Alisa Garber

Traditionally, children often follow in their parents’ footsteps and go into the family business. Lawyers beget lawyers. Store owners beget store owners. Even actors beget actors. This works well enough when the children are gifted in these areas. And not so well when they are not. Can you see the Sinatra kids as I write this?

Being a homemaker is following in the family business.

I have noticed that following in the family business even extends to homemaking. I coach many talented stay at home mothers who once had careers. They were in law, medicine, business, sales and financing. They are now in the world of homemaking and motherhood with a strident determination to do it as well as their mothers once did.

Homemaking is literally, the family business. And I continually watch my talented, intelligent and lovely clients beat themselves up when they compare themselves to their mothers. They have chosen to follow in the family business and expect to be perfect at it regardless of their talent, skill or even interest in it.

Oh how that makes me cringe. I just sink inside as I see them diminish themselves. I ache for them. So in honor of Mother’s Day, I want to share something I learned from my mother.

Your worth and lovability are not dependent on how good you do anything.

Just like any activity, homemaking requires some talent and a lot of skills. Not being brilliant at it is no reflection of your worth or lovability. My mother was not a great homemaker and I still loved her. She felt inadequate because she couldn’t organize a house like her own mother did. It didn’t seem to matter that she was her own person. She was not cut out to follow in the family business. She wanted to entertain. And she did. She was a wonderful singer, a great TV host and a pioneer as a working mother. Still, her failure as a homemaker bothered her.

But did it matter to me that she couldn’t really cook or clean or organize the perfect family? Not for one second. What did I care about? I cared about her. She was warm, fun and full of life. Her happiness was what I cared about. And watching her fret about herself because of the stupid laundry made me sad.

Our culture pressures women.

I see this cultural pressure on women to be perfect happy homemakers regardless of their inclinations as another way that women are demeaned in our culture. Watch TV for one day and look at those commercials. Women are cleaning everything. The only man who even comes close to a vacuum cleaner is the man who builds them! The messages are clear: Real women clean bathrooms until they shine like a diamond. If you don’t then there is something wrong with you.

Rethink what really matters in the scheme of things.

If you are relating to this, do yourself a big favor. Rethink your perspective. Reflect on what really matters to you and to your family. Your worth and self-esteem are not dependent on how well you fold the laundry or even if you do it at all.

Become your own person.

Imagine separating yourself from the looming specter of your mother and commit to becoming your own person. Be the one in your family to break this burdensome cycle of the family business and not pass it on to your own daughters.

Burn your bras!

When I was a teenager, we symbolically took off our bras and burned them. Okay, so I won’t be doing that any time soon. But find your own way to symbolically liberate yourself from the invisible bonds of your family business. Do something to break the cultural trance we are being conditioned to regarding what it means to be a good wife, mother and homemaker. Decide for yourself what matters to you and focus on that. You are worthy now. You are wonderful now. You deserve to be happy now dirty dishes and all.

Get out that kerosene. I feel a bra burnin’ coming on! Yee Haa!

What would it be like to live my life without that ego pressure of trying to prove that I matter? I can feel it now as I write this. There is a pressure within my solar plexus that doesn’t feel good. I mean it is more like pain than pleasure.

“I must perform. I must deliver. I must behave a certain way. I must succeed. I must eat a certain way. I must look a certain way. I must behave a certain way. Oh, and by the way, that certain way must be the right way.”

It’s All in My Head

From my reading of A New Earth and from the classes on Oprah.com, I am starting to understand that this incessant pressure is the voice of my ego mind. My teacher Leonard Shaw MSW calls it the “little mind.”

I am intrigued by the idea of living differently. What would it be like to live without that pressure? What would a day look like? As I write this, I am sitting in my bed at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. I am wearing my pajamas. Is that what life would be like without ego pressure? Would I become a loser?

“I Not Matter – I Spirit”

Our ego mind lives to keep itself alive and strong. It has questions like “Am I worthy? Do I matter?” In the space of being that Eckhart Tolle and other spiritual teachers point to, that is a non-question. Worth does not even arise. It dissolves in that space because it is a concept that does not exist there. In the space of being or spirit, our worth is not an issue. From the perspective of being, there is no such thing as worth, there is only being.

I don’t know how to explain it except with this story. When people perceived the world as flat, the burning question was what the world sat on. They speculated that it must sit on the back of a gigantic tortoise. But what did the tortoise stand on? It must be an enormous pillar of elephants, one on top of the other until it reached something solid.

When people realized the earth was round, their perspective shifted entirely and the question of what the world sat on dissolved. And so it is with my question of worth. From the perspective of ego, that is a valid question. And I answer it with my performance, my status, my earning ability, my relationships and talents.

But when I realize that these things are all ego and that I am not my ego, my question of worth dissolves. I am left living from the ground of being rather than from the need to prove myself. As Tarzan might say to Jane: “I Not Matter. I Spirit.”

Is There Life After Ego?

I, however only understand this from a conceptual level. Except that I have had moments when I have experienced it too. Still, I am left with the wonder of what my Sundays will look like if I can manage to live more fully in the present and not be driven by my ego.

Can I still have pancakes for breakfast? MMMMMM Donuts!

Does your life ever feel like a struggle? You know, the way you might feel if you were caught in a riptide. The more you splash and gyrate, the more caught you become? Lifeguards tell us that when we get caught in an undertow, the best strategy for success is to just let go and relax. Eventually, the force will swish us around and release us. This is truly a place of surrender and acceptance.

Stop Struggling Against the Tide

Being in a place of transition like I am currently feels like I am in a watery whirlpool. With so much undecided, changing and in flux, I can hardly figure out which way is up. I like to think of life’s challenges are opportunities for learning and growth. You probably know this about me by now. And the message that seems clearer and clearer of late is the paradox of how there is power in letting go and allowing life to be what it is. It is more about surrender and acceptance when you are hoping for change instead of fighting and controlling.

Eckhart Tolle Calls it Being Present

In A New Earth, Tolle writes about how to be present. I really like the way he describes how the content of our life, including our thoughts and feelings exists on the horizontal plane. But there is also a vertical plane. This is the plane of Being. Where the two planes intersect, that is the now. This is only a metaphor but it really resonates with me.

Allowing the Now is Learning to Let Go

I have noticed that when I allow myself to be at that centre point, I stop struggling against the horizontal events of my life. Instead, I just allow them knowing that “this too shall pass.” Everything on the horizontal plane is temporary. But the vertical plane is eternal. It is the ground of all being. It is the space from which all things arise. It is a very full and rich place even though it is described in Buddhism as emptiness.

Being Present is Also the Law of Allowing

When we stop resisting life and allow it to be what it is, we are also aligning ourselves with the Law of Allowing. When there is no resistance, energy can flow. Instead of being stuck struggling in the undertow, we bob around and end up somewhere else. We move merrily down the stream instead of fighting against it.

Where Can You Let Go?

I know that not everyone is in such flux as me. But I bet there is some area of your life where learning to be present, non-resistant and accepting could really make a difference to you. Give it a try. I think you will be surprised how acceptance ends up being the first step in changing and that the change flows more easily when we let go of fighting against life. Life is really just too big an opponent. And paradoxically, acceptance ends up being more powerful than the fight.

I just love watching House and Garden Television. I decided that it appeals to a lot of my values. Number one is transformation. I just love watching transformations in homes, in people, in Oprah’s hairdos!

One of my favourite home shows is called Sell This House. The host and designer just look at the mess and in 48 hours create miracles. It is truly awesome in the old sense of the word.

I need an inner transformation

Well that kind of transformation is exactly what I need right now to sell my house. Only it isn’t the bricks and mortar house. I did that work months ago. It is my inner house that needs the transformation.

My first step that I wrote about last week was to take Michael Losier’s advice and write out all the things I was complaining about. This was the “what I don’t want list.” I could not believe how long it was. It was all the clutter and negative thoughts and feelings that have been strewn all around my inner life for quite a while. Tough feelings about my spouse were top of the list!

I am stuck because I’m not ready to let go

The negative list was easy. I am totally stuck on cleaning it up. I’ve been resisting the hard mental discipline of sorting and transforming the negative to “what I do want.” And it goes back to me not really knowing what I want.

Actually, when I am truly honest with myself, I think I do know what I want. I want it all to be different. I liked being married and right now I don’t see me wanting to do that again. The ending was so painful. And so I am truly depressed because I don’t see myself every deciding to have something I actually want: to be married. It’s a little convoluted I know.

I am not ready to move on

I really don’t I think I am ready to move on. Even though I am marching like a real trooper through the boot camp of getting a divorce, I am on automatic pilot. It’s all mechanical. And I am resentful that he seems to have all the power.

He wants out.

End of marriage.

But what about me?

Ice cream and corn chips aren’t working

The Sell This House team needs to set up shop in my emotional home and do some sorting and cleaning. At the moment, I don’t feel capable of doing it myself. I’ve been trying ice cream and blue corn chips. They aren’t working.

Time to go back to my theme for the year. Surrender. Let it be what it is and allow it to change organically, like the weather. Here’s hoping for a quick change in the weather. Right now I understand it’s planning to stay cold until the middle of April. Bummer.

I was listening to one of my Michael Losier tapes this morning and I got both excited and depressed. I have noticed that my mood has been really low the last couple of weeks. Is it that the cold and snow are getting to me? That fact that my car is buried under 4 feet of snow AGAIN! Is that really such a problem? Normally, I am not one to let the weather impact my moods. Law of Attraction theory proposes that I do my best to feel a little bit better about the things that bring me down.The real reason I got depressed this morning was that I was listening to people who were having great success applying the Law of Attraction in their lives and I was comparing myself to them. That comparison is a little trick the ego likes to play. The participants on this call were really working the Law of Attraction program. And I was thinking that somehow, I had fallen off the wagon of late.

They were getting really focused on what they wanted and staying that way. I still feel like a great big question mark. The participants were also very skilled at “letting the universe” figure it out.

OOOOOH! I just love when I hear people talk about that. I even did my Master’s Thesis on the Art of Spiritual Surrender. I may have told you that already. And I guess I researched and wrote about it because I really want to live that way. But I don’t. I am really addicted to trying to figure it out myself. It makes me feel so powerful when I do that. (Another little ego trick.)

The problem with being the big question mark right now is that I can’t figure it all out. Still, I spend hours sorting through thoughts of should I buy a condo, a loft, rent in a co-op, find a house with an apartment? I just love to worry and ponder and research and make myself crazy changing my mind. And it is really a bummer, man! I’ve become a downer!

Today, I stop. Yes, I am committing this to all of you. Today I stop trying to figure it out. Instead, I am going to do what they say at Alcoholics Anonymous: Do the do things.

My separation agreement is signed so the next thing to do is sell the marital house. I am going to sit down and apply my LOA tools.

1. List what I don’t want.
2. Change it to what I do want.
3. Create a desire statement.
4. Let it happen by focusing on how great I’ll feel when it sells.
5. Let the universe figure it out.

How about you? Is there something in your life today that you are trying hard to figure out? Try letting go and see what happens. Stay focused on the outcome that you want. This might even be fun.

Oprah’s Book Club is reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I wanted to feel included in this world-wide event so I too am reading it. My friends are saying that it is a tough read, that perhaps his writing is a little dense or difficult. That may be true, and I think it is a tough read also because the topic is difficult. Tolle has drawn on some of the world’s most important mystical traditions to explain who we really are and what they see is our True Nature.

Other’s experiences are our teachers.

The mystical traditions are based on the experiences of people who have transcended the material realm to connect with the spiritual. Some did it after years of diligent meditation and other practices. Some just woke up that way. Others, like Saul who became Paul on the road to Damascus had a conversion experience that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Our True Nature is something magnificent and mysterious

I studied these masters and these traditions in University and I can tell you that the content is tough going because it challenges every traditional sense of reality that we have. It encourages us to see our self as someone who only HAS a mind, a body, and emotions and not someone who IS our mind, body and emotions. We are, by these traditions something much more magnificent and mysterious. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.

The Hippies were talking about these ideas decades ago

The spiritual ideas really resonate with me. After all, I was a Flower Child in my youth. I studied the Eastern philosophies, experimented with mind-altering drugs and well, you know, went to a lot of rock concerts.

My teen-aged experiences were profound. They formed me. I have meditated for over 30 years and studied spiritual philosophy in earnest. I have even had my own precious and private experiences of God.

Your black and white world will magically become color

So, I want to encourage you who are reading A New Earth to keep going. It will challenge your very being to its core. And that is the purpose. It wants to shake you up, like a salt shaker. It wants to unscrew your top, tip you upside down and pour you out. If you let it, you will be greatly rewarded with what you find there in the emptiness. You will realize that before, you were living in black and white, and now you have awoken to a world of living color. And it really is magnificent.

Do you know this woman? Each day, she creates the time and space to take care of herself - first. Yes, first. You probably don’t know her because she’s rare. Most women put themselves last when it comes to caring. Often, we are not even in the picture; somehow, we just forget about ourselves entirely. Indeed, self-care ranks low as a form of caring because most woman think it’s too much work, or it’s selfish, or impractical. Yet without self-care, we risk having unhappy lives. We lack energy and passion. And most importantly, we are emotionally unavailable to care for others.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated

I didn’t always know what self-care meant. I assumed it was complicated and costly, like a trip to Paris every spring. Then my life coach told me about an idea she called “five small nurturances.” For example, she might cut a small flower from her garden every few days to put into a bud vase on her desk. She coached me to start nurturing myself also. For instance, I used to take a book and sit by the lake for a few hours at least once a week. I took some fresh cut fruit with me and a bottle of cold spring water. That added up to three small nurturances all at once. It felt like a mini vacation actually.

Start With a Nurturing List

I started by making a list. You could do this too if you wanted. Your list might include playing music you love while you’re cooking, or aromatherapy in your shower. How about buying those fresh cut flowers that you’ve been meaning to get for a while? Any five small nurturances a day that you choose will reduce stress and add a sense of pleasure to your life. They really make self-care simple and easy.

Selfishness is Underrated

Now, I can guess what you are thinking right now. Isn’t this selfish? And when do I find the time? Arguments against self-care are major mental blocks for women. These arguments are ways we continue to deny ourselves. True, self-care is a personal commitment. In that way, it is selfish to a point. And what is wrong with that? Actually, self-care has a positive effect on others. For example, I find that my mood improves when I practice self-care. My clients find they are more productive, effective, loving and happier when they practice self-care.

The Trick is to Act As If

You can dissolve your mental blocks by deciding to behave differently. When you take self-caring actions, you are replacing old negative ideas with new, nurturing ideas. Therapists call this “acting as if.” Act as if you really care about yourself in these small ways and your feelings will follow suit. Nurturing yourself will become second nature. Self-care builds right into your life. It doesn’t take time away from your life; rather, it enhances your life. It really supports you in doing and being all you want. Rather than building mental blocks, why not build a strong, nurturing, personal foundation of self-care instead.

Self-care Turns Out To Be an Unselfish Act

Bottom line, self-care is really a very unselfish act. When you are on empty, when your energy is low, your life overly complicated with too much on your plate, you really can’t make much of a difference in the world, not to yourself, your career, or your special commitments. Moreover, self-care means having a healthy relationship to yourself. You can be an important model for the next generation. Always ask yourself this: “If I had a daughter, would I want her to live as I do?” Self-care forms the foundation for all your relationships, for unless you are caring for yourself in tangible ways, you really are not available to care freely for others. All caring starts with self-care just as all loving starts with self-love. Caring for yourself makes your energy more present in the world. That is when you can make a difference in the lives of others. So experiment. Practice self-care, just five small nurturances a day, and see how the results compound over time.

Last night I learned that Copenhagen ranks number one as the happiest country in the world. It’s citizens were adamant that happiness was not about money or even affluence. The key, they said, was to be happy with what you have even while you are pursuing something better. The key is to be happy with what you have.

Research in the area of positive psychology agrees with the Danes. Being happy with what you have is indeed the trick to contentment. And it is indeed tricky because so many people have so little. Many don’t even have a sense of security that they are safe. Others who have a lot are not satisfied. It can be so confusing.

Try looking with spiritual eyes.

It is all too common for people to pursue happiness by looking at the material realm of their lives. What if we look elsewhere, to the spiritual realm? In the Christian Bible, there is a saying that can help us to understand why it is so important to be satisfied with what you have even as you strive for more. To paraphrase, it says “to those who have, it is given; to those who don’t have; even what they have will be taken away.” That doesn’t sound fair does it?

It’s the Law of Attraction at work.

In Law of Attraction, it isn’t about fairness; it’s about law. Remember, the Law of Attraction matches or draws to you things, situations, even thoughts that vibrate at the same frequency you are emitting. So, if you focus on what you already have, no matter how meager or grand, and you find ways to feel grateful and appreciative for it, you will attract more to be grateful and appreciative for. When you focus on what you don’t have and feel the negative emotion around lack, you attract more lack.

So let’s rewrite that biblical statement. “For those who focus in gratitude for what they have, more will be given. For those who focus with resentment on what they don’t have, even what little they have will be taken away.”

This principle is law. It works for everyone. The Danes were grateful for what they already had. This was the basis for their happiness and more happiness was drawn to them.

Try it.

If you want to raise your happiness ranking, keep working on your gratitude skill. Look around you right now and practice feeling grateful for something you see, have, feel, and do? Make a game by finding the smallest of things or the things you take for granted, like your ability to go on line and read this. You will begin to feel your inner happiness grow with every moment you appreciate what you have now in your life.

What happens when the goal coach (me) doesn’t have any goals? I spend my working day guiding people to get clear on what they want to do, be or have and then I support them in staying focused, diligent, and accountable for doing, being, and having it.

It is hugely important for me to stay in integrity with my purpose. So what does a goal coach do when she is going through such a strange transitional time for herself, a time when the idea of setting goals is so overwhelming she just wants to eat Frozen Tofutti with Grapenuts and watch HGTV all day!

I simply don’t know what I want! Do I want to keep coaching? Do I want to write? Do I want to get a job at Starbucks and read books for the rest of my life? Where do I want to live? Does any of this feel good or right? Virginia, is there a Santa Claus?

Not Knowing What You Want is Normal When You are Newly Separated

Of course, this no woman’s land that I am in is pretty normal for the newly separated. At least that is what everyone tells me. However, and there is a big but coming, I pretty much felt this way before I was married. I don’t think the pending divorce has anything to do with it. It just triggered a state that was lurking in the shadows all along.

Not Knowing What You Want Might Be Something From the Past

My therapist remarked that I was just one big question mark. That made me laugh. That is exactly how I feel – like one big question mark. She also thinks it is a throw back to my early adolescence when my parents divorced and I moved to Toronto with my mother. It was a painfully overwhelming experience for me. I tried as best I could to fit in to my high school, to do the sports and music that I loved, to make friends. But I couldn’t get it together. And my mother was so into her own stuff that she couldn’t help.

I was so overwhelmed then, that I just gave up, dropped out and moved out when I was barely sixteen. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But I can’t exactly drop out now and feel good about it. So here are the steps my therapist has suggested I follow.

Try This When You Are Overwhelmed

1. Embrace the question mark. Be okay with not knowing. Not knowing is pure feminine energy. Make friends with it and just don’t make any irreversible decisions like getting a facial tattoo of Bono.

2. Re-parent yourself. Be for yourself what your parents could not be for you. The truth is, I really don’t know what that looks like. My therapist said that parenting in times like that would have meant my mother coming to school and talking to the teachers and guidance counselors to get help. It would have meant finding me places where I could play sports and dance, even have me invite some kids over for pizza and meet them and their parents. Really, is that what parents do?

It’s Never Too Late to Have a Great Childhood

I don’t really know what parenting looks like now that I am an adult, but I did walk myself down to a tennis facility on the Lakeshore the other night to see if maybe I might take some tennis lessons. I didn’t quite make it into the front door but next time I am sure I will.

So here I go - embracing my great big question mark and helping myself to find myself.
Find the Right Perspective, the One That Really Works for You

The big perspective shift here is to get excited about all the possibilities. I mean, not being sure about anything means I could end up anywhere, maybe even in Hawaii next winter walking along the surf and writing the next great novel. I must say, I am somewhat attracted to the idea of a facial tattoo however. A bright red question mark perhaps hugging my left eye and down my cheek! What do you think?

Do you have an overwhelming situation in your life right now that would benefit from a change in perspective? You know it’s a good perspective change if you feel a sense of relief just thinking about it.

Divorce and Self-Care

Until we go through a separation and divorce, I don’t think anyone ever really understands how emotionally painful it is. I certainly didn’t. Even my husband, who initiated the whole thing commented that he felt gutted - like someone had taken a painfully dull knife and unceremoniously ripped out his insides. Yep, I’d say that just about covers it!

How do you deal with an experience like that? There may be millions of handbooks and therapists to guide you, but ultimately, you have to work through it alone. It is really in the darkness of a sleepless night or in the intrusive burst of daylight on a very long and empty Sunday that you are called to manage your sore and bleeding inner self.

It’s About Self-care and Nurturing

At first, it seemed impossibly big to me. But now, as I look over the past several months, I can see a theme emerging. It is the theme of self-care. It is all about learning how to soothe and nurture oneself.

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Yet, it has not been. I think I fell into a trap that a lot of women do, specifically, nurturing everyone else but me. My goodness, just ask my friends how I treated the dog! I was totally invested in making sure all his needs were very well met. “Walk, play, feed, pet, play, feed, cuddle, cuddle, cuddle.” He was a very happy boy!

Feeling Good Needs to Be a Priority

Now I am learning to do that to myself and for myself. “Walk, play, feed, cuddle!” Okay, just kidding. Here’s a better example. I was doing a Law of Attraction all-day training in Ellicottville, New York last week. The initial plans were for me to go down with someone from the group and stay at their Chalet. Sounded nurturing enough. But as will happen when planning with lots of people, things changed, got complicated and I found myself spending a lot of energy managing the whole thing. And I started to feel bad.

My self-care and nurturing focus is on feeling good or even just a little bit better. I learned about that from listening to Abraham-Hicks tapes and from The Secret. Work at feeling better because your emotions are your point of attraction.

I made myself stop and look at the feelings I was having. I then asked myself, “What would help me to feel better?” The answer came in a flash. “Go on your own and book a nice motel for the night.” I immediately felt a sense of relief. So, I did it. And am I ever glad I did. I arrived late, grabbed some food, got under the covers and watched my brothers debut TV show, Eli Stone. I was a happy camper.

Self-Care and Nurturing Helps Heal the Pain of Divorce

Self-care and nurturing is a powerful focus towards healing that inner wound caused by separation and divorce. It is a time when we have to finally get selfish, in the best possible way. We have to get selfish, because no one is coming to save us. We must save ourselves.

Try It

What could you do today that would be nurturing to you? It might be as simple as a quiet time away from people. How much self-nurturing do you do? How would you feel if you spent some time nurturing yourself? How might it spill out and help others?

You don’t need to wait until something “guts” you to practice self-care and nurturing. It is always a good idea to make “feeling good or even just a little better” a priority. It will raise your vibration and help you to reduce your struggles and attract more joy into your life.