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Believing Your Own “True Lies” - Thoughts on the Schwarzenegger Scandal

May 21, 2011 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Anyone who really knows me, knows that I love Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has inspired me so much over the years - someone who has overcome the odds, dreamed big and accomplished so much. I am disappointed in the news, but not surprised. To me, this represents a larger than life projection of the ego and symbolizes the illusion of grandiosity in our culture. I find it actually hopeful that it is all coming crumbling down.

Rather than judge him or anyone, I can simply say a prayer of gratitude “there but for the grace of God go I.” All my “big dreams” and grandiose thinking was all ego and if I had ever got what I really thought I was supposed to get, I might actually find myself in the same place believing my own “True Lies” and thinking that my larger than life persona was who I really am.

Whenever our sense of self comes from the things of this world; fame, celebrity, money, success, prestige, we can develop a false sense of security that will one day crumble. The only thing that is everlasting is love and the only way to detach from the things of this world and find that love within is through forgiveness.

We need to forgive the thoughts that keep us separate from our connection to God and one another. We need to forgive and show compassion to those who believed their own lies. Thank you Arnold, for reminding me that the ego is simply an illusion. We all at one time or another get caught and stuck in the lies we tell ourselves. We believe we actually are the persona we’ve created. I’m grateful to be on a spiritual path and to awaken to the truth of who I really am.

“I prayed to God when my world was shaken to the core… only to find out, it was God who was doing the shaking!”

Dreams Can Come True

March 10, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

When we were little, everything was possible and no dream was out of reach. We were literally playing make-believe and planting a strong and powerful belief in the rich and fertile soil of our minds. Under the right conditions, those dreams can root, grow and blossom into fruition. Yet so often in life, the dreams we had as little girls get crushed, buried or simply fade away.

With today’s technology and with social networking mediums like Facebook and YouTube, many people are using them as powerful platforms to successfully launch their dreams out into the world. Others seem to just magically get discovered through these channels because of the viral nature of this technology.

Imagine being three years old and having your fantasy dream come true? Here is an amazing story that unfolded as a result of YouTube.

I stumbled upon this story last week quite by chance. I recorded the show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” because my all time favorite band, Hall and Oates was supposed to be on it. Sadly their base guitarist, T-Bone passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack and they cancelled their appearance. I watched the whole show anyways hoping for a mention of the band and how they were all doing, but there was no announcement.

When I first saw the clip, I thought it was so adorable and so cool of Jimmy Kimmel to arrange to make that little girl’s dream come true. But ever since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the story and it has left me wondering…

In the clip, Jimmy mentions that this is as good as it’s going to get for this girl and her dreams. She disagreed and said “No it’s not.” I love how she believes in her life getting better and better, but I can’t help but wonder if she is going to go through a major let down phase following an event of this magnitude at the age of three?
Why would a mother video tape her three year old having a melt down and then post it to YouTube?
If that kind of whining gets that kind of attention and positive reaction, doesn’t it just reinforce the notion that “she who whines the most gets the prize?”

We live in a world that values fame and everyone is looking for their own fifteen minutes of it. But that kind of power rush is short lived and will never sustain our sense of purpose or unleash our innate potential. As cool as that opportunity was for little Cody and her family, I am more interested in the dreams of those who are striving to make a difference in this world and of those who work tirelessly in pursuit of those dreams.

Sometimes those of us with big, unrealized dreams can become discouraged when it seems like others are out there, going viral and getting “discovered.”

Here are some ways to unearth, rediscover and live your dreams;

Think back to when you were little. What did you love to do? When I was three, I starred in a neighborhood garage show. My dad’s workbench was the stage and I raised $5.00 and donated it to a local hospital. i was born to inspire and entertain others, but my dreams got buried when suddenly my dad died when I was ten and then my mother died when I was sixteen. It has been a long journey to rediscover those dreams, but I know now that they never really die and they can be reborn.
Ask yourself, if money was no object and you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you love to do? Jot down whatever thoughts or ideas come to you and explore the possibilities without any constraints.
Play make believe. When we were little we believed anything was possible. Spend some time day dreaming and dive into that wild mind of yours and have some fun imagining some what-ifs.
Sift through all of the challenges and use it all as contrast to help you get clear about what you really want. If you stay focused on the problem, you’ll keep getting more of the same right back at you.

If you need a little help in sorting through it all and figuring out what you want to be when you grow up, then give me a call or email me to find out more about coaching and receive a free 20 minute coaching call.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions about the YouTube video!

When the Bully is You!

January 29, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

And by you, I mean me.

I’ve been procrastinating about writing this article for about a month now because it’s rather humbling to discover that after lecturing about self-esteem and empowerment to teen girls for over a decade that the bully was actually me.

But after reading an article in the Boston Globe the other day about Phoebe Prince, a fifteen year old girl who committed suicide after being bullied at school by the so-called “mean girls,” I knew that the time had come to tell this story. I hope to shed a different light on the topic of girls and bullying in order to better understand both perspectives and to help heal both the bullies and the bullied.

I’ve never been one to hop on the anti-bullying crusade because I have learned that whatever we push against, we actually bring more of the same back into our experience. In other words, what we resist persists. Mother Teresa understood this universal law of cause and effect and was well known for never attending anti-war protests and would only attend peace rallies. Our thoughts become our experiences so becoming outraged and pushing back against the mean girls is a losing battle and one that I choose not to participate in.

Every girl I know has been bullied in some way to various degrees. And if we are being totally honest, we have all probably bullied someone else too and like my own recent revelation, perhaps you were never really aware of it.

This past fall I received a friend request on Facebook from a girl I went to junior and senior high school with. When I saw her name I actually cringed as she and I did not get along nor did we hang out in the same circles. To put it bluntly, I couldn’t stand her. Susan was such a goody two shoes, always trying too hard. She was the girl who would raise her hand and remind the teacher about a quiz we were supposed to have that day.

I didn’t friend her immediately, but mentioned it to my friend Elaine who also went to school with us. When I said the other girl’s name, Elaine said with such compassion, “Oh, as I recall, people were not very kind to her in high school.” As I drove home from Elaine’s that day I thought to myself, Hell, I probably wasn’t that kind to her… that girl drove me nuts! My very next thought was that I owed her an amends because I am not the same person I was in high school and looking back I could see that Susan was just so desperate to be good enough and to fit in - and I knew that feeling well.

When I friended her, I included a note and apologized for the way I treated her in high school. Here’s what I wrote:

I remember you well Susan and I remember never being very kind to you. I’m really sorry. For most of my life I suffered from low self-esteem and I took every opportunity to tear others down in order to try and artificially build myself back up. Although it’s no excuse, my dad died when I was ten and my mother was an
angry, abusive, lonely and sick widow with five kids. She died when I was 16 and left me with a gaping hole inside of me and desperate to fill it up - so I chose anger, drugs and alcohol.

When Susan responded she told me about her own challenges that she faced as she maneuvered her way through school:

Although no one ever knew it, I was being abused by my father all through school. I’ve worked incredibly hard to heal through the scars left and to realize who I am meant to be, but I also happen to feel like that is a life long mission, and somewhere in us, no matter how old we are, is this little girl who can easily sabotage us if we give her a voice.

Then she added:

I was estranged from my parents for 13 years and am still estranged from my Dad. My mom and dad divorced 3 years ago and my mom came back into our lives. I forced her into some counseling with me to help her heal a bit. During one of those sessions, my counselor asked her if she had ever believed me when I told her what my dad was doing. She responded that that was why she sent me to counseling as a teenager. When prompted a bit more, she said I had come home from school telling her of being bullied by kids at school and that she had called one of the mothers to talk about it. The mother told her I must be lying so she decided to get me some counseling. That was your Mom, BTW. So in this very random and bizarre way, there was good that came out of it.

It just goes to show you that you never know what kind of burdens someone else is carrying. I teach girls that all the time - that it takes nothing to be kind, and your words can either build someone up or tear them down.

This story also paints a revealing portrait of the insecurities of a bully. For the most part, bullies see in their victims something about themselves that they secretly hate or are unwilling to look at and accept. As with me and Susan, her desperate attempt to be good enough was like a mirror being held up to me and I just couldn’t look at it - so instead I lashed out from a place of defensive fear. We were actually more alike than we were different. We were both desperately looking for love, we both felt unworthy of that love, we both felt abandonment and loss and we attracted each other like magnets.

Since the story broke about the suicide of Phoebe Prince, there have been hundreds of blog posts, articles, legislative joint panels targeting bully prevention and in South Hadley, MA, letters from parents and residents prompted the creation of an antibullying task force at the high school. Every outcry is fueled by anger, outrage, pain and fear.

But how is any of this truly helping the situation if in fact that what we resist persists? Pushing against bullying is only creating more of the same. Our thoughts create what we see - wanted or not. What we see creates our experience and if we just keep focusing on what is and saying things like “We must put things in place to stop this bullying” we are still focused on the experience and therefore that is still what we are thinking about and as a result we will continue to see more of the same.

So what can we do?

We must shift our thoughts away from what we don’t want and hold a vision of every girl finding her true power and learning how to tap into the source of her higher power for her guidance. What we don’t need is more anti anything. What we do need and what is most lacking in our culture is a return to spiritual values and a return to love. To me, God is love and yet God gave us the freedom of choice. So when we are consciously choosing love, we are allowing the grace of God to flow into the situation. Grace, simply put is the unmerited and unconditional love and strength of God that can and will heal any situation.

We must let go of playing the blame game. Whenever we are pointing a finger out there, there are always three more pointing right back at us. Years ago, I read a book called “Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood.” The author, Wayne Mueller told about the time he was asked to head a task force in California following the Rodney King beatings and trial and the ongoing riots in LA. His only stipulation for heading up this coalition was that everyone involved must commit to letting go of blame. The parents were blaming the schools, the educators were blaming the legislators, the cops were blaming the kids and the kids were blaming all of the above. No healing can happen as long as we hold onto the blame. We must take responsibility for the fact that we are sad, hurt or afraid and then learn to shift those thoughts from the contrast back to what it is we want. Otherwise we are simply participants in the no-win vicious cycle.

If you are being bullied - you must take responsibility for letting go of the victim mindset by understanding where your true power comes from. As difficult as this may sound, you must be willing to forgive and yes, even love the bully. Hurt people hurt people. See the bully with a giant bandaid on their forehead and know that they are trying to get their power by making you feel less than. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” When you let go and surrender your thoughts of being victimized, it’s like putting down the rope in a tug of war and the bully is simply holding a limp rope with no resistance and no power surge left to be had.

If you are the bully - get in touch with your real, underlying feelings for why you do what you do. Everything we do is either an act of love or a call for love. Bullying others in a strange way is simply a call for love. That power rush that you feel by making others feel less than is fleeting and it will never be enough nor will it sustain you and guide you towards becoming the magnificent person you were born to be. That kind of power can only be found by connecting to your own higher power - the source of all love, joy, well-being and prosperity. Make amends and say you’re sorry and then most importantly forgive yourself. You will be amazed at the new sense of freedom and power you feel as you let the grace of God flow into your heart.

If you are the parent of a bully or the bullied - the first thing you must do is heal your own mind and conditioned thoughts so that your reactions are not being filtered through the lens of blame, guilt, shame and buried wounds from your own past. Once we do that we can let go of the need to defend the actions of our children which comes from a place of fear and insecurity about how it reflects back to us and our parenting skills. We can then step back objectively and be fully present and available to our kids who, whether they are the bully or the bullied, are both crying out for unconditional love.

I wish I had had the opportunity to coach Phoebe and teach her to find her own inner power and strength. But perhaps Phoebe played a bigger role than any of us can even imagine and that she gave her life to bring a new awareness into the world. That is the thought I choose to embrace and to remember that the only thing I have power over is my own thoughts. Today I choose thoughts of love and forgiveness and that makes one less bully in the world today.

note: Susan has given me permission to use her name and share our story. We have met several times now for tea and healing and she is very open with her story as well as her love and forgiveness.

Parents: Giving Advice to Tweens & Teens

March 5, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

finger wagging doesn't work
Finger wagging advice NEVER works!

The other day I received a request from a journalist who is writing an article for Good Housekeeping and she was looking for tips on how to give advice to tweens and teens. Being right up my alley, I immediately dashed off an email with 9 tips that absolutely flowed out of me and onto the page. I still haven’t heard back from the writer as to whether or not she’ll be quoting me in her article and the way it usually works is you find out just before the publication goes to print. I’m not holding my breath, but just happy to have been asked and figured I may as well share that information with all of you instead of waiting for the article to come out.

So here’s what I wrote to her:

My name is Kathleen Hassan and I am known as The Teen Confidence Coach. I speak at schools, youth conferences and mother/daughter events all over the country. I give lots of advice to teens and tweens as I receive emails daily from girls all over the world… and the best part of all is that they actually listen to me and reach out for help! I have an “Ask” button on my website and encourage girls to email me their burning questions. I answer them either directly via email, in my blog or in a video on YouTube. They really want to be guided and they are desperate for some answers and for some relief from their inner struggle of not being or feeling good enough – just the way they are.

Here are some tips/strategies that I use, and suggest to parents for open communication and for doling out advice:

Be honest and dare to be vulnerable. Share your own experiences as an example of what worked – and what didn’t.
Don’t think you have to know the answers – it’s more about helping them find their truth and providing them with an opportunity to learn how to trust themselves and look within for their own inner guidance.
WIIFM – tweens, teens and everyone for that matter wears a set of imaginary head phones that are tuned into station WIIFM: What’s In It For Me? Make sure to explain and demonstrate how your advice, ideas and suggestions will benefit them.
Avoid the word “should” such as “You should do this… or that”. Absolutely no one likes to be “should” on.
Really listen and affirm what they are going through. For example, if an 11 year old girl gets caught up in the drama of boys and dating and asks “What should I do? The boy I’m crushing on likes someone else!” The last thing you want to do is to pooh-pooh her and say something like “Oh honey, you’re only 11, there will be plenty of time for boys.” Instead, say something like “Wow, I can see that you really like this guy. Tell me what you like about him” or “I can see you’re really struggling with this whole dating thing, let’s talk about it.”
Hire a coach for your daughter. (I have a list of the Top 10 Reasons to Hire a Life Coach for Your Daughter on my website) Girls tend to listen to someone who isn’t their mother! I was recently coaching a twenty-something school teacher who was feeling exhausted and run down. I suggested she might want to think about taking vitamins to supplement her diet. When her mother found out she said “Sarah, I’ve been trying to get you to take vitamins for years and suddenly your coach suggests it, and now you’re taking vitamins?!”
Attend mother/daughter workshops together. A good facilitator asks thought provoking questions that invoke deep and meaningful conversations.
Help them get clear about what they really want while identifying any erroneous or limiting beliefs about the situation. For example, she might think that “everyone has a boyfriend” or “there’s something wrong with me because I don’t have a boyfriend.”
Help them see into the future and think through their decisions. In Alcoholics Anonymous, people in recovery are encouraged to “think through the drink” so they don’t make an emotional decision in the heat of the moment. Ask what their decision will cost them in the long run? The teen brain isn’t fully developed and as a result, they lack the ability to think in the moment. So it is vital that you help them to see in advance what may happen in various scenarios and show they how their decisions and choices could play out.

Please feel free to comment and add your tips and strategies for offering advice to your kids!

Posted in Character Development | Life Skills | Parents | Trust |
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Parents & Teens: Is it OK to Snoop on Your Child?

February 1, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

My friend and colleague, Robert Siciliano is an expert on Personal Security and is often called upon by the media to share his insights regarding Identity Theft and Credit Card fraud. But I just received an email from Robert announcing that tomorrow 2/2/09 he’ll be on the Tyra Banks Show to teach Moms how to successfully snoop on their teen daughters!

Below is Robert’s announcement and I‘ll weigh in my comments after watching the show. I’ve highlighted the text that resonates with me and my gut reaction is that if you get to the point that you need to snoop, then you haven’t spent enough time developing your own inner trust muscles. As within, so it is without. In other words, what ever you’re seeing outside of yourself is a direct reflection of what is going on inside of you.

“Monday 2/2 the Tyra Banks show “Mom Police” Featuring Robert Siciliano features moms who go to extremes to spy on their kids! These snoopy moms admit to reading their girls’ diaries and going through their cell phones and personal things. Plus, one mom wants to know where her child is at all times — and secretly plants a tracking device on her!Like all daytime talk, its a tad sensational, and done well. What parent hasn’t snooped on their child at some point? I know my parents did, for good reason!!

Some moms simply search draws and closets, others interrogate and pat down. And with advances in snooping technology, many parents are installing computer monitoring software, tracking kids on GPS cell phones and others are monitoring their child’s text messages either remotely or right on the phone bill.

Snooping is done to protect the child from themselves, from others, and to give the parent peace of mind.

My role is to demonstrate various snooping technologies. I walk a mom through a few tools to monitor her somewhat out of control 15 year old daughter.

There may be a lack of trust, paranoia, fear, or good reason to snoop on your kids. Sometimes parents who fear, use love as an excuse to snoop. Either way, there seems to be a breach of trust between parent and child when snooping occurs (or when the child finds out).

My children are young, so I have no need to snoop. Will I? Neither you or my child will ever know. ~ Unless of course my child snoops on me and I end up on Tyra.

If you are a parent and have time to Tivo or watch live, I think you find this to be entertaining and educational as well.”

Keep Out Diary
Keep Out!

Posted in Parents | Self-Esteem | Trust |
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We Are One ~ Yes We Can!

January 20, 2009 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

I am in awe of the entire inauguration. My hope is that parents use this as an opportunity to open up meaningful communication with their kids and will focus on the underlying message of love and faith that was so clearly demonstrated throughout each speech, song and prayer.

My greatest concern and greatest hope for our nation is in the hands of the young women of our country. It astounds me that during the inauguration I still received emails from teen girls who are struggling with inner conflict. Until we help these young women to heal, there is no possible way for them to espouse what is to me the greatest quote of today’s proceedings, “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

I watched part of it through CNN and Facebook and am astounded by this new technology which allowed me to be part of something bigger than just me at my computer. But then I switched to the TV and sat there weeping and applauding and a few times jumped up and gave a standing ovation.

God bless America – Indeed!! What an amazing moment in history. I’m so thankful to be a part of it all.

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