Archive for the Self-Awareness
I’ve found that one of the hidden blocks to our personal power and joy as women is our competition with other women, whether overt or unspoken.
A unique way to turn this around and have way more access to your own lit-up power, came from Dolores (an alias!), a reader of my Love 3.0 website:
“dear liyana,
i just read your (long) bio
AMAZING
you are AMAZING
i had to stop comparing myself,
because that’s silly. I would rather just
be lit with the inspiration of who you are.”
Is THIS woman amazing or what?
I’m not saying that she’s amazing because she’s ladling praise on me. While that’s something I appreciate, what catches my eye is that she didn’t let herself get taken down by comparison. She turned it around. She got lit up with inspiration to light up herself.
THAT is a sign of a powerful woman.
As I said earlier, I’ve found that one of the hidden blocks to our personal power and joy as women is our competition with other women, whether overt or unspoken.
It’s been a long time (more than 5,000 years or so) during which men have held the key to the resources. Big time resources. Food. Shelter. A place in the community. Care for our children… It’s only been a short amount of time, not even a couple hundred years, since women are no longer really dependent on men, at least in most of the western world. But our bodies and brains are going on over 5,000 years of “reality” rather than the last few hundred.
For 5,000 years and more our cells and brains have been bathed in life-or-death competition – and that doesn’t just melt away with a paltry few hundred years and a handful of few generations. There are parts of our brains (not the rational parts) that simply laugh at the freedom and equality available to us over the last 200, 100 or 50 years. It’s extraordinary, unprecedented, but also painfully recent to our cellular memory. We can’t blame ourselves for having DNA that instructs us to beat out the other woman so we can stay alive, fed, clothed, housed, and our children looked out for as well.
So, this week, Get Lit.
Notice that woman (or women) in your life you compare yourself to. Maybe you feel envious of her, jealous of her, that she doesn’t deserve what she has or is, or that she’s more than you’ll ever be.
Rather than having it take you down, use the thing you are comparing to get inspired. Rather than seeing her as a threat, notice how you can see her as an inspiration, pointing the way for you to step into an aspect of yourself – your own unique, radiantly lit-up expression of Woman.
Allow her to be the spark that ignites you and sets you aflame. Get Lit.
The ability to empower others, while empowering ourselves, is a sign of true power.
And don’t forget to leave me your comments - there’s a link just under the title of this Mini Relationship Tip!
Enjoy, LiYana
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How can we expect to have a great relationship with another without one with ourselves first?
A couple weeks ago, I sat in my living room, talking intensely with my husband. I forget what about, actually. Without meaning to be unkind, he laid some kind of truth on me, and up came some very strong emotions in me.
Shame. Feeling like a victim. Self-pity. Despair.
My first reaction was, “If I feel this, I’ll die.” Followed by, “OK, what if I fall into you, rather than resist?”
I prepared myself for a long ride. I pictured myself flinging myself on the bed, crying for days, fully feeling the breadth and depth. I opened into the strong emotion when usually I would have clamped down, closed, denied and resisted.
And yes, a flood came. It burnt and seared, tore and scratched. I breathed, relaxed, did my best to just not flex and tense up it as it came.
And 3 minutes later it left.
Huh? I had prepared for 3 hours, 3 days, but 3 minutes?
A friend of mine told me that researchers say the life-span of an emotion is 90 seconds – if we don’t “feed” it with our resistance, judgment, denial, etc. Who knew?
I can’t promise similar brevity, to you, or even to me next time, but I took the lesson to heart:
“Practicing love often means feeling through fear: intentionally opening yourself when you would rather close down, giving yourself when you would rather hide. Love means recognizing yourself as the open fullness of this moment regardless of its contents — trenchant thoughts, enchanting pleasures, heavy emotions, or gnawing pains — and surrendering all hold on the familiar act you call ‘me’.”
~ David Deida
So, today, your mini relationship tip is:
1. Next time you notice a strong emotion coming up, and the familiar feeling of “If I feel that, I’ll die,” try feeling through the fear, the reaction to blame, lash out, crumple or run.
Intentionally open yours elf when you would rather close down. Give yourself when you would rather hide.
Why? To not move the way fear makes you move; to move the way love asks you to move.
To your fearwalk,
LiYana
When I was little, my dad could never keep our toothbrushes straight.
So as not to keep using mine or my mom’s, he created a color-coding system. Red for Roland (my dad), Blue for Beverly (my mom) and Yellow for LiYana (that’s me).
OK, yellow for LiYana was a stretch, but they didn’t make Lavender toothbrushes in 1979.
And the color coding system stuck, and went for things other than dental care, like jackets, pens, folders, etc.
My wonderful father passed away almost two years ago. About 10 days ago, on Father’s day, I picked my head up out of my computer (buried as I was in the details of an all-consuming launch), because I realized I couldn’t call him to say hi and acknowledge him for his fathering. And I missed him.
One of my coaches suggested (and please use this if it resonates with you!) that I find a sign or object for my father to let his presence be known, even that’s he’s passed. So, every time I see Red (like a bird or a valentine or lipgloss), I think of him.
It felt a little funny to be working away on a Sunday AND on Father’s Day, but this launch must go on. No turning back and all that.
Hard or as much as I work, it’s vital to me that each thing I do, whether a client session, an email, or even mundane details, be done with Love. Love and care and good ju-ju, it all gets in there. You can feel it.
And so it felt like a mini omen to get an email from my mom, later that Father’s day, telling me some things she remembered about her beloved husband of nearly 40 years. She signed her email, “Red for Roland, Blue for Beverly and Love for LiYana.”
Well, Dad, thanks for showing up in things like cardinals, fire engine lipstick, and my favorite crimson shirt. And, Mom, I guess instead of Yellow, it’ll be Love for LiYana from now on.
What, after all, is the color of Love?
If you want to take another peek at this launch I’ve put so much Love into, you can Love it up here:
http://www.radiance2010.com/liyana
“Love is all around you like the air, and is the very breath of your being.” ~ Barry Long
To Love, LiYana
PS: If you are moved to, send this on to other women who might like a little more love and radiance!
http://www.radiance2010.com/liyana
This was published a while back in New York Spirit Magazine, but I thought it deserved re-posting. Timely topic!
Post your comments below…
What I Wish Someone Had Told Tiger
By LiYana Silver
Are you really surprised Tiger Woods was cheating on his wife? Were you surprised Bill Clinton, Jude Law, Leann Rimes, David Letterman, Jon Gosselin, Mark Sanford and Hugh Grant were? We shake our once-again disappointed heads over yet another public figure or leader who has proven to be a cheater, liar or hypocrite, but why exactly are we so surprised and disappointed? Of course it can feel like a betrayal when someone you look up to, a mentor, leader or teacher, turns out to have cracks in their morals. I’m not saying that all public figures, celebrities and leaders are cheaters, liars and hypocrites – I’m saying MOST OF US are cheaters, liars and hypocrites.
Hear me out. According to the Associated Press, 90 percent of Americans believe adultery is morally wrong, yet between 25 to 50 percent of married women and 50 to 65 percent of married men admit to having affairs. And since not all of those cheaters are married to each other, the numbers of those engaged in infidelities increases dramatically, affecting 80 percent of marriages. Picture a room of 10 people; between 2 to 8 of those people are or have been cheaters. You might even have to count yourself.
We cry for monogamy in morals, but our actions say something very different.
As hard on everyone as infidelity is, cheating deserves a closer examination. Cheating is defined by the context it is set in and the rules it breaks, not by the action itself. In one context, having a knife plunged into your abdomen in the middle of the night by a strange masked man could be a very bad thing; yet in another context, if you are suffering a burst appendix, you are wildly thankful for that surgeon’s scalpel. By one set of rules, copying out of the textbook in an exam is blatant cheating; in an open-book test, it is accepted and encouraged. It’s not the necessarily act of having sex, intimacies or emotional connections with people other than our partners that is inherently the problem, it’s the secrecy and dishonesty as well as the unexamined rules so many of us strive to live and love by.
We take for granted that monogamy is the gold standard for relationships, and when we can’t manage it, we blame ourselves – or our partner. But we could stop and consider a third option; that perhaps there’s something outdated or ill-fitting for some of us, about the structure, confines and pressures of monogamy itself.
I’m not letting Tiger, Bill, Jude – or those fictional 2 to 8 of 10 folks in the room – off the hook for cheating, lying, deception and infidelity. Dishonesty is a tragedy for everyone. But does everyone who has an affair do it for the sole purpose of breaking up a family or betraying the trust of their loved ones? Are all cheaters callous cads, letting wanton selfish desires take precedence over the sacrifice and self-discipline that is often necessary in loving relationship? Are a majority of us simply just rotten, bad people?
With deep respect to his wife and family (and an additional wish that he not have his personal life scrutinized by the public), let’s also look at what Tiger, our token cheater, was going FOR, not just what he managed to mess up. It’s a powerful force; call it freedom, lust, limerance, infatuation, love, difference, otherness, intimacy, desire, or thrilling newness. For as long as there have been partners to cheat on, we humans have risked loved ones, jobs, careers, nations, our lives – and endorsements – for this force. It’s powerful, enlivening stuff, of which it seems we’d jeopardize just about anything for a taste, and which is as much a part of our humanity as is our integrity and honesty. It deserves to be dealt with head-on, with a healthy dose of respect.
Has monogamy outstayed its evolutionary welcome? Is the solution for long-term, committed partnerships and marriages to open up? Is the solution to keep doing the sexing-with-others we seem to be doing, but to stop lying about it? For some, certainly, but polyamory (the practice of having honest, consensual, loving, intimate and/or sexual relationships with more than one person) isn’t a panacea. Some monogamous relationships become stronger after infidelity exposes the cracks to be worked on. A few of us who cheat are of the narcissistic or pathologically disordered sort. And some people are stuffed into monogamy that shouldn’t be, whose perfect expression of love and commitment is to many, not just one. The lifestyle and love-style of non-monogamy may or may not be suited to Tiger and his wife, but the questions and considerations that must go into creating an honest, responsible, consensual open relationship most certainly would have helped them. There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer; but there are some important questions to keep asking.
Tammy Nelson, author of Getting the Sex You Want, states that nearly 80 percent of partners are complicit in their partner’s infidelity, whether they explicitly knew about it or not. Maybe they don’t expect their partner to betray their trust or have explicit knowledge of the affair, but on some level, they know. We don’t get pneumonia out of thin air – we have to first ignore our sniffles, our sore throat, our cough that won’t go away, our fatigue and the pain in our chests. Likewise, most of the time, we do know when our relationships are faltering, dulling, and closing to intimacy. We ignore the worsening symptoms and are ill equipped to do much to restore connection, passion, honesty and life to our relationships. Most of us have little or no means to deal pragmatically, intelligently, carefully, consciously – and even joyfully! – with the massive contradictions that make up any relationship.
It was only until relatively recently that marriage became about chosen love, soul mates, joint happiness and mutual sexual fulfillment. For most of its history, marriage was a political or survival strategy. You got your love, happiness and great sex where you could, if you could. Never before has marriage – or long-term partnership – looked like we want it to look now. Never before have we lived as long as we do now: the average span of “until-death-do-us-part” used to be about 10 years, and now our unions could last upwards of 60. Never before have we expected daily domesticity, child-rearing, financial decision-making, social and familial compatibility to merge seamlessly with erotic, sexual, intellectual, intimate, religious and spiritual fulfillment. Never before have we placed such pressures on one person to satisfy all of our needs, a burden too big for most of us to hold.
We are hard-wired biologically to be attracted to multiple people, as long as we have a pulse and hormones flow in our endocrine systems, and this doesn’t magically go away when couple up with just one. Often the closer, more comfortable, familiar and cozy the long-term relationship gets, the less the sexual spark, attraction and erotic fire. Desire, longing and arousal are fueled by newness, otherness, and even a bit of the unknown. It’s hard to find newness in a partner you know completely and it can become harder and harder to want something you already have.
Ever a realist, I’m not excusing infidelity. Ever a free-thinker, I’m not saying open relationship are always the answer. And ever a romantic, I’m not convinced that enough love, enough effort, enough faith – or the vows of marriage – can inoculate us from the very real contradictions of all relationships, let alone those facing the specific pressures of the 21st Century. We grow and change, and our world grows and changes, at alarmingly fast rates. The question becomes how can our relationships grow and change with us? Like buildings in earthquake zones, the structures of our relationships desperately need to be retro-fit for flexibility, pliancy and pragmatism – and right quick.
What sits before us all, and what I wish had shown up on Tiger’s agenda, is that now more than ever we have the opportunity to embrace the paradoxes of partnership – and they are many. The alternative to asking the hard questions of ourselves and our lovers is to bury our heads in the sand, and wonder, outraged, when cheating, lying or infidelity – or the general decline of our relationship – rears its head and makes a statistic out of us.
Albeit not for the faint of heart, there is absolutely a path for the survival and thrival of loving, committed, honest, fulfilling and sustainable relationships. What it takes is indeed humanly possible: a commitment to loving, openly and honestly; to having freedom and commitment under one roof; to the care and feeding of the partnership; and to seeking a third option when there appears to be none. Rather than defaulting to sexual exclusivity, it takes choosing powerfully monogamy or non-monogamy. It takes welcoming the enigma of relationships in the 21st Century. There’s no one right way to do it, except to choose YOUR way with open eyes and heart. What will your right way be?
“What is to give light, must endure burning.” –Viktor Frankl
Chance are, if you are reading this, you have a light within you that simply must shine in the world. Maybe it already is, through your work, your parenting, your volunteering, your loving. Maybe it is smoldering inside, not yet shining its way out of you into the world, through your doings and your beings. Maybe your light is painfully hidden away, and you are not sure if it is you or it that is crying to dance out of captivity.
Perhaps we shrink away from being our unique brand of light in the world because then we’d be seen, then we’d be powerful. Or maybe it’s because it requires burning away of layers and the sloughing off of important pieces. The terrain is tough, biting our own way out of our cocoons to butterfly-hood. Maybe we shrink because it’s hard and painful and we’d rather go have a beer.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t go away. It burns in your chest. It sings and cries to be let out. It carries you along, oft unwillingly and unwittingly into the family of life.
This week,
If you sing, sing loud.
If you’re making big deals happen, do it with beaming love.
If you’re sitting next to an old man on the subway, consider it two angels sharing a seat.
This week, give voice to your burning. Give voice to your light.
If you don’t know already what this would mean for you, take a second to write your comment below and connect with other burners. How do you burn? What’s your light?
Enjoy the week,
LiYana
Hey all, so glad you found me. This will be world’s shortest post. Think the love child of haiku and a valentine’s candy heart. Welcome to Love 3.0: modern recipes for relationships that sizzle!
