Whether you feel miserable, are crawling out of your skin, can’t get out of your own way, your brain feels like scrambled eggs, or your heart weighs a million pounds, you are probably seeking relief from your emotional pain. I certainly can help you with that.

But whatever your reason for reaching out, my goal for you is far greater than relief from pain.

 

You Can Have a Great Life

What I want is for you to have a great life of confidence, creativity, productivity, abundance, connection, and joy.

Now I know that some of you might hear that and immediately roll your eyes with skepticism.

Yeah, right, you think, me, have a great life?

You might find yourself at a place in your life where things are going so badly that having a great life is the furthest thing from your mind and ending your pain may be all you can think about.

It might be hard for you to imagine that having a spectacular life is even possible. You might be so mired in self-hatred that you just can’t believe that you could ever feel, do, or be anything different than what you have always been.

But is that really true? Does it have to be that way?

I know it doesn’t have to be true. I know you can have a wonderful life. I know it is possible because of my own life. Twenty-five years ago, I was completely lost. I’d ruined a fourteen-year marriage and a successful career in the music business and I had no idea how to fix what I’d broken. Today, because I’ve employed the principles I’m about to describe to you, I have a wonderful life, which I am so grateful for. I’m blessed to have meaningful work helping others. I have a PhD and am a published author. I have a passionate twenty-year marriage with a terrific woman and two wonderful children. At sixty-two years of age, I am healthy, energetic, and am in the best shape of my life. Now my mission is to help people like you achieve your greatest dreams and live your great life.

 

Love, Heart, and Your True Self

One thing that may be getting in the way of you accepting this idea is what you think I mean when I say you can have a great life. It doesn’t mean you have to fit into some stereotypical vision of greatness. To the contrary, having a spectacular life means not having a life like anybody else. What it means is that you have to be your true self.

If having a spectacular life means being your true self, who would that be, exactly? Though we each have a singular destiny, everything that we can and should be can be summed up in one word: love.

What do I mean by love? Love means opening your heart fully and putting the full measure of your heart into everything you do.

Now we have another word we need to understand: heart. What is the heart? The heart is the home of empathy, compassion, strength, courage, passion, imagination, and wisdom. Put those together and the heart is the home of love.

 

Have you read enough? Are you seeking psychotherapy, couples counseling, mentorship, or coaching?

CONTACT ME NOW FOR A FREE CONSULTATION.

Want to learn more? Read on . . .

 

The Lost Heart and Shame

We all have heart – that is, we all have the talent for love, but not only is this talent rarely developed to become a reliable skill, it is almost always limited, or crippled, by the circumstances of our life. When we are hurt as we grow up, many of us put a wall around our hearts and this lessens our energy, clarity, and our willingness to give of ourselves completely, which ends up limiting our ability to love. Though we believe this wall around our heart protects us, in the end it leads to suffering.

We close off our hearts to protect ourselves, mostly, from the pain of shame, where shame is the feeling that goes along with the belief that in some way we don’t measure up as human beings. This shame was forged in our upbringing, when we didn’t get all of our emotional needs met by the most important people in our lives. Our fear is that any humiliation in the present will be unbearable, because it will bring us in touch with our deep, historical, reservoir of shame.

When we imagine the threat of shame, our body responds as if it is in danger. We become anxious. We don’t like this uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, so we do all we can to avoid any situation that might result in this bad feeling. We believe we are protecting ourselves, but we don’t realize that the cost is that we end up shrinking our lives. We end up hating ourselves even more deeply for our lack of courage, strength, and connection.

We can become so closed off that we end up losing touch with who we really are and not even recognize what has happened.

An ancient Chinese philosopher named Mencius (MEN – shuhs), a sage many consider to be the wisest to have ever lived, whose words were studied by every Chinese student for over 1000 years, spoke to this 2500 years ago. He said, “Pity the man who has lost his path and does not follow it, or has lost his heart and does not go out and recover it. When people’s dogs and chicks are lost they go out and look for them, but when people’s hearts – or original nature – are lost, they do not go out and look for them.”

When we have a lost heart, as Aristotle put it, we do not achieve our entelechy, which means that we do not become “that which we are meant to be.” When our heart is lost we can no longer fully love – either ourselves, or anyone, or anything, else.

 

Have you read enough? Are you seeking psychotherapy, couples counseling, mentorship, or coaching?

CONTACT ME NOW FOR A FREE CONSULTATION.

Want to learn more? Read on . . .

 

Self-Cultivation

If we have lost our heart, what can be done?

It was in the next sentence of Mencius’s analect that we find the answer to our big problem. “The principle of self-cultivation consists in nothing but trying to find the lost heart.”

The secret to finding the lost heart, to realizing your true self, ending your unnecessary suffering, and having a great, spectacular life is self-cultivation.

What then, is self-cultivation? What the word cultivation tells us is that this idea came from agriculture. If you cultivated your crops by providing them with the appropriate sunlight, soil, and water, you would be rewarded with abundant, healthy food. If you understood and followed the laws of nature, you’d get good rice and beans.

Mencius came to believe the same about our hearts. In order to become our true self we need to be cultivated. For us to become what we are meant to be, to be able to love fully, we need to be given the appropriate emotional, physical, and spiritual sunlight, soil, and water. Unfortunately, since none of us were cultivated optimally in our upbringing, we need to take this task on for ourselves. Hence, self-cultivation.

What does self-cultivation look like? Self-cultivation means that you do the hard work of consistently developing yourself in mind, body, emotion, imagination, spirit, and relationship.

The first law of self-cultivation is the hardest one for us to accept. As Mencius’s teacher, Confucius, said, you cannot “pull the shoots.” You can’t pull the tender growths to make them grow faster – you’ll just yank them out of the soil. So, the first rule is, self-cultivation takes time and effort. In fact, it is the work of a lifetime. Though we might not like to face this fact, it has the advantage of being the truth, and once accepted, it is actually the path of real progress.

If the final result of self-cultivation is the ability to bring our full energy and attention to each moment of our lives, then it begins with practicing and applying this skill of open-hearted commitment to the great task of finding our lost heart itself, through the cultivation of every dimension of our being. Our first act of love must be toward ourselves.

The first aspect of ourselves to cultivate is the body.

Cultivating our body begins with what we put in it. The better and more properly balanced the food we eat, the more likely it is that our body will be healthy and strong for a lifetime, that we will have the energy to achieve everything we want, that our mind will be clear and focused, and that our mood will be good and consistent. It is also important that we drink lots of good water, breathe fresh air, get sufficient rest, and exercise.

Since no one gets all the essential nutrients that we need from the food we eat, and given that each one of us has a unique genetic blueprint, getting the proper supplement support can optimize the functioning of our brain and body. With the tools available in my Brain Health Coaching program, it is possible to understand a great deal about our genes and our bio-individuality, and develop a supplement program to help balance our nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and hormones.

The next aspect of ourselves to cultivate is our emotions.

In order to cultivate and expand our emotional life, we need to learn how to be aware of the full range of our feelings. We do this by bringing our conscious intention and focus to what we feel.

We also need to learn how to tolerate our emotions. If we can learn how to recognize and name our feelings, and allow ourselves to simply have them, our lives become enriched, deepened, and full of color. Only then can we make wise decisions, as emotions give the objects and experiences of our lives value.

 

Another aspect of self-cultivation is the development of our thinking mind.

Devoting ourselves to a lifetime of learning is key to self-cultivation. Studying the works of the champions of love – the sages, mystics, philosophers, and artists – our great forbears who traveled the adventure of finding the lost heart, can teach us, inspire us, and keep us straight on the path. As the Delphic Oracle said, “Know Thyself.” We need our intellect as much as our emotions to understand ourselves and what makes us tick.

It is also important to develop our thinking mind because we’re all a little crazy. We all think things about ourselves and the world that aren’t true! Expanding our thoughts and beliefs, and opening our minds is central to changing our lives.

To realize our full potential, it is extremely important that we cultivate our imaginations.

Human beings are the only creatures that can imagine what doesn’t exist. It allows us to envision what we can be, but are not yet. Certainly, there are external realities over which we have no control. But all of the great wisdom seekers tell us that the power of mind used creatively to imagine the life we want has a powerful influence on what we manifest.

In addition, when we are creative, which is the imagination at play, making something out of nothing, we are replicating the process of the evolving universe, which is, in its essence, an act of creation. When we create with love and devotion, it is a form of prayer, through which we come into alignment and harmony with the meaning and purpose of the universe. My Artist’s Mentor Program, is for those of you who are already artists and want greater artistic achievement, and for those of you who aspire to develop your creativity.

This brings us to the spiritual aspect of self-cultivation.

It is when we put the good of something beyond ourselves ahead of ourselves that we develop the deepest part of ourselves and find our lost hearts. By surrendering our willfulness and becoming willing to devote ourselves to living in harmony with universal law, we realize our full nature.

This brings us to the relationship skills that we develop as part of our self-cultivation.

This is what we work on in my Relationship Counseling program. The deepest and most sacred expression of our heart is through our intimate relationships. Having a deeply loving, intimate relationship requires making a commitment to being authentic, vulnerable, and present with our loved one. It means treating the other with as much value as we treat ourselves. We need to learn how to attune ourselves emotionally to our partner in order to foster a deep emotional connection. We need to be able to learn deep listening in order to cultivate our compassion and empathy for our partners. We need to devote ourselves to having a positive, mutually supportive day-to-day relationship, where we prioritize creating an environment of harmony in our homes. We need to risk being open and honest and learn to express ourselves in ways that can be heard. We need to be willing to change ourselves radically in order to help give our partners what they need so they can find their lost hearts, too.

Finally, self-cultivation involves developing our ability to experience pleasure and joy.

You’ve got to have some fun in life to be your true self! There are many pathways to pleasure, but one of the greatest, that involves the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual, and provides one of our best opportunities for opening our hearts fully, is to have deeply loving sex.

 

Have you read enough? Are you seeking psychotherapy, couples counseling, mentorship, or coaching?

CONTACT ME NOW FOR A FREE CONSULTATION.

Want to learn more? Read on . . .

 

Living in Alignment with Universal Law: Purpose

As Goethe said, when we commit ourselves to something the universe cooperates with us. The basis of universal law is love, so when we fully love, we are living in alignment with universal law, and the universe gives us everything we need to live the life we are meant to live, to be our true selves, and to have a great, spectacular life.

When we find our heart we love and care for those around us in an ever-widening circle of connection. We move from our self-centered view that the universe is a part of us and we end by recognizing that we are an inextricable part of a cosmic whole. Then we realize that to give of ourselves in service, to live for a purpose that transcends our selfish desires, and to work to make the world a better place, are the best things we can do for ourselves. When we reach this point, we connect to the infinite energy that is embedded in every atom of the universe and we become imbued with this power, which Mencius called the “flood-like ch’i.”

If enough of us live our lives with a devotion to love, we can tip the scales, and we can make this world we live in, which is in grave danger right now, a little more good than bad. And so, this adventure of finding your lost heart, with all of the confidence, courage, creativity, abundance, connection, and joy this will bring, is not only essential for your own existence, but it is vital for the sake of the world.

 

Accepting Help

In order to fully love we must heal and transcend our woundedness, that is, we must find our lost heart. We find our hearts through a devotion to self-cultivation – lovingly nourishing and nurturing all aspects of our being – our heart, mind, body, and spirit. We are aided in this quest by seeking and accepting all the help we can get.

How can I help you with this? First, I’ve done a good amount of work on finding my own lost heart. That makes it possible for me to do my work with open-hearted love and devotion. I start by doing everything I can to make you feel safe and seen. I treat you like the unique individual you are, and combine timeless wisdom, the best therapy techniques, cutting edge science, and modern technology to give you exactly what you need to help you achieve your biggest dreams. But most of all, what I offer is an authentic human relationship where I see the best in you, I enter your world and see it through your eyes, listen with undivided attention, and provide you with honest feedback, great information, and guidance that comes from a lifetime of experience and practice.

When you find your lost heart you will come to know that everyone and everything around us is love. And through that revelation you will know from your heart that you are a vital, essential participant in this beautiful, epic story of the entire cosmos becoming love and that there is nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to fear. By opening your heart fully, and giving all of yourself in everything you do, by living in, and through, that love, you will realize your true self, and live the great, spectacular life that is your birthright and promise.

Come on this great adventure of finding the lost heart, and being a champion for love. If there is any way that I can help, please feel free to reach out.