Weekly Reflections

An Oasis is a good place to pause and reflect. Each of my weeks provides ample inspiration in terms of topics; from coaching sessions, conversations with family and friends, my own reading, or one of the many podcasts I absorb when on the move. A topic will resonate with me early in the week and I get great pleasure from the iterative process of drafting, revising, polishing, and finalising each essay. Then comes the selection of a suitable photo, usually a product of yet another creative hobby of mine. I invite you take a little time out, to create your own six-minute oasis, find a comfortable chair, and read. You will hopefully find some inspiration from or a degree of identification in these Weekly Reflections. If you do, feel free to subscribe to this section. You will then receive future installments directly by email. Also, feel free to share the link among your circle of friends and associates. Finally, feedback and comments are always most welcome.

EnJOY!

Community

Imposter

The only explanation I could find as to why this `unbearability of being´ had become my daily reality was that there must have been something inherently wrong with me. The only alternative explanation, — that my parents were so overwhelmed that they could not meet my basic emotional needs — would have been too much to endure for a child still dependent upon his parents. Add to these internal ruminations the messaging common in any group trying to function as best it can under severe pressure and it is no wonder that some of us arrive at the conclusion that we are useless, not good enough, that the world would be better off without us…

Community

Longing

In our hyper-cerebral, post-modern culture, we may have been looking for answers in the wrong place all along. A fellow recently shared the following acronym during a meeting: FAITH = Finding Answers In The Heart. When we have begun to embrace all that resides within us, and only then, can true healing begin. Everything in there belongs to us. There are no bad parts, only those that pull us towards wholeness and those that would attempt to take us backwards, to the status quo of our early childhood sense of dis-ease…

Community

Beyond Morality

Fr. Greg Boyle S.J. is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in L.A. Many of those who benefit from the services of Homeboy Industries are living, like me, in long-term addiction recovery. As Fr. Greg, or “Gee”, as the hommies like to call him, points out in his most recent book “Cherished Belonging”, morality has not succeeded in making us moral and has, in fact, been the means by which division has been sown among us. We are good and they are bad…

Community

Secrets

As an addict living in recovery since 2003, I have had plenty of opportunities to get to know and interact with people from the many fellowships now providing support to those of us who wish to recover, all around the world. My experience of recovery is that of a transformative shift from fear to love. A major prerequisite for the success of this transformation is the cultivation and practice of compassion: for self, others, and circumstances. The realisation that: `We are as sick as our secrets´ plays a prominent role in the recovery process.

Mental Fitness

Emotions

In my family of origin, as I experienced things, there was no common language for dealing with the multitude of feelings that are integral to the human condition. It was as if we tried, in a group effort, to read Anna Karenina in the original without any prior knowledge of the Russian culture, language, or even the ability to read Cyrillic script. Emotions are sometimes characterised as `feelings in motion´. A wide array of emotions exists. The following list captures those generally identified as the most common: Acceptance, admiration, affection, amusement, anger, angst, anguish, annoyance, anticipation, anxiety…

Community

Spiritual Experience

Every roomful of recovering addicts is a roomful of miracles. For reasons beyond our comprehension, we had been guided and protected up to that turning point and had been granted sufficient clarity to make the decisive choice. The prospect of death thus became a constant companion to us, not in any morbid sense but in a way that helped us cultivate gratitude for simply being alive in a world which, we gradually discovered, also contained tenderness, beauty, and wonder…

Community

Solid Ground

For many of us who lose their way having emerged from dysfunctional families, the opportunity arises when, after a period of active acting out in substance and/or process addiction, we finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and `hit bottom´. While this is not an ideal way of finding solid ground beneath our feet (we usually land on our ass, in fact!), it does enable us to finally begin inserting a solid foundation into the skimpy structure of what our life had become…

PQ Mental Fitness

Response-Ability

Our brain, therefore, if stuck in autopilot, will keep flooding us with emotions. Without the ability to pause and reflect before responding, we generally get caught up in the mental reactions or even reflexes of old, of which we are not aware. And we are generally not aware that we are not aware. Today’s world is in many ways an echo-chamber of the earliest circumstances of childhood. This impulsivity tends to get us into a lot of trouble, with ourselves and those around us, causing conflict, strife, even disease…

Community

Shining Our Light

Any absence or lack of connectedness has more to do with the adult parents and caregivers than with the child herself. It is precisely because the caregivers are not emotionally and spiritually equipped to provide what the child needs, especially in the sense of being seen, and provided sufficient affection and safety to continue being her True Self, that she begins to experiment with ways of `earning´ or effectuating exactly that. We begin to develop a False Self to have our needs met. Rather than viewing this as a maladaptation, we can recognise in this the innate intelligence of evolution. Coping strategies secure our survival, after all…

Community

Trauma-Informed

The survival strategies and coping mechanisms we develop in those earliest of years become etched on our neurobiology, especially our limbic system. The good news is that discoveries are being made right now, which help us rewire the brain and retrain the body such that we can heal from the wounds of the past. It is often a case of learning the three-step process of regulate, relate, and reason. An unregulated body cannot successfully engage in the subsequent steps. The inability to relate, both in inner discourse and with those around us, will keep us beyond the range of sound reasoning…

Business Performance

On Setbacks

My translation of the statement; to supply me with prestige, security, and the like… into the trauma-informed language of the 21st century would draw attention to every child’s needs for ample acknowledgement, attention, affection, and an ongoing felt sense of safety. For those of us who came up short in any of these areas, our Inner Child may, even decades later, continue to attempt to draw our attention to the necessity of healing the woundedness, the childhood trauma. Until these cries for help are heeded and acted upon, we will remain in bondage to impulsive, somatically driven reactions, the coping patterns of the helpless child. This is a form of mental gridlock.

Community

Living On Purpose

Imagine reaching the end of your life and realizing that the person you became was not the person you could have been. Not because you lacked talent, intelligence, or opportunities. Not because life was unfair, but rather because you had spent decades being driven by forces you could not see, chasing goals that were never truly yours in the first place, diligently sitting in the orchestra, following the baton of the conductor, playing a symphony you have never truly comprehended, playing a tune that is not your own. Many great teachers have pointed out the necessity of carving out our own unique path in life, not following a path that has already been trodden…

Leadership

Parents

My paternal grandfather died long before I was born, when my father was a boy of 14. The fact that my dad died when I was a boy of 16 would appear to be the flip side of that coin of synchronicity. He was in his 52nd year and struck me, then, as being a very old man. The luxury of the blessing of enjoying an adult-to-adult relationship with both my daughter and son is something I consciously cherish. Again, through stories and hearsay, I conclude that my paternal grandfather was not emotionally available to his eleven children, of which my father was the second youngest…

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