10 Ways to Evolve Your Inner Uptightness
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10 Ways to Evolve Your Inner Uptightness

10 Ways to Evolve Your Inner Uptightness

 

Stop
So much of what we do is on automatic. Our motives are often predictable–patterns we keep engaging without any real thought. What outcome or experience do you want this year that you’ve not yet had in this lifetime? Patterns are great if you’re designing clothing, but for anything else it’s just old shit that holds you back. So stop … or at least slow it way down. (One of the women interviewed for “The Vagina Monologues,” when asked what kind of sign her would vagina have if it had one, replied: “Sloooow down!”)

Slow love is richer than the train on which we find ourselves. You know what I mean, the train that leaves the behavioral station, taking all your choices off the table. No one is going to stop you–you’ve got a destination. But, honey, you’ve been to that place before. Nirvana, bliss and peace live in new places. I suggest you pack all your boxes (behaviors, thoughts and structures that don’t work for you) and put them on that train. Then you walk in a different direction.

Giveaway
In the Native American tradition we have a ceremony called a Giveaway. You take something personal to you, something that you care about, and give it to someone you love as a way to honor and thank them for being in your life. You can also purchase something you know they need, and give it from love. One of the greatest gifts we can give others is our time.

Give yourself away. Some ideas: volunteer to hold a premature baby, wash and comb the hair of the elderly, sit and listen to the elders’ stories (so rich they are), walk and stroke an animal at a shelter, build a home, dig a well, babysit for an overworked family, hang out with the dying; you get it. A giveaway is one of the most self-loving things you can do. Yes, self-loving. You are not just giving away your time; you are giving your heart and your love. What you get back is buckets of compassion and wisdom you can’t get from a retreat or a book. And… take your children! Teach them the gift of giving. Give it away, again and again.

Speak Peace and You Will Become Peaceful
I’m a big proponent of languaging evolution. We do language our reality. What we think influences how we speak and ultimately what we will do. If you change any one of those, the change affects them all. Words have either a resonance or a dissonance. The definition of resonance: the quality in a sound of being deep, full and reverberating. Who doesn’t want to be that!

A resonant language is one that informs you, rather than you using language to inform others. You become the words you speak. You are influenced by the language rather than trying to influence (or, ahem, manipulate). A resonant language is verb-based, or uses nouns as verbs. Verbs in this context are about living in a continuum, not necessarily about action. Begin by swapping resonant words for words that may not bring the resonance you want. For example, instead of using the word “calm,” use the word “peace,” then you will have more of peace. Remember that what you speak is what you will do and who you become. Try “communion” for “meeting.” Opt in to “glorious” for “good.” Identify the “holy” moments in your life. Give grace to others. Contemplate the divinity in yourself and others, and see what words want to fall out of your mouth. I promise, it will be precious.

Stay
I’m a runner.  I say am vs. was because it’s a practice every time. When I get hurt, I become afraid and then I get angry. Rather than dealing with my anger and hurt and confronting the situation, I run away and do the blame game. Because I’m good with words, I am very convincing about the justification to run. Then the day came when my teacher and coaching mentor Henry Kimsey House and his wife Karen Kimsey House challenged me to stay.

Now I say to you: stay with the pain, the discomfort, the awkwardness of it. Stay with the emotions of the very thing you want to run away from. Stop making  it about them or the circumstances and stay with you. It’s uncomfortable for sure, but if you learn to stay, you get this huge bonus; it’s called courage. Courage is about softening up and staying with discomfort for the intention of something grander than being right. For me, it was about being devoted to love of the other rather than the fear of  the pain (and the story I made up about the pain). Love compelled me to stay, to stay the hurt away.

Here’s another bonus of staying: it is no longer about confrontation (which makes us all want to run), it’s about solution, it’s about the relationship. Even if you have to leave the relationship, stay in it to honor the completion of it. The final bonus of staying: growing up, maturing, emotional intelligence and transformation. Awesome, right?

Make Love
This is not a metaphor or euphemism; this is about sexual desire and sexuality. Know that you have a body. I’m talking to all you left-brain lizard-heads out there who think your brain is the only thing that matters. You have a body! Get to know it. You are a sexual creature (not just a horny one, a sexual one, I say!), and not only for the pleasure of sex but for the pleasure of making love. They are very different. You will come to know that.

Do something that is emotionally challenging with your body, like hip hop dancing, pole dancing or yoga. Swizzle those hips and stop thinking about it. (Men, I see how you make love to your iPad. Now do that with the love of your life!) Body movement of this kind isn’t a mathematical equation–it’s a point of connection. Trust your body the way you do your brain. This will take practice. Get with your partner and share your delicious swizzle, explore their crevices and make hot monkey love. Oh, and talk dirty! Get help along the way; you’ll need it. I hope the last line was the most uncomfortable.

To everyone else, especially women, look at your body and touch it–all of it. I know, that’s so 1970, but do it anyway and notice the thoughts or emotions that come up for you. Get comfortable with your luscious landscape. Forgive what you’ve done to it. Drop the ego of pride about sculpting it (that is not loving it). Feel the texture of its sensuality. What is its message to you?

Recently I was in the company of several octogenarian women who were commenting on how much they hated their thighs and butts. Really? I thought, is this is my future? Hell to the no! Imagine telling your body over the course of your lifetime that you don’t like it. No. No. No! Not you, my friend. If loving your body is too much of a leap, start with acceptance. See its beauty amidst the cellulite. Go get a vibrator and find out what makes you scream and giggle. That’s right, give yourself some pleasure, then share it with your partner.

Get nasty. Lingerie (for boys: colorful bun-hugging underwear) that says Oh no you don’t! but you do anyway. That is where I suggest you go. Please stop wearing clothing that hides you. I’m not asking you to look like you live on the Vegas strip; I’m asking you to encase your body with clothing that is as sensual as you’re starting to feel. Move your body and feel the joy it wants you to experience in that movement. You are one hot mama/daddy. Umm hmm.

Forgive
I know, I know, you’ve heard it a million times. Hear it again. It cannot be overstated. Here’s the skinny on forgiveness: It’s not about anyone not being accountable; they are just not accountable to you. Yep, you got to let that piece, that they owe you anything, go. Piece for peace, my friend. If you hold on to that, you stay tethered to the painful event. You literally ask for the re-wounding to continue. Yuck! “For you I give release” might be a helpful phrase. Stay with yourself to let go of the event. It’s a holy thing to be free. It’s where peace lives.

Dance, Laugh, Sing
Now I’m in the 80s. Hang out with me. We just don’t dance enough. I see you walking calmly with your iPod in your ears: girrlll, shake that groove thing! Love, don’t you worry one bit about what we think. We’re thinking, Wish I felt confident enough to do that. Sometimes is sounds silly, but the truth is translated in the love section above. Your body was meant to move and bounce in glorious jubilation. There is no better way to make love, open up forgiveness, give it all away, etc, than moving those hips! I tell you what, you start to shake it and everything breaks wide open. And while you’re at it, go ahead and sing. Oh, you’ll be off-key for sure. You’ll make us giggle and wonder again if we have the courage.

One day my husband was mowing the lawn with his iPod firmly in his ears and I watched his mouth move. He looked so peaceful and happy at the same time. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing; he’s not the type to talk to himself. Later that day I asked, “So what were you doing out there?” He pretended not to hear me. (Dude, we’ve been married 10 years; that’s not going to work.) I persisted, “So what where you doing out there?” Shyly, he responded, “Singing.” I ran and hugged him. He was so darn adorable when he sang that it melted me. I hope he continues.

Life is fucking funny. Bellylaugh, snorting-out-loud, I-need-to-wear-a-pantyliner funny. I hope you laugh a lot this year. Finding the humor in life releases you into the zone of the sublime. Watch comedies, go out with friends, recall embarrassing incidents and post or share them. Laugh when you feel committed to anger. I still chuckle when I pass the guys who work in the produce section of my grocery store. I know they all saw my big brown cellulite butt when I tucked my skirt into my undies. Yes, I did! I live in very small town and that was embarrassing… but also HILARIOUS! Almost as funny as when I was teaching grad students in China how to dance and my Kotex pad fell on the floor. Oh, yes  it did! We laughed and laughed, which totally erased my embarrassment and drew us closer together. They told me that if I could share laughter about that with them, they could share anything with me. In an Asian culture, twenty years ago, that was a huge point of connection! xoxoxo

Wake with the Gods. Sleep with the Angels
You, my love, are a god(dess). You are. You are capable of making it rain on a hot summer day. You may not believe or know or live that, but you are. I’ve seen it happen. In 1996, on Big Mountain Reservation in three-degree weather, Crazy Bull brought rain and hail. A man who believed in his capacity to act on the behalf of the Gods taught us to wake with the Gods and to sleep with the Angels. We are gloriously divine human beings with an immense spiritual capacity.

Waking with the God(dess) means to wake up, look up at the sky and believe you belong right here, right now. You don’t have to do anything else. No need to achieve anything. Feel that heart of yours brimming with delight. Go out and greet the day like you just won the lottery–because you did. You woke up. Gratitude is an awesome approach. Like the Energizer bunny commercials, gratitude just keeps going and going, giving and giving.

Sleep with the Angels. An elder, Pablo Lopez, taught me to go out and speak to the stars, particularly if I’m troubled, and then go to sleep. Ahhh, the Angels are working their brilliance inside of you as you rest. Do you get that? All you have to do–besides believing–is go to sleep. And, of course, wake up. Isn’t this a deliciously simple spiritual practice? Another way I say this: Wake up Joyous.

Go to bed with Gratitude. I like knowing that when you believe something, it becomes so. There is no magic, there is simply a decision: a decision to listen in, to be and do from the internal you instead of the you that operates from the external. Flip that switch. Since you have free will, stay with the will and dump anything that points to will not.

Do Nothing.
No, you don’t know. Don’t tell me you know because this is not a knowing thing, it’s a being done with knowing thing. In the Native American tradition, one of the ways we do nothing is to “go on the hill,” i.e. vision quest. The only object is not to have one. It’s time to be alone, to power down and be with the earth and the Creator.

Doing nothing might be a challenge for you. That’s good, as this is a blog on evolution. Evolving requires shedding and ripping off that old skin to allow for fresh new skin. That might take more vulnerability than you’re comfortable experiencing. Doing nothing, like spirituality, isn’t negotiable. No journaling, no TV, no reading, nothing. Okay, you can pray, but nothing else. Just be. Definitely no thinking. No-thing will be an obstacle to your being. No thing. No thing. No thing.

Guilt-Free Living – Once and For All
Guilt is a moral or ethical indicator; the rest is you being uncomfortable with saying no. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and you can evolve and become comfortable enough with yourself to say no without flinching. It’s a practice. Practice.

Who loves you, baby?!
I do.
xo,
Melanie

A Winter's Cabin
The Happy Pessimist
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