As a man, it has been my experience that open and honest communication is something that doesn't come easily for most men. I am very grateful for the many pieces of learning and the experiences, which have allowed me to embrace the idea of being vulnerable and sharing my truth. However, without these skills, I often isolated myself in my thoughts and fears.

Thank you to my friend for inspiring this post! For me personally, Owning Your Voice has been my journey, and at this point on that journey, I am sharing what I have learned. I tend to do so, from a voice that is intended to inspire others. Yet, there is another side to all of this that is very important to acknowledge. Every point of wisdom, was born from an experience and awareness of the opposite. I had a manager once who said to me, "You are exactly where you need to be on your learning journey". 

We are emotional beings, we are sensitive and we have feelings. We have the ability to "feel" a broad range of emotions, that range from shame, guilt and fear all the way to peace, love and joy. Our bodies are like a radio antenna, picking up a signal and sending it to our brain, which then sends a feeling to our body. What we feel and experience can be overwhelming and scary, depending on the situation. It is a natural response to suppress or push away something that feels uncomfortable, unpleasant or unfamiliar. I believe, that our bodies are 100% accurate in the messages they are trying to send us, in regards to our emotions.

Last week, I went to a talk about "Issues  in Adolescence" and as information was being shared, I had this growing awareness / idea. We are emotional beings, yet I don't recall anyone giving me permission to be emotional until I started training as a life coach at the age of 36. Although as I grew up, I do remember being told things like; "don't cry in public" or "don't be angry" or "don't be so loud" or "don't cry" or "be strong" etc etc. As a species, we have evolved very quickly and we still have primal instincts such as fight or flight, which is a response to fear. A dog's response to fear is to growl, which is a natural / necessary response to danger. It is instinctual, for a dog to growl or bark. I think we as human beings, have become disconnected, from our natural emotions and instead of feeling them we are suppressing them, because we don't know what else to do.

I recently took this photo and several days later, I ran into someone who had seen the image on my Facebook profile. They thought that I had taken it from the second floor of a building, that has no second floor, which caused confusion. I actually took the photo while standing on the sidewalk. It's a great example of how our perspective influences our interpretation of a situation. 

Over the last couple months I have been going through a significant transition / transformation. There were times where I became quite stuck in a perspective. The most common perspective for me, was an either or scenario. I find that when emotions and stress are involved, it becomes quite easy to get stuck in the mud. The situation, was either move back to Squamish or stay on Vancouver Island. Very quickly, I would come up with a list of pro's and con's on each side of the problem. Then my mind would cycle through the pro's and con's, trying to solve the problem. This would go on for a number of days until I finally decided to ask for help.

The other day at work an older gentleman came in and had a question. After some discussion it turned out that he had paid a bill that belonged to someone else in his community (who has the same name as him). When he came in he was frustrated by the situation. Through conversation I learned that he had paid the bill even though he doesn't subscribe to that particular service. It took some digging for me to fully understand what he was saying as well as what he was asking. When I finally understood the situation I decided to use humor to ease the situation. I jokingly said, "Wow, how nice of you to have paid someone else's bill". This resulted in some banter back and forth, we laughed at the situation and I gave him some options of how to solve his particular problem. We talked some more and then he got up to leave. As he got up he was smiling and I could see that our dialogue had an impact. There were tears welling up in his eyes. 

I had an interesting experience today at work in regards to anger. I have recently spent some time listening to Panache Desai, and loving what he has to say about our life journey. I first saw him on Oprah Super Soul Sunday and I have also watched a couple of his interviews on YouTube. There are a couple of things that he says that apply to what I am sharing today. Firstly, he says that, "our job is an excuse for which you get to love people."  This has really been a thought in the back of my mind recently. I have worked at Starbucks for many years now and I encounter a broad range of people. My thought is, "Love Everyone".... wow, that might be a stretch. The other piece that Panache speaks of, is embracing our emotions and allowing them to surface, be present to them, feel them, notice them. Our emotions are energy in motion and allowing them to move and to experience them is a good thing.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my Mom and she was sharing with me a situation that was unfolding between her and her Sister. My Mom and her sister have not seen each other face to face in about 44 years and their relationship has been rocky for as long as I can remember. My Mom's sister lives in Holland and my Mom lives here in BC. I won't share with you the actual story, however I will say that as my Mom shared her version of the story, my intuition peaked and I knew that something wasn't adding up. My Mom was quite angry about an email that her sister wrote. I asked my Mom to forward the email which was written in Dutch, so that I could translate it on Google and read it for myself. When I finished reading, I had a completely different perspective of the situation that I shared with my Mom.