JourneyWay Coaching Blog

Our tribe includes the familial, societal, national, and global combinations of training, expectation, energy, and indoctrination. This huge source of energy moves us in ways we often miss. There are very few of us walking the earth today who have the personal power needed to stand in the face of the tribal power around us.

Please don’t misinterpret that I am trying to say that the tribe is wrong. By no means. I’m simply stating that it is not only the people around us but also our ancestors around us that directly affects what we believe we can and cannot do.

Many reading this have grandparents or great grandparents who walked through the depression. If so, you won’t have to dig too far in your own life to see remnants of their actions, words, and beliefs. Look in the drawers in your kitchen, the bins in your garage, the boxes in your basement… What are you keeping, “for a rainy day?”

All I ask is that you take a few moments today, tomorrow, the next day, etc. and ponder where your ideas come from. Are they really your ideas? Or, is the voice in your head a committee of parents, grandparents, political leaders, religious leaders, bosses, older siblings, teachers, and so on? I’m not asking you to exorcise your committee. I’m asking for your awareness in this, just this, moment.

We all know that voice as parents who have said, “I never thought I’d hear my mom or dad’s voice come out of my mouth!” I watch my own behaviors and the actions of others that push my hot buttons. Dishes in the sink was a huge one as anyone who has every lived with me can attest! My mom had one rule: No dishes in the sink when she came home from work. I had no idea how ingrained that rule had become in me… No, I had no idea how cemented in stone as truth that rule had become. No dishes meant, well, no dishes. Why can’t these others I live with understand that? It is so simple!!!

Right! I was, and am, carrying the weight of my mom’s rule as fact just as we all are on so many levels. Epictetus said that it isn’t the events in our lives that cause us trials and tribulations, it is our ideas about those events that slay us. That is a loose paraphrase, but the message is intact.

Our ideas about what is right, what is wrong, what side to believe, what side to fight against, how the French are, how the wealthy live, how the poor spend their time, how immigrants are helping or harming the country, on and on… It is our ideas about all the topics and items in our life that hold power over us.

Our tribe is powerful and to be respected. They provided everything in our lives to bring us to this moment. Ultimately, the tribe wants the individual to grow because it benefits the tribe. However, when that growth pushes against the ruleset of the tribe you will be confronted.

Take a moment here and there and think about those “facts” or “rules” that you simply tuck away as truth. Those items you pass to your kids, friends, coworkers, partners.

Where did they come from? Are they really yours? Or, are they hand-me-downs created in an era of their necessity? Isn’t it time for you to begin asking those big questions of your life? Know that when you do, and I know you’ve already felt this… You will feel push back from the tribe.

The tribe wants you to succeed, but it also wants to preserve itself. It’s believe set is fact to the tribe. It will do whatever it takes to protect ideas of eras gone by.

So, what do you believe? Where are you feeling moved in this life? What pulls have you been fighting against simply because, “it’s not how we do things around here?”

This topic will be expanded on. However you are welcome to add a comment or shoot me an email.

As always,

Live your Best!

Zane

Saying goodbye for reasons I cannot adequately convey… Wow! I suppose I should try in this entry toward additional explanation. I’ll do what I can.

Saying goodbye for those un-communicable reasons definitely fall into the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. However we may find that the truly most difficult thing has been to live a life as someone other than who I actually am.

I am in the middle of saying goodbye to my wife and stepson. We have been together for 9 years. Married 8 years this next April. We hold within our family a warm, open, loving, relationship that is important to each of us. Why am I saying goodbye then? That’s the question containing empty answers.

I have openly accepted and voiced in the past year or so that I’ve lived much of my life tied to the value and opinion of others. I don’t know if you’ve run into this in your own life or not? When I’ve wanted to turn left in my life I chose the right path instead because it was right in the eyes of those who love me.

Well, I’ve learned that I devalue that love of others when I dare to actualize what I think they require of me. In going through this divorce I’ve learned that I am simply loved. That’s all. There are those who have sadness that I’ve been in pain for a long time. Those are the ones with whom I’ve shared my path of depression. They also have sadness for my family and for the effect my current actions have on their lives.

There are those too who my actions have hurt possibly beyond repair. We see that often in separation. Lines are drawn, sides form up, it’s now us-and-them. Two families together are now two families apart. In one day, “love” disappears into fear and anger.

So, I began this by saying that the hardest thing I’ve ever done is to say goodbye without being able to convey the reasons to those I’m leaving. There is difficulty in that to be certain! But that isn’t really the hardest thing, is it?

I keep writing about those reasons so difficult to convey. Are they? Really? Well, yes and no. Yes they are difficult because the path I’ve chosen involves living a life outside the expectations, traditions, and often acceptable parameters of the “Tribe.” (I’ll write a blog entry on the Tribe later.) I am choosing not to be a provider, to not be a contributing member of my local society. Sure I’ll pay taxes — If you don’t pay taxes you have no say in the outcome. But I am working on loosing the ties to society as I’ve known it in my short 43 years.

Then again, no… those reasons aren’t difficult to convey as long as I am aware, present, and attentive to where I am, who I am, and whether I believe myself to be worth enough to create the life I most want to live.

I guess the difficulty is mine. You see, each footstep I take from this point on points to one single goal and desire. I want to leave. I want to buy a boat and sail around the world. If I make it, fine; if not, fine. If I perish, so be it. I’ve tried to kill the desire to live a different life. I’ve called it a “simpler” life, but that gets me into trouble with trying to explain what the hell I mean by that. Simpler… So, for now, I’ll say the desire is to live a different life.

One not focused on living to work to support the life that requires that work. I want to leave the subdivision. I’ve thought of the mountains, the desert, the valleys… And I realize I’ve tasted those too. I want to try the sea. To live on a small boat on very big water. To see people and countries most just read about if they get around to that kind of reading at all. I want the emptying experience of big water I experienced in the Coast Guard.

I want the experience of expanding my tribal view to the breaking point by living the experience of a different world view. In each account of a solo or family cruiser, those who return to land did so fully changed. I want the opportunity to taste that change.

Saying goodbye has been one of the hardest things to be sure… Then again, not saying goodbye has nearly killed parts of me and at times, nearly even all of me.

I know I’ll be land-bound for at least 5 years to build the resources to be able to leave a common life in my prime income generating years. Then again, when I read the accounts of those who marched to a different drummer before me they all echo the same sentiment back through time…

Don’t over plan… just go. If you don’t, you may never leave.

So, I’ll see. This site will record much of this journey. I encourage your comments, positive or negative and I’ll keep writing to try to make sense out of something that is not of the mind.

Until then,

Live your Best!

Zane

P.S. So, ultimately… it isn’t having reasons I can’t convey that’s hard. It’s knowing the reasons and not giving up on honest expression; it’s knowing the reasons and giving up on trying to make everything okay for everyone else first. Yeah… that’s hard.

You’d have to be a fortune teller to figure that one out!

Really? I don’t think so. Well, sure, on stuff like the stock market or weather or sports scores, etc. But what about turning the question inward?

“What does tomorrow hold — for you?”

If we keep making the same choices and the same decisions I GUARANTEE the same outcomes. You have the freedom to make any choice you want, however you also have the freedom to accept the consequences for your actions.

I’ve made folks angry during workshops when I told them they have the power of choice in their lives. I was heckled about the importance of paying bills, keeping a roof over our heads, being the provider, etc. All that is true. I simply stated a truth: You have the power of choice in your life. Choice is a, well, a choice. It is yours, now. However it is also tied to its own universal law.

Exercising your will in making a choice sets the universe in motion. If you don’t go to work tomorrow, which is really something you CAN do, then you also get to accept the consequence of that choice. You might loose your job. You might find that you never liked that job and that you’d rather buy a small nursery and sell flowers for a living.

Our choices are fluid and flexible… only if we keep exercising them with mental and emotional clarity. If you continue to make choices in your life because that was “the way we did things” in our parents, grand-parents, and great grand-parents time then you are asking for the life they received. And please don’t misunderstand me. I am in no way saying that their life was any worse or any better than ours right now. I am saying though that if you continue to make the same choices today as you made yesterday then your tomorrow is destined to flow before you just as today did.

Do you want change in your life? Then you must have the courage to make changes, to alter the course of your life toward an ideal, a job, a day-to-day situation that more closely resembles the highest dreams you can imagine for yourself.

A great friend once told me to not allow the world to only see my potential. You see, I had created a chronic habit of not choosing. I didn’t take the high road or the low road; I just hunkered down at the fork in the road and stayed there. I always looked longingly at the path leading off toward the top of the mountain just as I gazed over the path that flowed down into the valley. Different paths, different desires and passions, different outcomes.

I KNEW what was in my heart, but I had made stories that solidified over the years an untruth: That I had to wait to begin living my life in the way I truly want my life to unfold. That I had to pay my dues like every other “respectable” member of society, family, church, and relationship circles. In short I didn’t want to hurt others or hurt myself so I sold everyone short.

We all do this to some degree. I had it mastered to such a level that I had become several separate and different people. Not split personalities, but a split person. I am deeply entrenched in the work and love involved in extricating myself from the damaging habits of waiting until it will be okay for me to do what I most want to do in my life.

So, what does tomorrow hold?

It rests on the sum result of today’s choices. Eat differently today for a better body tomorrow. Practice self care first, THEN care for others. Yes, I know, that sounds backwards from what we were taught. “Love your neighbors,” and all that jazz. However, the real scripture read, “Love your neighbors as yourself.”

AS YOURSELF changes everything. Tomorrow holds how you treat yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually today. Tomorrow you will be living the choices of today. I watched my mom die of bladder cancer that had been brought on by a life spent smoking. She had the genealogy to have lived more than the 72 years she visited here. However, she is now in a different place.

Tomorrow holds todays choices. What are you choosing, randomly or habitually, that create parts of your life that need freshening? I’m not saying to change anything if you are happy. But let’s chat in a week or so about what being happy really means. This is the time where you get to be selfish and TOTALLY honest with yourself. If you could have anything, do anything, see anything… what would you do?

Start making choices in that direction and you’ll see that thing that is only a thought in your head now turn in to a dream and then into reality.

As always, live your best!

Zane

Wow… there are so many books, magazine articles, workshops, motivational speakers and coaches, self-help courses, and opinions on this difficult — yet deceivingly simple - question! Who are you really?

Are you what you do?
How many times have you asked, and how many times has this been asked of you, “So, what do you do?” That question is so ingrained in us that it is almost as impersonal as how we can ask, “How are you doing?” and not really care or even want to know; we’re just being “kind.” What would you if instead of what you do, someone asked, “So, who are you?” What would you say?

Are you the roles you fill?
For example: Self, parent, child, grandchild, sibling, family member, community member, spouse, employee or employer, tax payer, church member, national or world citizen, etc, on and on. Or how about your hobbies? Outdoors-man or woman, geek, athlete, yoga practitioner, motorcyclist, rafter, pilot, sailor, etc.

Are you your values?
Does your integrity, competitiveness, certainty, calmness, honesty, freedom, trustworthiness, work ethic, or connection to others define you; are your values who you are?

How about spiritual belief or lack of one?
Most belief systems lean toward a “ghost in the machine” understanding of Self. Philosophers have pondered on who this observer is who lives within us. Is it mind, God, chemical changes in the brain, random firings of your neural synapses? I created an analogy for myself to voice my belief of spirit: In this life, in this body, we are simply moving around in a rental car. It’s not ours, we don’t own it, and we will need to turn it in when the contract expires. However the “Me” driving the rental isn’t turned in with the car.

I have no idea what comes next but have often enjoyed the peace of how differing beliefs try to explain this unknown that we travel into beyond the curtain of death. But that still barely covers the question… Who are you? (Or, more personally, Who am I?)

You’ve read this far musing over my questions waiting for my answer. Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have an answer for you. That is what you get to identify on your own. I am here in this post to pose the question and ask you if you’ve thought about it at all lately.

Why is any of this important? Well, going back to our example of driving around in a rental car we can bring the concept of Awareness into the picture. (I’ll write on Awareness later.) Awareness offers you a sense of presence in this moment. If you’re driving your car around without really being in the car then you are not really in the activity of living your life are you? I mean… you’re not even daydreaming. You’re just not there. You are lost in the thoughts you allow to control your mind, your life, and your experience of the present moment. Sound harsh?  Do you disagree? Think of this then….

How many times have you driven anywhere in your own car realizing somewhere along the drive that you weren’t really in the car? How often do you get to work and not really have any true direct experience of driving. Did you run any lights? Did you cut anyone off while talking on the phone oblivious to others around you? Well sure! We’ve ALL done that.

You are defined by the level and attention you give to your actions in this moment. Next time you brush your teeth — only brush your teeth. Next time you talk to you partner — be only with your partner. During dinner — taste the food, feel the sensation of fueling your body, take your time. Multitasking minimizes your experience of life by letting you sample random moments without partaking of the feast. Don’t get me wrong, multitasking is a useful tool. Unfortunately though it is how most of us live our lives.

So, based on this idea, my understanding is that you are this moment right now. You will either be present to it or let it drift away like others before it. You will either experience it fully or you will discard it without a thought. You are not your occupation or birth order in your family. You are not your body or your strengths and weaknesses. You are not what you believe, feel, or think. Especially, you are not your mind.

This is ALL you have, all you are… just this moment. What are you going to do with it; how are you going to experience it? How will you spend this most finite resource?

All I ask is that you think about it for yourself.

Live your best,

Zane

P.S. Oh, if your answer is, “I don’t know.” That is a GOOD thing. It means now you can go about this discovery with a clean slate. If you don’t know what you are, know what you are not and vice versa. Today is a great day to start. Right now. In this moment.

Welcome to JourneyWay Coaching. A journey, any journey, truly does begin with one step. I’m in the process of revamping the old JourneyWay Coaching website into a more friendly format. Please continue to stop by. I promise to have relevant coaching information available.

It’s all about the Journey! Live your Best,

Zane