Become all you can become by raising yourself higher on the Tree of Life

The empath’s guide to: How to not feel alone, isolated, abandoned, not belonging…

You look around. Everyone seems to have it better than you. They laugh, they hug, they walk hand in hand, kiss… or have friends who like them… but you? If feels like you have no one, no one cares about you, no one responds well to you… You are not getting enough “strokes”… from others.

A “stroke” (in Transactional Analysis) is a unit of social transaction. A hug. A nod. A smile. A hello, a thank you, a “how are you?”, or an f… you…. these are all social transactions. The more strokes you get the less your spine will shrivel up on you…

Continue reading “The empath’s guide to: How to not feel alone, isolated, abandoned, not belonging…”

Are you OK?

OK, I am getting emails asking if I am OK… this is what you get when people expect to hear from you every day… You skip a few days and they get worried… lol

Am I OK? I don’t feel OK.

But, of course, nothing is going on in reality… I am still doing work, I still read, eat, walk, talk to people… I just don’t have an article in me. So consider this a chat… not an article.

What happened?

The Playground, the year long process of emptying your past of “wrong” is what happened. lol.

Leading a program authentically, makes you walk with your students. Not ahead them, not behind them, with them. Continue reading “Are you OK?”

Focus on the things you can control… but what can you?

You can only control what belongs to you… Your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions don’t belong to you. Your actions, your attitude, what you actually heed, what you say… they do belong to you.

They are interestingly difficult to see… they are hidden from your view, overcrowded by noise.

We call these here: invisible dynamics. They are tiny machines, their behavior is predictable, manageable, and their effect on your life are detrimental. Continue reading “Focus on the things you can control… but what can you?”

Where every student of mine is lacking is communication.

One area where every student of mine is lacking is communication.

When suddenly they do something that I consider communication, I cry. Tears of joy. One of my recent articles brought a flurry of communication… but it was a ‘fluke’, an accident, a one time event.

What is communication, really?

The dictionary says: conveying information. Bah humbug.

The purpose of communication is to get what you want, from life, through other people.

Continue reading “Where every student of mine is lacking is communication.”

Carrot and Stick: Becoming someone who can

I wrote this article in 2014… So the webinar sessions it talks about are now a recorded course… Carrot and Stick.

We’ll have the third webinar in the Carrot and Stick series today. The results are mixed, but I am excited. Because it has made people to show their true colors: good or bad.

M from London, a Filipina writes:

Hello Sophie

I want to share with you that what we did last Wednesday (in the Carrot and Stick webinar) is now having an effect on me. Just saying UNWILLING in my mind has some some effect on my body something like a burst of energy and the feeling of ‘I can’t have this same life any more.’

This morning, I don’t know if this is part of the the plan of the universe for me to feel the disgust on how I behave and live my life by accident, I watched something on the internet that made me question how could I live the way I live…. I cried for hours until I felt I could not cry any more.. I have headache and my eyes hurt. I’ve never cried like this before. I feel so disgusted the way I live my life.

In case you are interested this the video that made me feel disgusted with my behaviour and attitude in my life. she won XFactor Israel. The song she sang inspired me which I will keep on listening at the moment to remind me the feeling of disgust with the way I live my life

Thank you so much Sophie. Stick works for me.

Watch the video below that inspired M… https://youtu.be/_LVV750lZkA
Continue reading “Carrot and Stick: Becoming someone who can”

Is it too late for you? Is it too late for you to change?

What do I mean too late? I mean this: The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken

This saying sounds like the god honest truth, doesn’t it? But when I muscletest, it is only 20% true…

Why is the truth value of something universally accepted as truth?

It is true, because it takes effort and intention and commitment to break bad habits. And we, humans, are not very motivated to change any habit, let alone a habit that gets us pleasure… in another name, payoffs. But when people can see, when people can own that they pay with their lives, a lot more people are interested and are willing to make efforts…

The biggest hindrance is the goodies… What goodies? you ask. Continue reading “Is it too late for you? Is it too late for you to change?”

Am I weak? Are you weak? Can you activate the inside stick?

Motivation… it is either a stick or a carrot…

And it is either an inside job, or an outside job.

I am more motivated, more nudged on to do a move, to do something, to make a change in behavior by the stick than by the carrot… the inside stick… Continue reading “Am I weak? Are you weak? Can you activate the inside stick?”

What is the strongest indicator of the quality of your life?

I measure 30 things about a person when they ask for their Starting Point Measurements.

They are all very relevant, but when it comes to the quality of your life, to your life satisfaction, your experience of your life… one could almost say, the level of your happiness depends on one thing.

The level of your happiness depends on one thing

The culture claims that to be happy, you have to have possession, you have to have success, you have to have comfort, safety, fulfillment, companionship, whatever, and, to some degree it may matter but not as much as the number, the measure, just one number told me why 99.99% of the people I have ever measured had a low life satisfaction, even though some had money, success, love even talent… seemingly everything you’d ever wanted. Continue reading “What is the strongest indicator of the quality of your life?”

Why getting well is so difficult for us…

There is never a better time to experience what you experience, than right when you experience it.

This morning I was hit with a strong feeling of despair, loneliness.

I didn’t have time to hang out with it, I was in the middle of something. I wanted to shoo it away, and I also wanted to indulge in it.

But then I decided to just feel it, acknowledge it, and let it go. I paid attention to what it said… nodded, wept a little, and let it go. ¹

Is this familiar to you? I didn’t think so. You don’t know who you are, and you don’t want to find out.

There are many reasons you don’t know yourself.

One of these reasons is that you resist your emotions.

Continue reading “Why getting well is so difficult for us…”

Following a script or doing your way… what is predictable?

Why do I read my (and your) Rob Brezsny horoscope every Tuesday? Do I believe that they foretell the future?

I don’t.

But every horoscope, yours or mine, gives me a different vantage point to life, a filter, a frame, through which I can see what is not visible (for me) through my day-to-day frame…

The exact same thing was true about listening to the 67 steps by Tai Lopez.

On average I took a redirection of my vantage point five times a week for three years by the 67 steps. Plus 52 times a year by Rob Brezsny.

To change from where you look, you need to step back, tear away your eyes from how you are looking at things now, and consciously move your attention to a new place, a new frame, a new vantage point.

Most people are stuck with one way to look, in every area of life… like the 35 year old man who still whines that his daddy is mean to him.

Saying “mean” is a fixed way of looking. Continue reading “Following a script or doing your way… what is predictable?”