For me connection continues to be a journey of learning about myself, becoming grounded in myself, honouring my intuition and getting curious about others. When there is a balance of energy, between self & other it can create a tangible shift in the depth of connection.

Connection is about embracing a different model for being and doing, that brings awareness to three main areas;Self (My World), Other  (Your World), and the Relationship itself (Our World). The most common example I see, is that people avoid connection because  it can be scary and show us aspects of ourselves we may not be ready to own.

There is a burning desire / need within me that for the most part is going unmet. I apologize in advance, this might be a bit of an honest rant. The deal is, that I am totally human and perfectly imperfect. For example, in regards to this Blog post, my inner critic had a bit of a field day. Write it , don't write it. You are a hypocrite if you write that. You won't be teaching anything, it's just a rant. Back and forth. 

Life can be messy and in those wonderful situations that life presents us there are always gifts that eventually present themselves. Your rocks, are those things that keep you anchored when things are tough. Your rocks are the things. you absolutely believe in, that can sometimes keep you stuck. Your rocks can represent your core needs.

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.