Tag Archives: Life School

Habits

Habits

The other day, a writer I follow on Instagram (hellbentonbliss) posted the following quote by author Octavia Butler:

Octavia Butler, October 2005

“Forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

This quote absolutely sang to my soul.

As a person who is in the School of Wisdom, for whom decision-making can be angst-ridden to the nth degree, habit is a godsend. It eliminates the need to deliberately think about every action I take.

We all have basic habits, such as brushing our teeth, or exercising, or walking the dog before breakfast. For me, some of those habits were drilled into me as a child, and I haven’t really thought about them since. Others, such as exercising, are the result of a deliberate choice. Making exercise a habit means I don’t stop and think about whether or not to do it every day. It’s just part of the program.

But I can easily slip into some less-than-helpful habits, too. These aren’t habits that I have deliberately chosen, and practiced until they have become automatic. They are the easy-way-around habits, such as diddling on Facebook rather than painting. Replacing such a ‘lazy/comfort’ habit with something more meaningful requires me to think, choose, act, and repeat. Repeat until that deliberate choice becomes automatic.

Thinking and choosing, taking small steps in the right direction, then taking those steps over and over again, has been helping me create new habits around one of my concerns of long standing: managing my clutter. If clutter is an issue for you, too, master coach extraordinaire Mary McDowall and I have created a unique way to approach your habits as they relate to your stuff—our upcoming KMI Master Mind, Creative Clutter Clearing: 10 C’s to Move You from Chaos to Calm. You can learn more about it here.

This Master Mind can create a life-altering transformation of your relationship with your possessions. It’s supportive, filled with tips and tools, and it’s actually fun. Oh, and there are some impressive early bird goodies if you register by Friday, September 23^rd!

Be Who You Are

Leave a reply

Dr. Seuss Quote

Isn’t this a fabulous quote?

It was a writing prompt in Kathy Kane’s inaugural Purple Ink Cafe Writers’ Circle, and so appropriate for those of us navigating the School of Love!

How can I get more comfortable with being who I am, and saying what I feel?

As I’ve gotten older, this task is a little less daunting than it once was. It’s been a long time coming, but it has finally dawned on me that I’m really not the focus of everyone’s attention. (Older women, by the way, can become virtually invisible—especially once you cross that great divide between ‘miss’ and ‘ma’m’!)

When we are teenagers, we have this self-consciousness that stems from the conviction that everyone is looking at us and judging us. The reality? Everyone else is so busy worrying about what others are thinking of them that they have very little time or energy to notice us.

This can be pretty obvious, too, in general conversations. How often do we really listen to what the other person is saying, right in the present moment, and absorb it? Frequently, we are forming our responses in our heads while the other person is still speaking. We miss the import of what they are saying, because we want to make our point or share our experience.

I get this mental image of two heads facing each other, with a mirror separating them. Each person’s words are bouncing back to the speaker, never penetrating the partition.

If we don’t believe we’re being heard, it’s hard to share our feelings. Feelings, after all, are messy things. Just going inside ourselves and sitting with them can make us feel pretty uncomfortable. Then to have to bring them to the surface and reveal them? Possibly to someone who may deflect them or disagree with them? Not easy.

But this is the curriculum in the School of Love—learning to identify and share our feelings, appropriately and at a proper volume.

Sometimes, we get a bit obsessed about the negative feelings that dwell beneath the surface, and forget that there are a lot of positive things down there as well. School of Love folks have the lifelong challenge of digging down, understanding what’s going on with our emotions, and then expressing them authentically and appropriately.

And when it gets scary, channel Dr. Seuss!

The School of Service

Leave a reply

The School of Service

Do you know someone who absolutely delights in doing things for others? This is the person who plans the family parties, who babysits with a smile, who is the first in line to donate blood or chauffeur the soccer team to their next tournament game. They honestly want to help others achieve their goals and dreams, often providing free advice and resources to help make it happen. When they are asked to do something, their automatic response is ‘yes.’

I have several relatives like this, and they are wonderful people. That said, I worry sometimes about whether they are getting totally stressed out by taking such good care of everyone else. Are their own needs getting sidestepped in favor of everyone else’s?

On the flip side of the coin, do you know someone who demands that everyone else cater to them? There are folks who exude an air of entitlement, who take and take without appreciating (or even seeming to realize) the efforts others are making on their behalf. The dinner menu, the television remote, and division of the household chores are all under this person’s control.

WHORL These two kinds of behaviors embody the extremes of the School of Service. If you have four whorls in your ten fingerprints, this is your school.

The goal of students in the School of Service is to be conscious of the ways in which they want to serve. It is an ability and a willingness to discern and choose genuine, joyful service, without falling into servitude (which breeds resentment and burnout).

In navigating this school, people can fall into the two extremes described above, and suffer their negative effects. In the first instance, if you are constantly giving to everyone else, you may exhaust yourself, begin to feel resentful, and go from joyful, willing service to obligatory, victimizing service. You may also be making unconscious bargains with those you serve—“I’ll do this for you, but you need to come through for me in return.” (This isn’t service, by the way. It’s commerce.)

Any of these scenarios can result in a pendulum swing to the ‘other side’—swearing off being of service because you are tired of others taking advantage of you. You adopt the entitlement posture.

How about you? Do you fall into either of these camps? Whether or not you are in the School of Service, it’s helpful to notice your own service-related behaviors and attitudes!

The School of Love

Leave a reply

The School of Love

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been focusing on the Life School aspect of your Soul Psychology. We’ve looked at the School of Peace and the School of Wisdom. This week, the School of Love is on the docket.

LOOP The fingerprint pattern associated with the School of Love is the loop. If you have at least eight loops in your set of ten fingerprints, this is your school.

If you’re in the School of Love, you’re here to learn to become fully present to all of your feelings, regardless of what those feelings are, so you can work with them. When you can accept yourself and your feelings, and develop the ability to communicate them authentically and appropriately, you find the closeness, love and connection that you deeply desire.

What are some of the challenges in the School of Love?

You may have a hard time recognizing and identifying your true feelings. You may judge your feelings as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and/or judge others’ feelings using the same good/bad yardstick. Feelings actually aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ they just are. If you judge them, you are likely to try to bury them—which means burying a part of yourself. In order to work with your feelings, it’s vital to honestly experience them.

You may withhold your feelings from others, stoically (and unreasonably) waiting for them to guess what’s going on with you. (“If you really loved me, you’d know how I feel…”) Conversely, you may indiscriminately share exactly what you feel at all times in all places, without regard for how appropriate that sharing might be.

I had a classic experience with that ‘appropriate’ piece a few years back. A couple of my friends took a lot of pride in their open, honest relationship, and their ability to ‘tell it like it is.’ But they missed the fact that the communal dinner table wasn’t the place for a frank discussion of an issue that really belonged in their own private space. The airing of their feelings, at full volume, had the rest of us cringing in our seats. So there’s a need to be sensitive to what you’re saying, where you’re saying it, and to whom you’re saying it!

How about you? Are you willing to take the emotional risk of authentically and appropriately expressing your feelings? Do you tend to ‘stuff’ your feelings, or are you more inclined to ‘let it all hang out’? How has that impacted your relationships?

The School of Wisdom

Leave a reply

The School of Wisdom

In a recent overview post on Life School, I described the four basic fingerprint patterns—arch, tented arch, loop and whorl. Each of these patterns is associated with a particular Life School.

This week, we’ll look at the School of Wisdom. If you have at least two tented arches in your set of ten fingerprints, this is your school.

What is the curriculum?

If you are in the School of Wisdom, you are here to learn to move from thought and evaluation to action, so you can gain real, hands-on experience. This means being a participant in life, rather than just an observer. You need to be willing to make commitments, so you can ‘get off the fence’ and gain understanding through experience. Wisdom comes from experience, not from using your intelligence to insulate yourself from life.

If you are in the School of Wisdom, you can be challenged by two extremes.

On the one hand, you can be filled with doubt, always hesitating, procrastinating, and needing to ‘know more’ before taking action. You want to keep as many options open as you possibly can. Analysis paralysis is a hallmark of this end of the School of Wisdom spectrum.

At the other end is The Expert, the know-it-all who operates from a position of dogma—a ‘my way or the highway’ perspective. Do you have to be right? Always know best? Are you a perfectionist? Do you shudder at the prospect of making a mistake? These are some of the pitfalls of the ‘too much’ end of the School of Wisdom.

The School of Wisdom is designed to give you practice in seeing the big picture, taking calculated risks, committing, and gaining expertise through doing—then sharing your experience-gained wisdom with others.

How difficult is it for you to say ‘yes’ to something, knowing that means saying ‘no’ to other things? If making decisions is challenging for you, what steps can you take to help yourself move from observation to action?

The School of Peace

2 Replies

The School of Peace

For the past several weeks, we’ve been taking a look at the Life School aspect of Soul Psychology. Your Soul Psychology is found in your fingerprint patterns.

In last week’s post, I described the four basic fingerprint patterns—arch, tented arch, loop and whorl. Each of these patterns is associated with a particular Life School.

ARCH The arch is associated with the School of Peace. If you have at least two arches in your set of ten fingerprints, you are in the School of Peace.

What is the School of Peace curriculum?

If you are in the School of Peace, you are here to learn to feel safe and secure, in your body and on this planet. This implies being at peace within yourself, and balancing work and play. It means dealing with a basic, internal anxiety that is intrinsic in this School, so you can be present, experience your life, and enjoy it.

If you are struggling to feel safe and peaceful within yourself, how do you work with that challenge? If you are in the School of Peace, you may tend to operate from one of two extremes.

At one end of the spectrum, you may keep yourself so busy, overcommitted and occupied with activities that you don’t have time to think or feel much of anything. You may create an endless chain of ‘emergencies’ by making mountains out of molehills, which provides plenty of distraction from what’s really going on inside.

At the other end of the spectrum, you may try to anesthetize the anxiety through various forms of numbing self-medication (tv, food, alcohol, drugs, web-surfing). You may adopt a false attitude of ‘Mr./Ms. Mellow’ (an artificial overlay of serenity, rather than the real thing), or make molehills out of mountains in order to avoid dealing with the fear involved in dealing with significant life events.

The School of Peace is designed to give you experience in navigating these extremes, so you can find your own place of balance.

What steps can you take to stay grounded, and feel the peace that comes from being genuinely present for your own miraculous life?

Fingerprint Type and Life School

1 Reply

Fingerprint Type and Life School

If you look at the tips of your fingers, you’ll see some patterns there. If you can look at the tips of your fingers with a magnifying glass under a good light source, you’ll see those patterns more clearly.

The patterns in your fingerprints come in four basic shapes or configurations. Here’s a picture of the four basic fingerprint types:

Print Samples Labeled

Arch: An arch is made up of ridges that run almost parallel to each other across the tips of your fingers. There may be a rise or bump in the middle, but there is no looping or poking or twirling around.

Tented Arch: A tented arch looks like an arch that has a tent pole sticking up in the middle (hence the term ‘tented arch’!). The parallel ridges of the arch have to travel up that pole, over the top of it, and down the other side.

Loop: A loop looks like a group of parallel ridges that enter from one side of the finger, rise up to some degree, then double back and flow out on the same side of the finger from which they entered.

Whorl: A whorl looks like a bullseye—a nice roundish target in the middle of your finger.

Each of these fingerprint types is associated with one of the Life Schools:

Arch: School of Peace – Feeling safe and balanced in your body
Tented Arch: School of Wisdom – Developing your awareness and intellect
Loop: School of Love – Recognizing the messages of your heart
Whorl: School of Service – Being of service to others

You can have any combination of fingerprint types on your ten fingers, from ten of a single type to a mixture of all four. Also, more than one type can even combine on a single finger. How many of each type you have determines your Life School(s). (More on that next time.)

So take a look—what patterns do you have on your fingertips?

Clutter Clearing and Life School

Leave a reply

Clutter Clearing and Life School

In my last post I mentioned taking a look at how clutter clearing might relate to Life School.

So what does ‘Life School’ mean? Schoolhouse

Think of it as the water in which you’re swimming, the filter through which you see and experience the world. In his book, Lifeprints, Richard Unger describes Life School as “…a soul-level initiation, a life-scale training program that works its way into every corner of your life.” He relates the four schools to four themes of human development:

Feeling safe in your body (School of Peace)
Development of awareness and intellect (School of Wisdom)
Recognition of heart and empathy (School of Love)
Inclination to serve others (School of Service)

All of us are challenged to grow in each of these four areas, but your fingerprint patterns reveal which one or two of these need more attention.

Looking at clutter clearing through the lens of Life School helped me to see what my challenges would likely be. I have two Life Schools—Wisdom and Love. A big lesson in the School of Wisdom is learning to make decisions. Wisdom folks want to be right, want to have lots of options all the time, and use the ‘need’ for more and more information as an excuse to avoid that leap off the diving board. So I realize that the pressure to make the ‘right decision’ when it comes to clearing my clutter makes it difficult to decide to let things go.

In the School of Love, the main lesson is emotional authenticity—learning to feel what I’m really feeling and expressing it appropriately, so I can have warm, sincere connections with others. Those loving connections can make it hard for me to let go of items that people I care about have given me. It feels as though giving away that godawful swirly candy dish means rejecting the person who gave it to me (a person I love very much).

This awareness of the pitfalls inherent in my Life Schools is a good example of that old saying, “Forewarned is forearmed.” By knowing the challenges that will prove most difficult for me, I can look ahead and seek solutions to those specific issues.

And, as I mentioned in my last post on downsizing, our KMI Master Mind, The 10 C’s of Creative Clutter Clearing, is coming up. If working with a group on this sometimes sticky issue would be helpful for you, please contact me and I’ll send you the details!

Downsizing

3 Replies

Downsizing

For quite a while now, I’ve been thinking about downsizing.

Clutter has always been a bit of a challenge for me. My home isn’t overrun with items covering every available surface. That said, the closets, shelves and drawers that were empty when we moved to this house 28 years ago have managed to attract enough stuff to more than fill them (and we’ve added a considerable number of storage spaces along the way).

So I began to explore different methods of dealing with my possessions. The KonMari clutter cartoon method, which is very popular right now, tells me to put every item I own of a specific type in a pile on the floor, then pick up each item and ask myself if the item gives me joy. If the answer is “yes,” the item is a keeper. If the answer is “no,” it goes into a garbage bag for removal from my space.

Based on Amazon reviews of the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, the method works amazingly well for the many who have used it.

That said, just the thought of pulling every item of clothing I own out of closets and drawers feels crushingly overwhelming. It literally stops me in my tracks. So I investigated a number of other clutter clearing/downsizing methodologies. During this investigation, one truth stood out—it’s not really about the stuff. It’s about my own mindset, my own habit patterns, and the way I work best.

This led me to think about how my clutter clearing might relate to my Life School, and how I would most naturally work towards the downsizing goal in a way that would be effective, rather than overwhelming, for me. I’ll be exploring those ideas in a little more detail in an upcoming post.

But for right now, one thing I know is that (even though I’m an introvert) I am much more inclined to tackle a challenging task if I have real, live support around me. And that led to a conversation with my business partner, Mary McDowall, a Master Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coach, and one of the creators of the KMI Master Mind. I’m a certified Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coach, too, as well as a newly-minted KMI Master Mind facilitator (yet another story for another day).

And this radical idea took shape:

Rather than creating yet another course or writing yet another book about clutter clearing, why not approach the challenge from the perspective of a creative masterminding circle? Using a format that allows me to combine the concept of Kaizen* with the creative spark and support of a group of women who are also downsizing?

So—Mary and I are busily putting the finishing touches on The 10 C’s of Creative Clutter Clearing.

Stay tuned!

*Kaizen: Breaking huge, overwhelming tasks down into very small steps

Palm Reading vs. Hand Analysis

4 Replies

Palm Reading and Hand Analysis – What’s the Difference?

What picture do the words ‘palm reading’ conjure up for you?

If you’re anything like me, you may envision a school carnival, with a tent staffed by a willing mom wearing a turban and lots of jewelry. She examines your hand and tells you when you’ll get married, how many children you’ll have, and how long you’ll live. This sort of palm reading is fun; it’s entertaining, and it generally settles lightly on you.

However, this isn’t hand analysis. While hand analysis does involve looking at the lines in your hands, the structure of your fingers, and your hand shape, it is very specific about looking at your fingerprints. Your fingerprints, which are formed before your birth, contain your life blueprint. They reveal who you are here to be (your life purpose), the life challenges you can expect to encounter as you pursue that purpose (your life lesson), and the filter through which you experience the world (your life school).

There is nothing predictive about hand analysis (except to the extent that, barring a choice to change, you’ll continue to do what you’ve always done). The lines in your hands have no predictive power; rather, they reflect what we in the land of hand analysis call your ‘personality psychology.’ You have natural personality traits—e.g., an emotional style, an intellectual style—and you have behavior patterns that are the result of the choices you’ve made throughout your life. Those natural tendencies, and your free-will choices, are displayed in your hands, and there is a specific system for
decoding them.

In contrast, I’ve seen a number of different sources of information on palmistry, from centuries-old to 21^st century, and they vary widely. Depending on the reader, you may encounter major variations in interpretation. A palm reader, especially a deeply intuitive or empathic one, may also be inclined to make predictions based on what s/he sees. I wouldn’t presume to judge that process. But it is not hand analysis.

Hand analysis is science-based, objective, and concrete. While every hand analyst brings a degree of interpretation and intuition to the session, the basic life blueprint information you gain from a properly trained and certified hand analyst won’t vary. Your fingerprints have a story to tell, and it is the same story, regardless of who is telling it!