Girls and Guidance

 February 8, 2010 by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

A week doesn’t go by without receiving an email (or several) from girls desperately looking for guidance. The details of their stories may differ, but the essence of each request is exactly the same: “Please help!” Help me figure out if I should tell this guy how I feel… Help me learn how to be more confident around other people… Help me figure out what my next step should be… Help me get along better with my mom.

There was a time when I would personally answer each request and offer suggestions about how they might move through their challenge. This could easily have turned into a full time job if I let it, so I decided to reach more girls who might be going through the very same challenges by posting my responses on my blog or by creating videos on YouTube. Not only would I be helping more girls, but I was also setting gentle boundaries for myself so that I didn’t feel so obligated to personally respond to every single cry for help.

As much as I love hearing from these girls, what I love even more is to empower and teach them how to turn inward and trust their own inner guidance for their next right step or direction so they won’t have to keep looking outside of themselves for their answers. It reminds me of the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

Call it intuition, divine guidance, an inner voice or simply a quiet knowing, each of us has the ability to access a source of wisdom that will lead us to the next right step. Learning how to access it and then trust it is something that requires both practice and patience.

Here are some steps you can take to begin to make that connection and tap into your own inner guidance.

Develop a daily practice of sitting still and quieting your mind.

Carve out five to ten minutes each day to just be. Make this time sacred by lighting a candle, listening to soft music and focusing on your breathing. You may not notice any immediate answers or see any dramatic changes at first. After you’ve been practicing and developing this habit for awhile, it will begin to have a cumulative effect and you will start to notice a clarity of mind and your answers will come to you as a hunch or in a flash of inspiration. An additional step to making this practice stick is to actually have an uncluttered sacred space to practice your daily ritual. 

Get in the habit of writing in a diary or journal either every morning or evening.

In Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way,” she recommends writing morning pages to get the creative juices flowing. She asks you to commit to writing 3 pages each day. In the beginning you may just be writing things like “how the heck am I going to fill up three whole pages?”, but eventually the words will begin to flow. Once you get the hang of it, you can write out a question and then like magic, guidance will spill out onto the page. 

Ask for divine guidance.

Develop a relationship with your own concept of a higher power and then have a conversation and ask for help. Many christians live their lives and receive their next right step by asking WWJD? or What Would Jesus Do? If you were brought up in a different faith you can simply ask the question, “What would love do?” To me that means the very same thing because I believe that God is love and when you align your actions with love, then you can never go wrong and your answer will come from the ultimate authority and source of all truth.
 

Here are a few important reminders as well as the benefits to receiving guidance:

Don’t try to solve big problems all at once.

All you need to do is look for the next right step and then take action on that guidance. It’s like driving in the dark with only your headlights to light your way. You can’t see the final destination, and yet you get there by seeing only the next 200 feet in front of you.

Pay attention to the signals your body is sending you.

We each have our own built-in GPS system that lets us know when we’re off course. If something doesn’t feel right to you, then it probably isn’t the right choice for you.

You have to stay alert when you’re seeking guidance.

It will show up in all sorts of ways and you could miss it if you’re not noticing the signs along the way. One of the benefits of practicing the suggestions mentioned above is that you develop what is known as mindfulness as you become fully engaged and take an active role in the creation of a fabulous life instead of letting life happen to you.

Adolescence is about learning to take responsibility (response ability). In other words, developing the ability to respond to whatever happens and to deal with it by making your own decisions. Probably the biggest payoff to developing your own internal guidance system is that along the way, you start to strengthen your own inner trust muscles and the result is self-confidence. An added bonus to that is when you start to trust yourself then others begin to trust you too. How cool would it be if instead of complaining that your parents don’t trust you to make good decisions, you could effortlessly gain their trust by practicing these few simple steps.

Remember, there’s nothing wrong with asking for advice. But never take that advice without first running it through your own internal guidance system to make sure it’s the next right step for you.

There are lots of free downloads available on my site to help you connect to your own guidance, as well as some cd’s and mp3’s you can purchase that will also help you learn how to harness the power of your mind to create a life you love!

NOTE: In my next blog post, I’ll be delving deeper into the topic of divine guidance and angelic assistance. One girl recently asked me how she could connect to her “angles and sprite guides.” Spelling, structure and grammar aside, I was thrilled that she wanted to learn more about her “angels and spirit guides” in an effort to connect to her own inner wisdom and truth.

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Posted in Life Skills | Personal Power | Self-Confidence | Spirituality | Trust |
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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.

 

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Posted in Mother/Daughter | Parents | Personal Power | Self-Esteem | Teen Girls |
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When Bad is So Good

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

What do rockers Keri Hilson, Gwen Stefani and Katy Perry have in common? Besides the obvious of being extremely talented, they have all landed on the celebrity client wish list of those “baddest” girls that up-and-coming designer, Samantha Ferguson would love to see wearing her Donnaccia clothing line.

Can’t you just see Gwen Stefani or Keri Hilson rocking this skirt? 

Imagine Katy Perry on the red carpet wearing this beautiful dress? 

I met Samantha Ferguson while speaking at the Young Women’s Leadership Conference in York, PA. Samantha is a member of SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) and was one of the models who rocked the fashion show demonstrating how to get the look for less by consignment shopping. As always, I am so inspired and fascinated by young women with a vision which Samantha clearly has. During lunch she told me about her business and brand but with only a few minutes before the next group of girls were to arrive, I still wanted to know more so I asked if we could do a follow up interview for my blog. 

Kathleen:

What’s the name of your fashion design company and how long have you been designing fashion?

Samantha:

Donnaccia is the name of my line and company. I’ve been designing for about 3 years now on a part-time basis while taking classes at York College as a full-time student.

Kathleen:

Who are your favorite designers?

Samantha:

fave designers are; New york Couture (Cassie Kogler) - because everything is unique and she is a hustlin’ and bustlin’ girl like me, she has a very unique and dramatic style ♥ it lol and Betsey Johnson very awkward stuff sometimes, which is different from the norm, stuff that is unusual is very attention grabbing, i don’t like to do what everyone else is doing.

Kathleen:

When did you decide you wanted to be a fashion designer?

Samantha:

I designed my prom dress, and my mom made it. I designed my own dress because there were not any dresses that were my style, and I did not want to blend in with everyone else, I wanted the dress to be memorable, something no one ever saw before. After prom I thought about designing but I was in college and doing a lot of homework. I started taking entrepreneurial classes in my sophomore year which helped me build my dreams into ideas and finally into opportunities.

Kathleen:

Who’s your ideal client and what kind of woman would wear your designs?

Samantha:

I target women who are ‘bad’ though bad in a good way. Strong and independent women/ladies are my target client. I target women who like to be noticed for there achievements, who are not afraid of showing who they are, who are breaking the class ceilings in corporate america yet still having fun. The women/ladies I see wearing my clothes are those that are very influential and willing to play with the boys. I greatly respect women who are independent and not conforming to the norms of society.

Kathleen:

What is your vision or future goals for your design company?

Samantha:

I want to eventually own a boutique. I want to own a boutique that’s half a salon. Salons are important to strong women, to make them feel beautiful and a good place to throw around ideas for entrepreneurs.

Kathleen:

What advice do you have for girls who are interested in a career in fashion?

Samantha:

First, learn a little bit about business. I’ve talked to a lot of fashion designers and they told me that now they have to hire people to run the business for them. Second, try to define yourself from other designers, have a key aspect that your customers will remember you for. Lastly, always have a clear vision of your dreams!

Kathleen:

What companies or designers have you interned for?

Samantha:

I am currently interning from a small business; Bowling Concepts LLC, an online clothing retailer of custom embroidered bowling shirts and retro shirts, and also a western wear website that retails western clothing. I work closely with the owner of the company (an entrepreneur) and learned and am still learning a lot about running my own company.

Kathleen:

Do you have any aspirations to try out for Project Runway or the new show called Launch My Line?

Samantha:

oh, yeah! it would be a great experience and a fun challenge! i would love to do the things that people on the show do, i would love to meet new people, expand my horizons, and also challenge my talents. and develop my designing skills.

Kathleen:

How can someone purchase your clothes?

Samantha:

online at onlyforthebaddest.com, on myspace and find me on facebook

Kathleen:

Your tag line says Bad Clothes for Bad Girls and can you tell me about the line only for the baddest?”

Samantha:

only for the baddest is about uplifting women to be the best they can be in an edgy way. Bad is not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good. A bad girl is one that does not conform to the norms of society and pushes beyond expectations.

Kathleen:

Where do you think your bold sense of confidence comes from?

Samantha:

I never really thought about where my confidence came from. I just know I am in control of my own fate so whatever i do can effect my future and I make decisions according to that. I set goals for myself, both short term and long term and then I set out to accomplish them. That way I am continually challenging myself to grow.

Kathleen:

Any final message for young girls who might be looking up to you?

Samantha:

My message to young girls is to not let other people influence the aspirations they have for their future. More often than not very talented young girls are influenced to do things to satisfy other people, when they should be focused on satisfying themselves. I want girls to know that if you stick to your goals you will achieve them, and let your haters be your motivators.

Samantha Ferguson is certainly someone to watch and follow - so why not follow her on Twitter? @Donnaccia2bad

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Posted in Coaching | Personal Power | Risk-Taking | Self-Confidence |
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