to move toward your answer.

Our intention and commitment are based on having a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

A fixed mindset is stagnant, wanting perfection, and hoping that things will make you more — more happier, more lovable, etc. This orientation is an attempt to enhance and improve the ego. 

A growth mindset is just that —  you are focused on growth without a destination in mind. You are curious while on an adventure of the present moment. With a growth mindset, you're not giving up on yourself. The mindset can diminish and dissolve the ego, rather than enhance it. The ego cannot pursue a true aim, only presence can. Instead, your aim is to understand yourself now. It is the dance of life.
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Life is not about where you want to go. It's not about waiting and striving to get someplace other than where you are right now.

​Do you spend your day waiting for lunch time? Or, the end of the work week? Are you always looking forward to something different than what is happening right now in the present moment? If so, then you have a 
fixed mindset and you are living a future-orientated life and you have some work to do! 

Do you enjoy your day no matter what time it is or what day of the week it is? Do you find joy in the ordinary and simple tasks you need to perform? If so, then you have a growth mindset and you're doing great! 
"The growth mindset is the dance of life."
If you think you have a fixed mindset, then it is time to STOP meandering through your life with no directional compass, hoping someone will come and save you, or change it for you. YOU are it! When you are committed to ego-boosting activities, as you are with the fixed mindset, you're like a hamster on a wheel. When you reject the present reality and hope or imagine a future that will be better than what you have right now  —  you begin a pattern of rejection, hope, and desire. It then feeds into the belief that you are not enough. Such thoughts keep us stuck in our childhood and past core beliefs that simply don't serve us anymore.

So, what are you spending your precious time doing? Will you take the step to unravel your "stuck" places or habitual patterns today? Choose to accept the growth mindset!

Find more about the fixed and growth mindsets in Carol S. Dweck's book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. 
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7/8/2018 Comments

BEing Big

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Are you keeping yourself small? I have a hard time “BEing big” or putting myself out there. 

I can feel how the tension lives in my body and my autonomic nervous system. When I dive deeper into this fear, I connect it to the self-thought that I am someone who has great ideas, but often fails to bring them into existence. This tension is directly related to my fear of failing, which developed during my childhood. If I still believe that I am a failure, then I struggle to prove that it is NOT true.

A core belief from my childhood was that I was a failure. This belief has been validated over and over again in various ways, which keeps me stuck in this pattern.

When I don’t finish something, I want to argue, rationalize, and/or collapse (child behaviors). While I want to convince everyone, including myself, that I’m not a failure, shame arises nevertheless because the core belief from my childhood comes creeping back - and I know this feeling too well.

I can distract myself by watching TV, posting on social media (“look at me!”), or eating too much food - but I still feel these feelings. So, how can we move away from this fear of failure and instead embrace a “bigger” life?
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us."
​- Marianne Williamson
The first step is to be aware of the internal voice that controls our life. The “judge voice” is relentless and says, “you can’t pretend - you are a failure and I can give you examples to prove it.”  

When that happens, turn TOWARD the judge, harness energy from deep in your body and say, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”  This stops the judge and allows you to question whom exactly you’re yelling at.

For me, this inner judge is my mother’s voice. I can visualize and feel my parent’s disappointment that I took on as a child. But were my parents really disappointed in me? Probably not. So, what is the fear truly about? Did I want my parent’s love, but was afraid of losing it?
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As a child, I took on their feelings and mixed them into how I thought about myself - a failure. This is what we call a double bind. Visualize a rubber band that is pulled so tight on both ends that I can't let one end go. I can’t win in a double bind. Instead, I stay stuck in the middle and if one end goes, it will hurt since the love will go away and I will be alone on the other end. In this scenario, my judge wins. I can’t allow that.

So, as I turn toward the rubber band, I know that the sting will hurt, but afterwards I will be free of the double bind - and my prison. Isn’t it worth the pain? If I can get away from this inner judge voice that is truly not me, I can feel how much it is causing me pain and suffering, making me small and collapsed on a daily basis.

Ultimately I decided to let me mom go. I now feel compassion for my younger self and see that I am not a child now, but an adult. Life is really good in this very moment. I can be in the world without my mom (ironically she died when I was a teenager) and I can let go of the lingering fear that I am alone and afraid of the world. This relaxes my nervous system and the tension I have been holding. I feel a gentle warmth and appreciation for myself.

If we want growth and change, we need to turn toward the pain, specifically this double bind. Let’s allow ourselves to un-merge from our old stories. We are enough. We are not worthless, ugly, or weak. We don’t need someone else’s love - the source is within us. Nobody can do this for us - our shift in consciousness is the key and the key is to look inward.
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5/30/2018 Comments

Confronting Fear

​What is your biggest fear? Mine is speaking in public or in front of a large group of people.

How do you confront your biggest fear? Well, I confronted my deep fear of public speaking rather unexpectedly just two weekends ago when I was pulled up on stage while attending a conference in Las Vegas. After I walked under the spotlight and grasped the microphone, I looked at the eyes of over 400 attendees staring back at me. But, I quickly realized that these were the eyes of supportive, loving people. And I realized it wasn’t really that scary. (Watch the full video below).

The Backstory

The Power of You (POY) is a 2-month online course with Mel Robbins and her amazing team. She invited the POY class participants to a reunion in Las Vegas so we could get to know each other in-person, share our experiences, and hopefully get answers. At the registration desk, we dropped our names in a hat, which were entered into a drawing for a live, onstage coaching session with Mel. Of the 400 attendees, I was one of 4 names drawn from the hat.

Mel has an Audible series called, Kick Ass with Mel, where she coaches 8 people through habits or issues in their lives that are keeping them stuck. Mel helps each person go beneath the surface level - to the root cause. And this is what she did with me two onstage weekends ago!

From my experience with Mel (see video above), I found that I am fearful of saying words, any words. I fear I will not find the words or that I will not be able to accurately articulate what I mean. I am scared that I will look or sound stupid. I am fearful of being laughed at, or being judged by others. I dread eyes looking at me because I think they might find me lacking, without value. Or, perhaps they will find me ugly. In other words, I am terrified of people thinking that I am a piece of shit (root).
"I am terrified of people thinking that I am a piece of shit." - Wendy Wagoner
But, why? Why do I think these self-degrading thoughts and have these fears? Well, if you’ve watched the video, you know that Mel starts to chip away at this question. Since this experience, I have gone a bit deeper.

I will go all the way back to my early childhood and will reference the Attachment Theory, specifically the avoidant attachment pattern (see box to the right).

​The following stories are from my childhood, and I believe, help explain my fear of public speaking.

Childhood Stories 

Attachment Theory
Avoidant Attachment Pattern


During the first 4-6 months of a baby’s life, the primary caretaker is usually feeding the baby and there is a lot of eye contact. This is a critical time for the baby’s brain to create synaptic patterns and associations. If this attunement with the primary caregiver does not happen, that baby will develop a character pattern that avoids eye contact, or can’t tolerate too much stimulation from eyes staring at them; it feels overwhelming to their nervous system.  
​A quiet childhood
Throughout my upbringing, my mother was not fully attuned (my brother and I were 13 months apart and he had some physical issues that needed special attention) and my father was an alcoholic. While a small child, my dad did not like noise in the house. To receive the love I wanted from him, I had to stay quiet. So, I quietly played in the corner. If I cried, he would often say, “do you want me to give you something to cry about?” Sometimes he did. 

Misbehaving has consequences 
My father would return from work on Fridays (he worked out of town during the week), hoping to come home to peace and quiet. Instead, he was responsible for disciplining us if we had misbehaved in his absence. My father did not want to spank us with the belt. But he did because my mother expected that from him and he was frustrated with the situation. I remember feeling bad for him, and yet at the same time I was upset for being hit. I would cry (because of course it was very painful) and this would only make him more angry. 

Grandma embarrasses us all in church 
Once, when I was 5 years old and my crippled grandmother was staying with us, the neighbor forgot to pick us up for church.  My grandmother found us another ride and we slipped in the side door since mass had already started. While the priest was talking, my grandmother decided to yell across the church at the people that forgot to pick us up. Every eye turned towards us and the judgements flooded in. I wanted to shrivel up into nonexistence. Since that moment, I haven’t walked into a church without worrying about what people thought of me. 

Teasing has consequences 
During my adolescent puberty stages, my brother would come into my bedroom without knocking, and say to me, “boy you’re ugly” or “boy you’re stupid.” And sometimes “you’re so flat chested.” When you are told something often, you start to believe it. Plus, my brother was popular and cool, so I figured he would know. I decided I better stay hidden so people would not tease me like he did. 

Staying small 
I was going into the 4th grade when we moved to a new city. At the new school, the pretty girls pretty much ran the playground; they decided who could play with them on a given day and who couldn’t. As the new girl, I was bullied and told that I was not allowed to play with the poplar girls. This validated my belief that I should stay small in the hopes that I would not be picked on. I never raised my hand in class to read or answer a question. In fact, if we were reading out loud, I would count down the lines so I could practice reading the paragraph before I was called on. I would literally take an “E” in a class before I would get up and speak. I would even get to the end of the bus line over and over again so I could take the last shuttle to junior high school and avoid walking the halls before class.
Ok, you get the point.

I validated this core belief that I was a Piece of Shit throughout my life. I even married a man that was abusive to me for 14 years to prove I was a piece of shit. I stayed small and hidden in many ways. While I have worked on this issue for over 15 years, I still had not stood up in front of a large crowd. And this crowd was big (400 in-person and 1,500 on Facebook Live). But, I felt safe. And I no longer felt like a piece of shit. In fact, I have a voice and value. 

So if you have a fear, any fear, realize that it is never about the thing you thought it was about. If you dig deep and start to pull at the root of it, you too can be free of your deepest fear.

Bonus: I was able to see not only friends, but my family in warm, sunny Las Vegas and then in Los Angeles. Enjoy the pictures!
Comments

4/19/2018 Comments

Death

I have spent my entire life trying to come to an understanding of death. Up to this point in my life, I felt it was the one area I could be certain about - I will die someday. The uncertainty lay in the exact date and time it would happen.

Death is the one concept that we seem to struggle with the most. Why do we struggle if it is a certainty? I always felt that if we could change our mindsets around death, to feel that death is fine or even beautiful, our suffering around this issue could disappear. Yet, most of us do not feel that death is fine or beautiful. 

Here is my backstory pertaining to death...
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My parents & grandparents
As a young girl I was raised Catholic and believed in God and heaven. I lost my dog to death after the neighbor poisoned her, an uncle to a car accident, and two grandparents to cancer. Meanwhile, my other grandmother repeatedly told me she was dying. When she had a stroke in her 40’s and lost her ability to function on the left side of her body, I waited and waited for her to die. Ironically, she lived to be 95.
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In high school when I was 15 years old, my brother had just received his driver's license and was driving four friends home from hockey practice. It was winter in Northern Michigan and he lost control of the car and hit a tree. One of the boys, Scott, died.

2 years later my mother died of a brain aneurysm. No time, no goodbyes, just gone. Two weeks later, I ended a pregnancy and from that point on self-hatred was my best friend. At this point, I believed in a God that I felt was making me suffer because of my actions. My motto became, life is a bitch and then you die.
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Me with my godparents
"My motto becomes life is a bitch and then you die."
As a young adult my stories about death go on and on and could take up pages - but that is not the intent of this post. 

In my late 20’s I find God again and believe in an afterlife, and even past lives! 

In my 30’s my motto changed to life is interesting then you die. I started my journey of healing and exploring Native American spirituality, and shifted my focus from God to the Universe. I believed that if we were all part of the whole, we could let organized religion go. At this point, I started to consider myself a recovering Catholic and began working on the layers of guilt associated with that.
"My motto changed to life is interesting then you die."
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PictureMe and my sister, Tammy
In my 40’s I embraced the concept of anything is possible. I began to start unraveling my character patterns - seeing the continuum from you, me, we to oneness. I realized that there is no way to skip up the ladder to oneness without doing the work first. My motto in my 40’s was life is an adventure.

I truly thought I had worked on my issues around my mother’s death. I thought I had moved past it. I thought I was good with death and that death was my friend. I believed that I was good at helping people die; I could hold space for them and create a beautiful experience, which I have done. I felt it was a gift I had to give - helping people feel comfortable with dying.

But, I truly had barely skimmed the surface of understanding death. I had been holding on to my mother - not truly letting her go, I was NOT ok with letting her go again! 

How was I doing this? Well, by keeping myself small, not good enough, not lovable enough. I was enforcing my core beliefs about who I was. I could even find myself merging with her in the clutter of my drawers and closet. Every time I walked into my closet or pulled open a drawer - wham! - my judge voice kicked in and I would feel less than.

It was a very subtle way of keeping my judge alive, which just happens to be my mother! My bad tone of voice I would use with my family was my mom’s voice. The popcorn I wanted to make and eat each evening was my mother's favorite. The way I kept myself avoiding true contact with people was similar to my mother's actions when she was alive.

But, if I stopped beating myself up with my inner judge voice (which is my mother), then I would need to figure out a way to let her die all over again. I would have to feel that raw, numbing pain again!

Ironically this is all imaginary in my thinking, stored in my cortex as my perception of my memories. 

"My motto in my 40’s was life is an adventure."
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Yesterday while lying down, I could feel the roots coming up from the earth into my feet and spreading  through my entire system. I could feel that my mother was absorbed into this root system and part of  consciousness (Avatar comes to mind now). I could feel the Earth mother (archetype) of consciousness and the flow of this life system through my system. It was  feminine energy - not masculine. I could feel how this new energy flowed and the true strength of this space was just being. Simply lying on the table Being - not being pulled or needing to do anything for anyone - there was value in my just ​being. 

I could feel myself at all ages, into my 90’s, feeling the same as I did when I was 2. I could feel how time was irrelevant and my previous anxiety about being a minute late to my appointment became funny. I could feel that there is no need to be held, that I was part of this Universal consciousness - of which my mom was too.

I could feel myself no longer needing anyone or anything. I was everyone and everything! What could I need or want? I had been keeping my mom alive through the gravesite, pictures, my tone of voice, my smallness, my nervous system. I was totally vibrating and relaxed at the same time.

My mother has been part of this collective consciousness since she died (and while she was alive). I was born knowing about the oneness, but had since merged with her wounded identity.

AHHHHHHHH………………..finally, I could FEEL the whole picture and KNOW that I was part of the Oneness. I had it so wrong and it seems so simple. My motto in this moment is life and death are the same, they are everything and nothing at the same time. I KNOW of Oneness and its spacious vast awareness of everything all at once. 

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Today I am perceived to be 53 years young, ten years past the age my mother was when she died. I believe in a Universal energy that is within ​everything and ​everyone. Why do I believe this? Because I had a direct perception of it and it was truly a place of heaven on Earth. All of our ‘thinking’ gets in the way and our perception of how things should or should not be keeps us stuck. Putting ourselves in any box or believing in anything outside of us is just insanity and keeps us suffering.

Early on, I could see that time was a huge factor in death. We don’t know how much time we have in this life to be with our loved ones. At the same time, the passage of time makes the raw, numbing pain of death more tolerable. Now my deep inner KNOWING is time is an illusion!
"My motto now is life and death are one."
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    Wendy Wagoner has explored numerous avenues of disciplines over the last 30 years. She is a professional Awakening Coach, healer, and experienced workshop leader.

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