NEAL YOUNG AND EMINEM SHARE SOME SECRETS

Whoever you are and whatever you’re up to, you know when you set about to do something new, whether it’s write a new piece, go to a new class, talk to a new client, start that exercise program, or learn something new, especially if it pushes against your boundaries, you know resistance is lurking, resistance that hides in that tightness in your gut, in that irresistible urge to clean the refrigerator, in that seductive call of a bar of chocolate, or the allure of that nasty website.

Here I am writing, as a dozen little itches, distractions, thoughts, desires, judgments and genies try to draw me away and keep from doing my work this morning.

“Why are you doing this?” they ask me. “No one will listen. It won’t make a difference. It won’t be any good. It’s been done already. Who are you to do this work anyway? Don’t you need to go do something more productive that will make more money?”

Resistance will try to make you forget what you are doing and why. You have to pull yourself back to the center where your work and your life are waiting for you.

I saw an amazing interview with Neal Young on the Charlie Rose show—Neal Young from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, who wrote Ohio, Southern Man, and has been rockin’ in the free world for over 40 years.

Day in and day out, married to the same woman, suffering from epilepsy, father of kids with cerebral palsy, Neal plays on. 

Neal Young explained to Charlie Rose that everyone who knows him, knows that when Neal hears the ‘call’, unless there’s a life or death reason not to, he’s going to answer it.

Tired. Having fun. Down. Busy. Worried. Guilty. Afraid. None of it is going to stop Neal Young from heeding the call to go write that music and those lyrics.

            It was a gift, he explained. It had been, not given to him, but offered to him. He had accepted. Now it was his responsibility to show up.

            That was the deal. He’s given his life to this thing, and it has given him his life.

I imagine some of you are saying, damn, I wish I were Neal Young. Where’s my muse? I wish I were called like Neal Young to write a song, or a poem, or to paint, or to sculpt, or take a photograph, or to design a product, or create a business, or choreograph a dance, or code a cool I-phone app, or run an amazing experiment, or think of a new line of work, or called to come up with a novel solution to a problem.

I’d give anything. Just please call me!

Like former President Clinton, I can feel your pain, but, sorry, I don’t believe you.

You have heard the call. We all have. More than once, but you didn’t heed it. You were too busy, too tired, too afraid, too something. And now, you think you don’t hear it anymore.

            But it’s there. The whole universe is bursting with the call. No matter where you look, there is change and creation. You are part and parcel of a God-refined creation machine. There’s destruction and decay, too, but you have to destroy some of the old to make way for the new. Destroying the old, that’s the part that scares us.

In Rolling Stone, Eminem shared that fear was one thing that made him do so many damn drugs in the past, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of being too connected to all those adoring fans. One of the most successful musicians alive has to face fear and anxiety.

Neal and Eminem have to face their demons before they can answer the call. So do you, and so do I, if we hope to do our work.  

The particulars are going to be different for each of us, but once you get the inkling of the direction of your contribution, whether it’s to make your job more meaningful, to write that poem, or to be more present to those children, you’ve got to show up every day like Neal. Commit. Get professional. Get your crap out of the way. Sit down, stand up, go in, go out, whatever answering the call looks like to you, do it everyday—at least every workday.

Act like you hear the call even when you think you don’t. Keep doing your work. Keep showing up. The call is there, like leaves rustling in the wind. If you’re not paying attention, you won’t hear it. In doing the work, the call becomes clearer.

You don’t wait. You act. You don’t clean the refrigerator. You don’t call that friend. You sit down and you write. You go out and take those pictures. You learn that skill. You send out that resume. You go to that exercise class. Even with nineteen kids, four husbands, and eight cakes baking, you do what has to be done. And you keep doing it. Why? Because your life depends on it, just like Neal’s life and Eminem's life depend on it.

So, learn your craft, which includes studying the ways of your own mind and personality. Observe the deviousness of your excuses, the disabling power of your limiting beliefs and self-criticism. Observe your broken-heartedness over the past. Forgive yourself for things done and not done. Get out of your own way.

Your life is calling you, right here, right now, to be who you are.

And that’s pretty exciting, and damn frightening.

“My God, if I could just be fully and completely who I am, it would be like heaven. But what if I fail? What if they laugh? What if they ignore me?”

That’s fear we have to face, step by courageous step, as we work to become who we are called to be. And we do it knowing we will never be fully who we are. We’re too much of a mystery for that. The best we can hope for is to be a living part of a universe that is a becoming more than it is a thing, more of a dance than a sculpture. There’s no end to it.

So, where is your place in the great dance? What music do you hear? Who are your partners? What is your instrument?

Whatever it is, be open to it. Work to find it. Do what you can.

Listen. Do you hear it? Your life is calling.

Namaste. I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

BEFRIEND YOUR DRAGON: OVERCOME FEAR AND RESISTANCE

 

Seth Godin, marketing guru, author of Linchpin, wrote a blog entitled “I Think Laziness Has Changed”. Seth sees that, where once physical labor was demanded from us, now our work, if it’s to be vital and alive, demands that we do the emotional labor needed to overcome our fears and resistances so that we can be productive and creative.

“You’re hiding out,” Godin says, “because you’re afraid of expending emotional labor. This is great news, because it’s much easier to become brave about extending yourself than it is to become strong enough to haul an eighty pound canoe”

          Sorry, but I disagree. For many people, it’s much easier to become physically strong than it is to become emotionally strong. That’s why physical labor is easy to find, and therefore cheap, in comparison to emotional labor and the emotional intelligence needed to do vital, creative work in a rapidly changing world.

Look at how challenging many of us find it to change ourselves, to overcome our fears or the story we carry. Yet life may be nothing more than a fantastic opportunity to work through our fears and resistances so we can express more fully who we are.

I want to offer something for overcoming fear that is usually not discussed, and is a big part of my coaching practice. 

We often deal with fear and other difficult emotions only from the neck up, and that’s a problem.

Oftentimes, even very insightful advice boils down to, “Just do it.”

Just make that phone call. 

Just put your butt in the seat and write that book.

Just get that product to market.

It’s amazing advice and very powerful, but what about all the times you just can’t seem to get yourself to do it? What about all the times you want to go east and you just can’t seem to stop yourself from going west?

In spite of your best efforts, you go right ahead and do what you don’t want to do, and you feel like a failure for doing so.

If you really want to go east, then why can’t you resist going west?

It’s because you’re ignoring a big part of you. You’re ignoring your dragon, and the dragon doesn’t like to be ignored.

We often think we’re nothing but our thoughts, nothing but our frontal lobes and neo-cortex where we think and plan all day long. But there’s a dragon living in the lower regions of our brain running much of the show. It’s old, similar to the brain of a lizard, and based in primal emotions like fear and anger, but when you wrestle with lizard brain it feels like you’re wrestling with a damn powerful, fire-breathing dragon, and not a four-inch-long chameleon.

          There are two very powerful tools to overcome the resistance of the dragon. One is to have an inspiring vision that calls you forwards, whether it’s to write that book, fix that relationship, make that move to a new city, or to take that non-profit to the next level, a vision that gives you the energy, the commitment, and the power to do what you need to do.

The second tool is to stop fighting the dragon, or ignoring it. You need to become present and aware of what your body is doing as you begin the work of dealing with difficult feelings or emotions. That change in your breathing is the dragon starting to awaken, so is that constriction in your chest, or that tightening in your throat or your butt.

Maybe your feet are tapping, or your palms are warm, or you have crossed your arms. Whatever it is, it is your limbic brain, the dragon, responding, usually with fear, to the threats of the new project, the new relationship, or the new possibility.

Pay close attention to the body. Don’t get lost in your head, in your words, in your arguments, or in your attempts to cover up your fear or explain it away. Just stay put and get a good look at the dragon.

And keep breathing. Keep gazing around the room. If the physical distress gets too powerful, remember a time and a place where you felt more fully alive. Maybe it was your child’s first birthday, or hiking down the Grand Canyon. You’re not looking away from whatever difficult emotion is coming up, but you’re bringing in resources to support you while you get a better look at the snorting son-of-a-dragon who you could swear is breathing fire down your neck. You are doing the emotional labor necessary to tame your dragon, so you can do the creative, challenging work of living.

Dealing with fear and resistance requires the will of “just do it”, but it also requires imagination, and the ability to stay with the feelings in the body, which is where the emotions come from.

As you practice this, you will observe that your body has multiple intelligences and ways to find balance and healing. Your body and your dragon will begin to settle down. This is an art and a skill, like riding a bike. You get better with practice. What else is new?

So, go do your work. Begin that project, but as you do, do it with all the resources available to you. Do it with your emotional brain, your dragon brain, working with you, rather than against you. Get the dragon to lie down in its lair, not by slaying it, but by befriending it. You do that by paying your emotional brain its due. And what your emotional brain wants is to know what’s going on, and that things are safe. The way you let dragon brain know things are safe is by letting it look around and giving it the time to really see, feel, and experience what is going on in the body, without your thoughts getting in the way, either with negative thinking, or with commands.

Just do it! Is not always a helpful way to speak to a dragon.

Let it feel and experience in and through the body.

Is there tightness? What does that tightness feel like?

Is it hot, cold, electric, tingly, watery, or dizzying?

Where do you feel it? How do you feel it?

Take some time to do this. If you’re like most of us, you will be a bit handicapped. You will find yourself thinking and interpreting. But keep at it. If it gets to be too much, take deeper breathes, bring up comforting images and memories, and slow it way down so you can process what’s going on. This is not about thinking, but about simply letting the body feel what it needs to feel. That will give the dragon what it needs to settle down. Do less rather than more. Come back again later, or tomorrow, but don’t give up.

In this way you will help the dragon feel safe and to lie down. Then you will have more freedom to do what you want to do. You will, over time, increase your ability to, “Just do it.” And your life will be richer and more fulfilling.

Now go do your work, and be prepared. If you start to push at your borders, trying to expand your limits or comfort zone, the dragon will awaken. That’s its job. You will never slay the dragon, nor should you. The dragon is part of you, and so is its fire. It has warned you of danger. It has kept you alive. It remembers to keep you breathing when you forget. It’s part of your many intelligences. It just doesn’t live upstairs in the house of words and thoughts, but it lives in the body of feelings, images, and stories.

The dragon is an extraordinary ally, so why would you venture into strange territory alone when you can ride a dragon into victory?

Just asking.

Namaste.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572.