A Take-No-Sh*t List For Your Well Being

Have you ever walked by a tree that is branching out sideways out of a wall—baffling gravity in its existence? Janne Robinson

Or seen a flower that is growing through cracks in the cement and marveled at its sheer stubborn will to show up and not only exist, but resiliently thrive?

This list is not about merely existing. This list is not about primitive-survival self care. You already know how much water to drink, that you feel better when you exercise and eat nutritiously and get eight hours of sleep.

This list is about that next part—expanding your existence from a place of fire by living, speaking and breathing from within your power. It’s a “take no shit” list for your well being. You are a vigorous being of worth—plant your feet, own your brilliance and show up to this world by being in service to yourself with these nine steps.

1. Learn the art of boundaries and how to say “No.”

Most people want to be liked. Most of us have, at some point in our lives, said yes when we truly desired to say no. I am guilty of walking in the shoes of being a people pleaser. I want to say yes all the time, to everyone. However, it is sometimes a disservice to ourselves and those around us to exist solely to please. Boundaries are healthy and necessary. Boundaries with our friends, lovers, family, strangers, teachers and most importantly ourselves.

If a man in the café lineup asks you to sit with him for coffee and you have zilch interest in getting to know him, gently tell him that although you appreciate him reaching out to connect that right now all you want is some time with you. His feelings might be hurt for a nanosecond but you’ll have saved his time and your energy in the long run.

When you feel it deep in your gut that you don’t want to do something—honor your intuition and yourself. Learn to say no gently—and use it to be in service to yourself. Accommodating you and your power is important.

2. Get To Know Your Purple Elephants

You know those moments where you possess an urge to sweep something uncomfortable under the rug, super glue the rug down and then disconnect the wires so the lights remain off of it forever?

I want you to rip that rug off so quickly it may make your system shriek in shock, stare it dead in the eye and talk to it till it’s black and blue and free to walk transparently.

I want you to dive into the ocean of uncomfortable, French kiss mystery and flash the world your beautiful vulnerability. The people in your life will only love you more by your ability to be transparent with them.

Talk about your shame, guilt, and fears—get naked and douse it with as much awareness, light and empathy you can possibly create. Your purple elephant won’t survive and you will grow tall.

3. Be the person you want to fall in love with

I decided this year that instead of dating the men who did things I admired that I would learn to do those things myself. As a good friend of mine and relationship coach Mark says, “Make a list of all the things you want in a partner and then be that list yourself.”

I now live in a log cabin in the woods, wear plaid, smell like smoke and taste like the sea. I learned to chop kindling with my teeth, use a chainsaw, caulk a sink, put a paintbrush to canvas and I went after what I love—writing, hard. Next up on my list is learning, “Ain’t no sunshine” on the guitar, learning Spanish, and buying a beginners motorcycle. I may never grow a beard but I figure I will leave something for my future partner to be good at.

Sweep your own ass off your feet. Be an asset to yourself by showing up in this world doing the things you admire and love.

Be mad about you. You’ll attract an even more badass version of yourself by doing so.

 4. Take Personal Growth Courses

We up tune our cars, renovate our houses, repair our clothes and shoes—why wouldn’t we invest the time to tune-up our souls?

People associate “self growth” with “self help” and immediately throw a wall up and remark, “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

Our belief systems are formed by the age of six.

The way we react to resistance, receive affection, give love, communicate—all of this is formed in the earliest stages of our lives. Some of your deepest roots may come from experiences you don’t even remember anymore—that’s reason enough to dive in.

If we have negative limiting beliefs about ourselves or the world we live in they will affect how we progress, grow, live and love. The only way to uproot them is to identify them and spend time looking that sucker in the eye and telling it “you do not serve me.”

5. Spend less time glued to screens and more time living.

When we turn a TV on we turn off our brain—we check out and let someone autopilot our mind. It’s a great escapism—it can also be damaging. When you sit glued to the Internet, your phone or a TV you disconnect from the moment unraveling now. Our world is full of “smart phones and dumb people.”

Turn that shit off. Stimulate yourself out in the big beautiful, living, breathing world. Remember about ladybugs, lupins and stars.

6. Live Vicariously Through Yourself

It is not good enough to live our lives through anyone but ourselves—period. Reading a book about climbing Everest is not the same as climbing Everest. Looking at a friend’s photographs of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef, or jumping with Machu Picchu behind them is great—but it doesn’t cut it.

We need to live our own desires and wants.

We need feel first hand what the thinning of oxygen feels like at 15,000 feet and observe the world around us vanish into rocks and ice. We need to stand at base camp and marvel at the mean mother herself.

We need to strap on a weight belt, spit in our mask, and ascend into the ocean decompressing as we marvel at Nemos and a rainbow of coral at our fingertips. Elbow past the 20 million other people getting a photograph in Peru to create our own jumping phenomenon.

Create space to speak the experiences into existence you desire—now.

 7. Learn To Receive support

Every single human being on this planet needs support. All of us.

We are not capable of carrying ourselves alone through life. It takes guts and courage to receive support. No one is taking away your power if you say yes to help. It does not mean you are unable or weak—it means you are human.

To receive is to give and to give is to receive.

By saying no to support you’re denying someone the gift of giving.

And if the entire time you are receiving you are planning of ways to reciprocate it, you aren’t honoring the other person’s gift. Accept with grace and just say yes.

8. Take time to do nothing.

The first time I flew to visit Greece, my motherland, I learned the art of spending time doing nothing. From 2-5pm in Crete all of the cities (even the biggest ones) close down their shops. Why? Well, to take naps, drink coffee and eat. It is possibly why their economy is in complete turmoil but that’s beside the point—these people know how to live. They will probably outlive us all.

Our bodies need rest. They need to decompress and to unravel.

The reason we get sick is because we go, go, go, go and don’t make space to rest. When we get sick it is our bodies way of slamming on the breaks and forcing us to rest. Your body essentially gives you a time out.

Take time to sit at a café and drink coffee. Take naps—for the love of god, take so many naps. Take some time to lay like a lizard in the sun and just Greek out, man. The world will wait.

9. Never stop learning.

The way to keep a truly juicy relationship with our partners and ourselves is to eat up all the knowledge we can, take a short digestive break and then seek more.

“We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them.”

~ John Waters

I have a friend who told me the reason she loves her boyfriend so much is that he is constantly finding new hobbies: rock climbing, banjo playing, spear fishing, yoga, gardening, astrology, learning French, ice climbing.

Drink up knowledge like it is the sweetest nectar you have ever tasted. Expand your mind, keep your relationships exciting and build you in the meantime. Win-Win-Win.

Janne Robinson

~

i can't fix it

i can't fix it ... okay so guilty as charged but then again not really. There is no guilt. Rather, realization. After an amazing session of Body Talk I got off the table and had an epiphany - "i can't fix it." I am the adult daughter of an alcoholic, the lines run deep affecting many in and out of my immediate family and for too many years, most of my life i have attempted to FIX IT. What is it? In my next writings this will unfold and as many of you who read this will no doubt relate to for good or not ... you too may be the carrier of "i need to fix this" or perhaps unconsciously just went about attempting to. Until ...

Wake UP! Do you know YOUR conscious & Unconscious Beliefs & Beyond Beliefs

I am so grateful that I have come to embrace and understand  BELIEFS and how they make or break our dreams. This BLOG is my THANK YOU to the Masters in NLP whom I have had the priviledge of studying and apprenticing with. Robert Dilts of NLP University and Christina Hall President of NLP Society.
 My life was turned around completely and forever because of NLP. Now, my own work is based in NLP. I will always be grateful for and to NLP and these Master Trainers who create and teach with integrity. This has been passed on to me and I honor this and embrace using these techniques when I work with all my clients.Below is an exerpt from an interview with Robert Dilts for the documentary Beyond Beliefs.




by Robert Dilts, Co-Developer of NLP
Excerpt from interview for the film" Beyond Beliefs

The other thing about NLP it says there are different levels, lets call it programming.  That is, to have a behavior, there is an inner mental map, a cognitive program that sort of guides that behavior.  Behind that cognitive map are beliefs and values which are different than, let’s say, our idea about what we want.  They are more the motivation, the permission, and then behind that is our sense of identity.

So if I say I want something, there is an “I” who wants it, and behind that “I” that’s where you get to that sense of a purpose, of belonging to something that is beyond yourself, that is bigger than yourself.  This is where you get a sense of some kind of deeper vision of purpose.

People who are able to achieve things they want in their life most effectively are people who are aligned in that way:  their identity is aligned with their higher purpose, then their beliefs fit with that identity and that is connected with their capabilities which lead to their behavior.
When you are aligned, when your identity and your beliefs and your capability are aligned, we called that being in the zone.  A lot of NLP is about coaching what you might call the inner game.  Every athlete, every performer knows that you have an outer game, which is what you are doing, what the physical activity is.

And there’s the mental game, which has to do with your mental attitude and your emotional attitude.  So when those things are aligned, the athlete would say you are in the zone and a performer you would say you havepresence. So when you have that sense of confidence, the zone is what we call being in a state of effortless excellence, of flow.

 The idea of neuro-linguistics is you’ve got language and the nervous system.  A positive affirmation is the linguistic part of the belief, but it is not the “neuro” part.  To actually bring in an empowering belief, you are going to be doing more than just saying it in the mind.  That’s the verbal part, the idea of the belief.

 In NLP we say you’ve got to get beyond the idea. to get it in the muscle.  The way you are going to do that is by adding in information from the other senses and also using the body, your physical attitude, you are aligning again the words with your inner images, your memories and your physiology.

 In NLP coaching we do a number of things.  The first is to help people get IN the zone and the second is to find out what gets in the way of being in the zone and how to transform that.  One of the ways that we’re going to coach people to get into the zone, it starts by coming present in the body, to come into the body.  In fact, we say the body is always in the present, to bring the mind and the body into the same place.

How Should We Set Our Goals?

How should we set our goals?”


The first thing to understand is that you are in this situation because of your present state of self. Your beliefs, your personality, your behavior, have made you in this present state of reality. If at all you want to change your situation, you must set a goal to change yourself first; you must change the state of yourself. In changing your belief systems your accepted reality changes, and when this is changed the outer changes automatically. So the fact is that the outer goal is secondary, the inner is the most important thing. If ever you want to change the outer reality or achieve some outer goal, first start with the self. Only then you will know what effortless achievement is.


For a long time effort has been introduced to us by many speakers and psychologists, simply because they believed that in order for the self to change, the outer must change first; some even consider that the self has nothing to do with the outer. This is why they have always emphasized effort and propagated struggle. You must understand, this struggle and hardship is not with the outside, it is because the self (the reality creator) can't be changed.


What I am discussing with you seems to be difficult but actually it is not. Remember, stop wishing and start seeing that which you are, and see that which you are is the same as your reality. Also remember that the self is not fixed, it is changeable. If you dare to go beyond the self and see that it’s not actually you, that you are something transcendental, then almost everything you want is possible, all goals are achieved; not by maddening effort but by spontaneous creation.

Health is a reflection of Beingness

Health is a reflection of beingness. So how can you expect your mental, emotional, and physical states to be ready for the joys and demands of self-discovery if you have fulfilled belief systems your entire life, have allowed yourself to become prematurely old, have believed that your glands should atrophy and cease to function, and that your heart, liver, intestines, and general metabolism should slow down? Your body runs down because it is forced to operate in ways antagonistic to the purposes for which you were born and to the creations to which you should have given birth.


Your conception of aging is like anything else in which you believe -- you embody it. ...

Perceptions, which are based upon sensory experience and knowing, should precede conceptions. You express yourself and through that you change your attitudes. In other words, you do not change your attitudes in order to get a better perception, you get a better perception in order to change your attitudes. To do that you have to transcend the concepts under which you have lived. It is not a matter of denying or erasing them. There needs to be a continual process whereby perceptions form conceptions, rather than belief systems forming conceptions. Concepts should be based upon what you are perceiving now and relating those perceptions to what you have already experienced. The experiences you have and the potentials you activate are mainly determined by your belief and knowing systems and attitudes. So changing your perceptions will also change the types of experiences you have. Transcendence is what keeps the universe healthy, and it will keep you healthy too.

Jack on Aging - Part11

From approximately eighteen to thirty years of age, people can start to practice and implement the directions of their beliefs and consciousness. Those who act upon their potentials and continuously become what they desire to be, even if their family, peers, and society disagree, will be much healthier than those who do not accept the joy of their potentials. They will perform at much higher levels in whatever they do, because they have their heart and soul in what they do. These people do not count their rewards by numbers. They count their rewards by their happiness, their joy, and their state of excitement. Their excitement is not so much in seeing if they can win over someone else, but in challenging themselves. They risk!


Between the ages of eighteen and thirty, people still have many chances to make changes. What can young adults do to enhance their health and personal expression? They can go on a path of self-discovery and thus not become one-sided. They can explore their desires, and their sources of joy, and become well-rounded people, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Rather than holding onto accomplishments, they can develop great freedom and can use it to pursue potentials felt but as yet unexpressed. This is possible because in most cases the responsibility to parents has been reduced, and commitments to a mate and children have not yet been made.

So there is much freedom of choice. This freedom of adulthood can be powerful when combined with knowing systems, health and radiance, and the privileges of being an adult. During childhood parents can help prepare their children to assume the joys and responsibilities of such freedom.

It can be difficult for young adults, who usually have not yet established families and often do have personal freedom, courage, and initiative, to go on paths of personal discovery. The difficulties for middle-aged adults, who often have been stuck in beliefs for a long time, are even greater. These people think they do not have the capacity to ever get their potentials going, that is, if they think about it at all!

Jack on Aging Part 1

Jack on Aging:


The selection below is drawn from Jack Schwarz's book

It's Not What You Eat But What Eats You, published by Celestial Arts.

When we are born we want to be. Over time we become aware that being also means having to have something. Let us put those two words together: be-have, or behave. By the age of thirteen our be-havior is dominated by what we have and that with which we identify.

So adolescents enter a new state. They go from a state of becoming to a state of behaving. Becoming is a process of movement which has to be activated by the individual. To become, energy must be put into motion; it is emotional to become. To be and to come you need constant activity, that is, expression and experience. But rather than becoming, what do we do? We get. A man has to get that job, in order to get that mansion and that Ferrari, in order to get that wife, who has gotten that money from her parents. A woman has to get a husband who has gotten through behaving. Because of the changing roles of women in our society, women are now attracting diseases which formerly affected only men, for women are now involved with getting in the workplace. They are surprised they haven't become what they wanted. Can you feel the wear and tear behaving puts on the body? The universe is for-giving, not for-getting.

There is nothing wrong with getting, unless you hold onto what you have gotten. But if you put your beingness into getting, it becomes be-getting. Begetting means "to give birth." It means as soon as you get something, you let go of it or hold it only so long as you need it in that form, and then transform it to create something else. You give birth to a new idea. You birth to an expression. Holding onto it causes the energy to stagnate and causes health problems. You can transform your holding the same way you transform your getting: you put your beingness into it. Then holding becomes beholding. And you say, Lo! Behold! A new birth!

The result of getting is that consciousness is modeled by social standards and beliefs. How does society say you can best succeed? Not by action and not by giving birth, but by getting and holding. But to maintain health it is vital to discover your potentials and to become them. Put yourself in situations in which you must expand your potentials and give birth through them.

If you become something that you are not potentially directed to be, whether because of belief systems, family pressures, economic security, or some other reason, you force your body to malfunction. You force your consciousness to function in a way that is not its intended purpose. This forces your consciousness to stagnate, as well as your reason and rationale. To become a corporate executive when you would prefer to be a river guide, or to become a river guide when you would prefer to be a corporate executive, forces your energy and evolution to stagnate.

To become, you need to know your potentials and pursue their fulfillment. Without that knowing and action, you suffer a loss of courage and happiness. You do not become the expression of your consciousness. You eat food that maintains you in a forced function, which forces your body and consciousness into directions antagonistic to the core of your being. You force-feed yourself. It is like the Christmas goose, which would like to be flying south for the winter but cannot, for people keep stuffing grain down its throat -- to get it fat for their dinner.