Love – Every Day

Valentine’s Day brings up a lot of stuff for people. From joy at having someone to celebrate it with to depression that there is no one to celebrate it with again to opting out of a “Hallmark” holiday completely no matter the relationship status.

I’ve had an interesting spin on it because Valentine’s Day is my birthday. Which means my focus has always been on celebrating me. Sometimes that also means I’m celebrating relationships too, but it’s always been a day that I love and I’m at the center.

As a result I have 5 thoughts to consider today:

• Love yourself every day so you don’t measure yourself by Valentine’s Day.
• Love others and be loved by others every day so you don’t measure them by Valentine’s Day.
• If you aren’t in a romantic relationship, you are still loved. Treasure all the many ways you are loved.
• Give your love as a gift today.
• Give yourself some extra TLC today. You are worth celebrating.

If you want some fun visual messages about loving yourself, check out my Pinterest Board!

Identity: Being Known and/or Self Limiting

Many of us use terms to describe our identity. If we are talking about our sexuality identity we might use words like straight, gay, bisexual, pansexual, vanilla, kinky along with a plethora of other terms. Sometimes we string them together, like butch dyke switch or straight male cross-dresser submissive. If you’re questioning what any of these terms mean, lets simply say for now that there is a whole world out there and you might be identifying with only a small section in it!

We also create identities around relationships and relationship style – monogamous, polyamorous, swinger, romantic partner, wife, boyfriend etc. There are plenty of other places we create identities as well: within family, work, how we eat etc.

We use these terms to be known in the world. We create communities and tribes around these identities so we can share with people like us. We also use them as a point of contrast to know who is different than us. This is especially easy to see when the topic of politics comes up.

But can our identies become self limiting? I’d assert yes, they can.

Let me start with a personal example looking at one of my identities. I was raised a vegetarian since a baby. For my parents it was for health reasons and their religion advocated it. When I was a senior in high school I was curious about meat so I tried a bite of steak. Probably not the best first choice for me but either way I decided no, I am still a vegetarian.

Over the years from time to time people would say, this is delicious, you must try this, you’ll like it. I would try it but never really enjoyed it and clung to my vegetarian identity. Beyond some inconvenience when traveling, being vegetarian worked for me and I didn’t have a big enough incentive to change.

Fast forward to here and now. I’ve been doing a lot of things recently to create more energy and improve my physical & mental well being but was still feeling sluggish. My acupuncturist challenged me to eat for what will best support me nutritionally and help shift my body chemistry. She asked me to try salmon.

What to do? If I hold fast to my identity of vegetarian I won’t really know what impact salmon will have for my health and it could limit me. So it’s a choice point. I can eliminate this as an option or try it.

Since I’m exploring how to eat for what by body needs instead of what tastes I enjoy, it changed the conversation for me. I was willing to choose to try it because it is in line with my overall wellbeing commitment to myself.

So how did it go when I tried it this week? I can’t say I loved it, but I ate about 5 or 6 ounces of salmon and felt good right after I ate, later that night and into today. Overall it was a success and I am willing to try it again and will have it later this week. Will this be a lifetime shift to eat salmon and will expand my palette further to include other fish or meat? It’s too soon to say. But what I have learned is in loosening my hold on a lifetime identity about how I eat and focusing on my bigger commitment to myself, there are some new possibilities ahead and I always get to choose each day. In building my muscle here, there is an opportunity to expand outside my comfort zone with other identities.

The take away I’d love for you to get is not just to hear an example from my life to illustrate how an identity can become limiting but to see something for yourself in your own life. What are you getting for yourself from this?

A few other questions to get you thinking are:

• What identities do you use to describe yourself?
• What identities have you inherited? (for example, I’m a good daughter so I won’t do X because I’d upset or hurt my parents.)
• What identities are in line with the big commitments in your life?
• Which identities are limiting you in reaching your goals?

From building some awareness here you get to make a choice. Will you continue with your current identity or explore something new? I look forward to hearing about your journey.

30 Days of Pleasure

Whether you attended the  Pleasure as a Priority workshop at the Playground Conference in Toronto last weekend or not, you can join us here! We kicked off 30 Days of Pleasure as a way to support us in consciously creating more pleasure ongoing in our life, instead of waiting for it to happen or pushing it to the back burner.

What do you do? Choose 30 items that bring you pleasure. Pick items from the 3 S’s of Pleasure:

• Sensory  (hear, see, taste, touch, smell)
• Sensual
• Sexual

Do one item each day and track it. Share your progress here on this blog thread.

• What benefits are you creating from focusing on pleasure as a priority?
• What are some challenges to staying on track with pleasure?
• What are you learning about yourself throughout these 30 Days of Pleasure?

The intention is to build awareness, community and support here as we intentionally design space in our lives for more pleasure. Save any graphic details for your friends!

National Coming Out Day: Getting Real & Celebrating You

Today is National Coming Out Day. Whether you identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or None of the Above, there is a reason to read on. Why does coming out matter? Why should I care if I’m not LGBTQ?

This conversation at the core is about equality and everyone’s right to not just be who they are but to CELEBRATE it. It’s about being yourself without shame or guilt and to be open and seen. It’s about claiming your right to be yourself no matter who you love or how you love.

While today’s celebration is in relationship to the LGBTQ community, which I am a proud member of, we could also take the learning from this and apply it to a broader conversation.

So how does this relate to a broader conversation and make a difference to you? One way to look at it is we all have things we are afraid of being “out” about whether we are LGBTQ or not. It could be something like having gone bankrupt and being ashamed about it and keeping up appearances to friends and family. Or it could be pretending to like something you really don’t on a date so the person you are on a date with will like you better. Or it could be hiding that you don’t orgasm with your partner so you don’t hurt their feelings. What is the thing or things you are afraid of people finding out about you?

I’m not suggesting that everybody needs to know what sexual position you like the best or what fantasies you have. However, what I am suggesting is for you to build an awareness of all the places you are not fully being yourself. Because when it comes down to it, the more authentic, true and real you are, the freer you are. There is a great book called “Getting Real: 10 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life”. In it one of the things Dr. Susan Campbell talks about how to stop worrying about how others might react to your honesty.  She also says, “Any time you feel unsafe or unable to be honest about yourself, it means you have energy tied up in a false belief, probably unconscious, that is still dictating your life choices.”

The thing is we take the things we are afraid of people finding out and make them mean something about us. We say we are protecting others and yet in the end we are really protecting ourselves. I spent years “protecting” my parents from who I really was and in the end I believe it hurt me the most . I came out to my parents as bisexual in 2007 and it is truly one of the things I’m most proud of in my life. I got real about who I am and who I love. I was present to all their shock and feelings and was patient as they adjusted. If it had gone a different way and we became estranged that would have been heart-breaking and I still would have done it because I was tired of not being me. I am out as bisexual and polyamorous.

Today let’s celebrate all of those who are out in the LGBTQ community, those who are coming out today and those who are inspired to choose a path of being true to themselves in all areas of life. Happy Coming Out Day!

——-

Coming Out Resource Guide from the HRC 

It Gets Better

Coming Out and Polyamory

Poly/Mono: Not Foreign Species

This Thursday night I sat down with my partners, Jazz and Brian, to watch Showtime’s new reality show called “Polyamory: Married & Dating“. We were pretty excited because this show will be introducing some people in America to the idea of polyamory for the first time and we wanted to see how the relationships would be handled in the reality show format, especially since reality shows thrive on drama. Brian wrote a great synopsis with his thoughts.

For me this show renewed my interest in talking about something that’s been brewing in my mind for a while now. Because polyamory as a relationship style is still relatively new to a lot of people, I (and my partners) am often asked a lot of questions. The questions start: How does it work? Don’t you get jealous? Do you all sleep in the same bed? How does your family feel? I understand when something new is encountered there will be curiosity, however I’m still a little surprised at how often people relate to polyamory as some foreign species and I’ve become the newly discovered exotic bird.

This country thrives on divisive politics and binary ways of relating to everything from gender identity to sexuality. We also consistently look for what’s different or similar so we can see where we fit into the world. I’m not interested in pitting people or relationships styles against each other here. I’m interested in creating dialogue where we can discover commonality, learn more about ourselves and others and open up new possibilities for our lives. I’m challenging the idea that monogamy and polyamory are so different from each other.

Let’s tie this back into the show by taking a look at three qualities that people demonstrated on the show:

• Love
• Honesty
• Commitment

Followed by three other things that some people in the show experienced:

• Jealousy
• Insecurity
• Fear

If I hadn’t started with this conversation talking about polyamory, you would just think I had listed things that are part of many relationships and the imbedded assumption would be I’m talking about monogamy. What I’m pointing to here is that at the core what it takes to have a relationship work is the same. Additionally, many of the underlying roadblocks or challenges people encounter are the same as well. So another way of saying it is the icing on the cupcake is different for polyamory than it is for monogamy, but underneath it’s still a cupcake. Mmm, cupcakes! So if it’s about having a tasty relationship, what do we do with the jealousy, the insecurity, the fears that sometimes show up whether we’re polyamorous or monogamous?

First it’s helpful to identify some typical things people do when these emotions come up. Here are a few to start with:

• Blame the other person for our feelings
• Create rules or demands of our partner(s)
• Be passive aggressive

You get the picture, it’s not pretty and often drama filled! It’s reactionary and designed to protect us from our emotions and will have us avoid taking responsibility for them.

The next thing to do is to be present to what you’re feeling. Instead of judging it, them or ourselves, what would it be like to use these emotions as an alert system to warn us that there is something we need to pay attention to? Let’s test it out and think of jealousy as the beeping on your smoke detector. The beeping isn’t the problem. We could blame the smoke detector but it wouldn’t address the real issue which is the batteries are running low and need to be replaced. So if jealousy isn’t the problem but an alert system that something is up with us, we can actually welcome the jealousy instead of running away from it. We can start exploring what jealousy has to tell us about ourselves and what we need to pay attention to. A few questions to ask:

• What is the trigger for the jealousy? What’s underneath the jealous feeling?
• What are my assumptions? What am I making this mean?
• What are the facts here? Imagine if someone neutral were describing it.
• What am I committed to in this moment? Is it being right or being in a tasty relationship?

It allows us to step off the rollercoaster of emotions to get present to what’s really going on. From there we can actually create instead of react. We can take responsibility for what we are feeling and deal with it instead of vomiting all over the other person in the conversation.

And key to it all is communication. Listening is as important as talking. Be honest, be clear and be open. One of my favorites things is to practice remembering we’re on the same team. In fact that’s where “Team Triad” came from. When Brian or Jazz or I feeling upset and get all positional on each other, the quickest way for us give ourselves a reality check is to say, “remember, we’re on the same team”. If I’m on the same team with my partner(s) my focus isn’t on being right, it’s on working through what’s at hand so we can get back on track. I invite you to practice this yourself.

So if you’re planning on watching Showtime’s “Polyamory: Married & Dating“, perhaps consider a few things: Notice what is the icing (differences between poly and mono) and what is the cupcake (commonalities)? If there’s a dramatic scenerio, what’s underneath it? I’m sure the show will bring us plenty of other things to talk about so stay tuned! Love to hear your thoughts.

Sex: Relaxation and Beyond

When we think about relaxation there many things we think about: a massage, a vacation, a glass of wine and so on. One thing we might not immediately think of is sex. However studies show that sex (and orgasm) reduces stress, pain and helps you sleep better. All things that help you relax, improve your well-being and quality of life. These are great benefits we might not have considered and lose sight of when we are caught up with all the day-to-day concerns. How often does sex get pushed to the back burner? What do you notice for yourself when you have sex consistently and when you do not? I invite you to consider treating sex as a vital part of your well-being. In addition to things related to relaxation, it improves heart disease, burns calories and improves intimacy.

However if we were to boil it down to the simplest thing, sex provides pleasure, which has us feel good and be relaxed. I was just speaking at a conference in DC at the end of March where I heard Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former US Surgeon General say “It’s time to admit sexuality is about pleasure.”

I’d assert for many people we still have a hard time with the pleasure piece. We have a lot of questions, confusion, shame and fear in America when it comes to sex. We get a lot of mixed messages of what’s “normal” and what’s “weird”, what’s too much sex, what’s too little, as a culture we use sex to sell things and yet are often afraid to talk about sex openly and honestly. We let things get in the way of us experiencing full joy and pleasure when it comes to sex.

So what to do about it? One of the first things is to start building some awareness of where you’re at with your sexuality and where you’d like to be. Here are a couple of questions to consider:

1. How empowered are you about your sexuality on a scale of 1 to 10?
1 being lowest, I have a lot of fear and shame around sex…
10 being I feel full joy and pleasure around sex

2. What gets in the way of you experiencing full joy and pleasure when it comes to sex?

3. If you were to consider creating three goals for yourself and sex, what would they be?

Now comes the fun part! Are you willing to take some action to create that? Do you need some support?

Reflect: a Year and a Mirror

I love this time of year. New Years Eve bridges the old and the new years. As we celebrate one year ending we are also celebrating the promise of the one ahead. Whether it happens on January 1 or sometime in January, it’s a great opportunity to take stock. It provides a time to reflect on what’s working in our lives, what’s not working and also thinking about what’s next. The promise of the next 12 months is one of possibility and the options are limitless.

Before you know it, January will be over and then it will be February and March… We’ll be in a routine. Will it be the same routine from last year or will you have created someone new in your life to have you reach your goals or dreams? Do you have a mirror to reflect the things you don’t see?

Coaches are a mirror. They are a neutral surface that can reflect the spinach in your teeth – whether that spinach is self limiting beliefs, how you let circumstances get in your way or when you are making choices in reaction or from fear. A coaches job is be unbiased, stand for you operating at your greatest and to reflect what you can’t see so you can choose actions and ways of being from awareness as opposed to auto-pilot.

What projects, goals or dreams could you use a mirror for? Contact me if you’d like to explore what coaching could provide for you.