Jaclyn Beckerman Coaching

Life doesn’t have to go as planned.

We tend to think that things should or need to go a certain way based on how we envisioned our future to be.

But the truth is, most of the best things that can happen to you don’t come out of some life plan you made up before something new and great presented itself.

If an opportunity really excites you or you’re passionate about it or it brings you joy, and it is in line with your values in life, why wouldn’t you take it? What’s stopping you?

Well for most people, it’s fear.  Fear of things not working out or it being the wrong decision, sure.  But more paralyzing is the fear of the unknown.

The unknown scares us because we haven’t envisioned it.  And since we don’t know what it looks like, we therefore don’t feel comfortable or safe.

But consider this: the unknown is where opportunity exists.

So if you have the opportunity to do something that inspires you, would make you immeasurably happy or betters your future, and there is any conceivable way to make it happen, I dare you to take the leap.

Worst case scenario? It doesn’t work out.

Ooooh scary…

But so what?

Everyone is afforded a blank slate to start over whenever they need it.  An inherent fact of life is that it’s always moving forward. It is not obligatory that you drag your past experience along with you like an overstuffed bag of unneeded luggage, for which you’re paying a significant amount extra. Take only the golden nuggets that serve you and walk lighter and with a more empowered sense of what works for you into the vast blank canvas of your future.

If you never go for what inspires you, for what you want, you certainly never get it. Inspiration – Action = No results.

I left a full time job to become a life coach.  After a year and a half of continually growing my business, I owned up to what I really wanted which was to travel.  After passing through some nerves and a couple months of consideration, I decided I would travel around the world for nearly 2 years and started planning. About half way though my trip, I fell in love with the most incredible man I’ve ever known and have decided my next step will be to move all the way to South Africa to be with him, and we are maintaining and building that relationship all while I continue to finish the travels I’d set out to do, knowing I would regret it if I didn’t.  All of those have had varying levels of being scary, but they were also amazing opportunities that inspired me and were in line with what I ultimately value in life: joy, love and peace.

And the beauty in it is that they irrefutably fed into one another. I wouldn’t have summoned the courage to disregard what was expected of me and live my dream of traveling the world without having done the transformational work I received through coaching.  And I wouldn’t have met the man of my dreams if my travels hadn’t brought me all the way to South Africa, a place I’d wanted to visit for years.

So if you’ve created an opportunity for yourself in life for which you’re teetering on the fence of indecision, consider choosing the side that ignites your spirit.  Choose the path where you don’t have it all figured out and don’t know how it will go, that may surprise you with even more amazing opportunities and gifts than you could have even imagined.

Let me know how it goes…

I think that New Year’s resolutions perhaps do more harm than good.  They put a sort of all or nothing type pressure on us that more often than not leads us to give up anyway.

In fact, we pretty much expect that we’ll give up.

With that said, why make a resolution? Year after year, we continue to resolve ourselves to something we know we won’t likely take seriously anyway.

So this year, I propose instead declaring a theme for the year.  Choose something that you can try to keep present in your daily life and that will ultimately increase your sense of joy, satisfaction or well being.

This year my theme will be gratitude.  Getting present to it and expressing it on a daily basis.

I’m getting rid of the all or nothing and instead setting the stage for something.  Something that could make a difference..

What will your theme be for 2012?

I included this awhile back on my travel blog and thought it was worth including here too.

I had an insight with my coach that although I very much enjoy writing, and I share with people that I’d like to write books, I’ve simultaneously, repeatedly, avoided it like the plague.  I recently realized something game changing.  Just as I’ve done with many other areas in my life, the reason I didn’t want to write was because I compared myself to the world of writers I don’t even know and haven’t even read. Essentially I was comparing myself to any author that has ever been published and successfully sold enough books to make a profit and deeming myself as inferior to each and every one of them. Telling myself that they’re better or smarter and I couldn’t be like that.

From there, I made a decision, based on what some hidden part of myself believed to be true, that I shouldn’t bother because it didn’t really matter anyway.  I related to it as if I didn’t have a shot and nothing I had to say was really worth sharing.

I clearly didn’t realize I was doing this.  Now, the thing is, just the realization of this on it’s own has no real implication to impact having things go any differently.  What instigates change is the willingness to shift your perspective and TAKE ACTION.

It didn’t hurt that I could get present to other areas of my life which I know I’ve already completely transformed such as friendships and coaching.  I shifted these areas by distinguishing the inequality I’d created in viewing the situation as me vs. everyone else, and doing the work to build awareness around seeing and “getting” that I am just as good and just as capable as anyone else.  But there had been a starting point for those as well.  Seeing the stagnant, rigid way you viewed things previously along with a willingness to practice looking at them from a new perspective, or even creating a new perspective, is the initial access point to transforming your relationship to the very thing you’ve been coming up against.

In this particular case for myself, I created practices around taking a deeper look at my confidence in my writing and a commitment to write something, no matter how brief or long, or whether it would be shared or just for me, every single day.  The other practice I took on was noticing every time I use the words “have to” or “need to” in my head or aloud and then repeating the same thing replacing those terms with “want to” or “going to”.  From there, writing every day has been EASY and fun!  I get to express myself and share freely without all the judgment I was previously tagging on to every word written.

Take a look at where you compare yourself to others.  Note what areas you do this in.  To whom are you comparing yourself?  To friends?  To a particular person? To a generalized group of people?  To an entire industry of folks?  How is it serving you to make those comparisons? What might a neutral relationship to others in each scenario look like? Or what if you allowed yourself the gift of seeing your equality.

There are an abundance of ways to objectively observe this pattern of thinking.  Take some time and just reflect on some of the questions above.  Or even better, take a moment and get present to your own questions that arise from considering the ways this (or something like it) shows up for you.

Change your thinking, change your results…

So as you know I’ve started my journey to travel around the world.  It’s been over a month and a half now and I’ve driven cross-country with a couple girlfriends, spent an incredible week at Burning Man, tasted my way through San Francisco along with what turned out to be a very close new friend, spent almost 2 weeks in LA at my sister Jen’s having more quality time with her than ever and loving it, and spent a few days in San Diego before heading back to LA to stay with Jen for another week.  Tomorrow I’m off to Austin, TX for 5 days for a friends wedding, then back in LA for 2 short days and then I fly to Peru on Oct 13.

It has all been absolutely amazing.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed while traveling is that it forces you to be in the moment.  There are always incredible things you’ve done in the past but they’re no longer happening.  (And if there was any drama or not-so-incredible incidents, those too are behind you).  There is an unbelievable abundance of amazing things to come but they’re not happening yet and it’s almost a little overwhelming (and scary) to think about them much as it’s such an enormous journey to take on.  This leaves me at ‘now’, the present moment, front and center.

This has been the most poignant lesson in the joy, satisfaction and contentment of being present.  Many great philosophers point to it.  Your fear, your worry, your anxiety, they’re all attached to either something that already happened or something you’re assuming, expecting or fearing will come.  None of that exists in the present moment because the present moment is based on nothing.  It just is as it is.

Being in the now allows for you to fully experience your life as it’s actually happening.  This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make plans for your life, goals and whatnot.  You should.  But within those goals, and within the markers you set for yourself within that, the opportunity is to relish ALL of it.  Not just look for what you perceive to be positive or the end point.

So many people are never satisfied with the process or with the progress they’re making.  Nothing is ever fast enough, big enough or good enough.  Or on the other end of the spectrum, it’s too fast, too overwhelming or too much to handle.  None of that is presence though.  It’s all based on either fears about the past or fears about the future, fears of your own capacity not being big enough or sufficient.

But you’ve already got everything you need.  You have the ability to BE anyone you want and to create anything you say because you’re that powerful.  You are no different than the Bill Gates or the Donald Trumps of the world because anything they’ve ever had the capacity for, so do you.  We all start out the same.  You may have different gifts or talents, but you can express and capitalize on them in the same way if you choose to.

But a truly rich life?  That comes from relishing every moment of it.  Experiencing it fully.  Every ounce of joy, every tear, every human interaction, every bit of anger expressed.  It’s ALL meant to be part of the experience or you wouldn’t be experiencing it.  One emotion isn’t better than another, they’re just emotions.

If you truly want to know where peace and happiness come from you have to look within.  It’s not from trying to avoid experiences you deem as negative or uncomfortable.  That is precisely where your pain stems from in the first place.  Content comes from embracing them.  Allowing and being with them.  Not trying to circumvent them or explaining life away as good or bad, but rather relishing it all.

Everything you’ve every wanted, the experience of life you’ve always wished for, exists in being in the present moment, embracing everything life already consists of.  What will you embrace today?

Hello folks – it’s been awhile, I know.  I apologize for falling off the radar.  It’s been an amazing and very busy summer filled with friends, fun, inspiration and adventure.  As many of you know I’m off to travel the world for a year and a half and my journey essentially begins Sunday.

Here’s the breakdown… I’m driving cross-country for a week with a couple friends, going to a festival in Nevada for a week, CA for a month, Austin, TX for 5 days, then South America for 6 1/2 months.  In South America I’ll be going to Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil then in Central America, Panama and Costa Rica.  Then I’ll return to NY/NJ for 2 months to visit friends and family.  Then Africa (South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe & Egypt – perhaps more) for 2-3 months and Southeast Asia (India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam & Indonesia) for 6-7 months.  Phew!

I’ll be starting another blog just to update everyone on my life in transit and will note the web address on here for those who are interested and want to follow.

I will still be coaching/working with clients while I travel and I already have the phone issue sorted out.

So why am I sharing this here? Here’s the thing – I’ve had countless people express to me how envious they are of my life.  What I tell them?  If you want it too, do it. The life you live depends solely on the choices you make.  So what DO you want?

The fact that I am now taking on my life’s dream of world travel was NOT predictable 2 years ago.  Before I started coaching and being coached, doing the work to get out of my own way and create a life I love – where my fears don’t run the show – I was slighty uncomfortable going to the movies or dinner alone.  Traveling the world by myself would have been unthinkable.  I’ve always been pretty independent but if you told me this would be my life 2 years ago I would have wistfully laughed and sighed “I wish”.

What I’ve learned is that your life is happening now.  You cannot wait for someone else to hand you the life you want.  Or for it to just fall in your lap.  You will spend your whole life waiting.  You have to commit to creating it and then actually do what you say you’re going to do.  Take the actions there are to take.  Figure out what you want – set a date for by when it will happen and put one foot in front of the other.

If you want world travel, buy an around the world travel guide and start planning.  If you want the relationship of your dreams, play a game with yourself of how many dates you can go on in a week.  If you hate your job, re-vamp your resume and start sending it out today.  It is no one’s responsibility but your own to create the things you want in your life.  No one will do it for you – they’re too busy moaning and groaning about not having the life THEY want.

Stop talking about living a great life and start living it.  The time is always now.  And you are more than capable. Walk the talk.

So I’ve realized (with the help of some coaching) that I’ve got a serious layer of protection called “I don’t care/it doesn’t really matter/whatever”.  I use this to numb out to the consequences of not taking the actions I say I’m going to take or to not have to really be committed (with both feet in) to what I claim I’m committed to.

What this covers up is that I really deeply DO care (if I didn’t, I would have stopped talking about it ages ago).  AND I’m convinced that I’ll be devastated and get my heart broken because it inevitably won’t work out.  The ‘it’ could be anywhere from making a difference with people and getting people to stand for world peace to building my coaching practice to creating the relationships I want in all capacities such as romantic, friendships and with family.

The ironic thing is that the impact of this on me is that I end up feeling frustrated irritated, and really disappointed in both myself and others.  There’s also impacts on specific areas of my life like friendships, romantic life, my coaching practice, my family, etc.  And with me being that way I imagine it leaves others feeling left in the dark, disconnected, hurt and confused or even oblivious.

This isn’t how I want to live my life.  And I’m really well practiced at it.

So what I’m up to is thawing this ice that is covering the oasis below.  What I’m committed to is being a contribution everywhere.

Being a contribution doesn’t have to take a lot of effort and isn’t thwarted by not wanting to or feeling like it because it’s a way of being.  And it’s a choice to create or generate that way of being moment-by-moment.

What’s an act or shtick you can see you’re putting on in your own life?  What’s the thing you do to avoid getting hurt? What is that a facade for or what are you hiding from people (and maybe even yourself) that it covers up?  What’s the impact of that on yourself and others?  Actually let yourself really get present to and experience the impact.  Then decide if that’s what you’re committed to or if you want to create something else.

Every moment of every day you have to opportunity to create something different for yourself.  Is today going to be just one more iteration of how it always goes or will you have today be the day that you bring it to a full stop and create something else?  Invent a new perspective on life. Take a new action in line with it.  Tell people you’re giving up the crappy way you were being before and tell them what you’re creating instead.

Watch your life transform.

I notice that when I don’t relate to someone as their greatness or their highest self, when I instead see their faults or see them as their fear-based self, that it causes them to relate to me the same way. That is, they then see me as MY fear-based self instead of as the powerful and loving person I know myself capable of being.

This is because the reason I’m relating to them as their fear-based self is because I’m BEING my own fear-based self. I’m getting caught up in my own insecurities about not being good enough or needing their approval or to be liked and am then relating to them from that place.

Now, I know what I just said may have been somewhat wordy and possibly a bit confusing. The core of what I’m saying is that when you are coming from your fears or insecurities, you bring that out in others. And they then relate to you from and as those fears and insecurities.

When you are authentically coming from love and compassion, they will often come from that place as well and will relate to you that way.

Seems pretty simple right? If you always related to everyone from a place of love, you would bring that out in them as well and they would then relate to you as that. Which I’ll assert is the way you want them to relate to you anyway.

You can’t expect someone to relate to you with loving kindness if you don’t relate to them that way. (And ‘acting’ loving and compassionate as a strategy to get them to do the same, on top of your fears and insecurities, doesn’t count. It doesn’t count because it’s not an authentic expression of love if it’s still based out of fear.)

The beauty in this is that it is true not just for your partner or your friends, but for everyone. For that boss you just can’t seem to get along with, for you mother (who you love but likely don’t always relate to from love), to your neighbor who drives you nuts, whoever.

And yes, YOU are the one who has to ‘do all the work’, who has to take responsibility for your relationships. It is never another persons job to change. You lose all of the power you have to transform your relationships and your life by putting it on someone else and saying they should do it for you (or instead of you, or even that they should do it too). Love begets love. You bring it, they’ll produce it too. And even if they don’t, it won’t really matter, because who you’ll be being is love. Your experience of them will still be completely transformed.

Consider also that in relationships that have been heavily fear-based or where coming from love has been weak or absent, you will likely not get instant gratification. It may take some practice and some time. This isn’t a 100% game. You will always have fears show up here and there. But start noticing where you’re coming from with people and how it directly correlates to how they are with you.

When you start to BE the person you want to be with, whatever relationship that is for, they will start to relate to you differently, and your relationship will transform.

What I’ve found is that the moment I acknowledge that I’m in the midst of a breakdown, or said differently – some sort of roadblock (whether internal or external) on the path to my commitment, it starts to dissipate.  I fairly recently was in one of these for a good week and a half before actually recognizing it and owning that that was where I was.  The moment I did, I was able to see that I’d just been hanging out there and not being responsible for having it be that way.  It gave me the space to start moving through it.  It wasn’t instantaneous, and I was still in process around it for a bit (in fact there’s parts of it that I am still in process around), but it did immediately start to shift my energy and provide access to a gigantic breakthrough on the other side, bigger than I’d been aware of there being.

Essentially the breakthrough available is in having things be about others.  In giving up living my life like it’s all about me, and being the contribution that I’m capable of being.  I’ve been told that 99% of people live their lives like it’s all about them.  Yet based on what I’ve chosen to do with my life as a coach, and the difference I want to make in the world, I can’t be one of those people.  I’ve hit my capacity for it.

I’ve had it that if I have it be all about others, I’ll lose myself and what I want to what they want.

Yet when my connection to others is out, and it’s all about me, I get caught up in my own nonsense and interpretations.

I already know how to connect with myself and my own needs.  What I recently realized is that if I have it be about others (and Spirit), then that actually builds my power and my identity.  Which will inevitably lead to my getting what I want in the end as well, in fact it’s the only way to truly get what I want.  I have to trust that I am receiving as I am giving, even though I likely don’t know what that receiving will be or become.

This requires me to commit to creating deep and authentic connections to others.  Through this, others get to be seen and heard, they get to know they are completely accepted exactly as they are.

When we’re not connected to self, Spirit and others, we go inside of our fears and fear is all there is. When we are fully connected in all areas, we can notice fear and still move forward.  Generally we create a lot of pain and suffering about the things we resist and have some fear around them.  Fear and pain or suffering do not need to go hand in hand. When you’re fully connected, you can have fear and simultaneously distinguish what the pain or suffering is really all about.  From here, you can move forward anyway.

There are of course variations of where you might be disconnected than from my personal example above.  For example, some people have it be completely about others and never about themselves at all.  There, they tend to be disconnected to getting their own needs met and often end up resenting others for their lack of well being or not being heard.  Or when someone is connected to spirit and not to themselves or others.  In this case one might connect with a higher purpose yet has no access to fulfill on it because life exists in relationships to others and oneself.

Take a look in your life at all three areas, self, Spirit and others.  Which one is currently the most out of sync? Consider that your suffering may be a direct result of one of these areas not being handled in your life. If you got completely connected in that area, what would that make available?

Take it a step further: Create at least 3 actions for the next 30 days that will move you towards getting connected and share them below!

So I apologize I didn’t post last week.  I got caught up in some busyness.

Ok, that’s a lie.  To be honest, my body was taken over by “I don’t feel like it”.

I notice that “I don’t feel like it” sometimes does a hostile takeover and runs the show.  I guess it’s to be expected since I’ve definitely stubbornly lived life from that place in the past.  So it can’t be very happy that I’ve started to disengage from it and pay it less attention.  Yet although I’ve had huge breakthroughs around it in the past year (in fact, especially in the past 6 or 7 months), that doesn’t mean it goes away.

That’s the thing with our “stuff” .  Even when you transform it in a huge way and completely alter your relationship to it, that doesn’t mean it’s forever gone.  It just means that you’re more adept at recognizing it and not allowing it to take the wheel and control you. (Even though that may still happen sometimes – it will happen less and less the more practiced you are at acknowledging it and not choosing it.)

It’s funny because there are definitely plenty of times when I feel like I don’t have anything particular, useful or inspiring to write about.  Which compels me to put it off.  Yet I notice that when I just sit down and start writing about whatever is actually going on, it often turns out to be some pretty insightful stuff.

You’re like this too.  If you actually jump into the thing you’re avoiding, often times, it winds up being incredibly easier than you expected.

We can’t help that resistance shows up, we’re human.  We resist the way things are, don’t want to admit to or share it, and then get caught up in the drama of it without a lifeline.  Yet all it really takes is authenticity, recognition of ‘what is’, and ownership of it being that way to completely change the experience.

The point is that we ARE human.  Things aren’t always going to be rainbows and butterflies.  There are ups and downs to life.  But if you’re willing to ‘be with’ whatever your experience is and take responsibility for it, you can choose or create something else that’s more empowering or powerful.  The ‘ups’ suddenly start being more of the norm and the length of time you hang out in ‘downs’ gets shorter and shorter.

So, start noticing where you’re resisting whatever is going on in your life.  You have no power around it until you can fully own that YOU see things the way you do and have things going the way they are.  No one else created your experience for you (no matter what they said or did to you), YOU created it.  If you truly take full responsibility for how you think, feel and respond, then you can choose to have it go differently.  You can choose to be more compassionate, more loving and more understanding with both yourself and with others (and also with Spirit!).  Imagine what would shift in your life living from there.

Piggybacking on last weeks post, I want to talk more about being with ‘what is’.

The phenomenal power of being in the moment and accepting things as they are.

Now I’m not saying I’m an expert at this.  I’m practicing and learning.  But man is it useful and empowering.

When you start to be with what is, you stop resisting how things aren’t.  And after all, what you resist, persists.

For example, you’re on the phone and a major client decides to stop working with you, in that moment that’s what is.  In the next moment, you are just sitting there working, and that’s what is.  Instead of reacting, throwing all your energy into the upset and losing the rest of your day or week, you can be proactive and productive to create new clients or plan for whatever is next. (This takes PRACTICE.  It may take you more than 10 minutes, 3 hours or a day to get back to the present moment at first.  But keep practicing and you’ll get back to it faster and faster.)

Or say you’re on a date and you really like the person, in that moment, you’re getting to know someone and having a good time.  If you’re measuring them up against some imaginary list you’ve concocted representing the ‘perfect partner’ or losing yourself in your thoughts about whether or not you’re going to marry this person, well then you’re NOT being in the moment with what is.  Every time you notice your mind wandering from the exact current situation you’re in, bring yourself back by reminding yourself that you’re here right now.

Or maybe you had a really awful day at work.  Everything went wrong and you felt like you just couldn’t catch a break.  But now you’re at home.  Well, ‘what is’ is that you’re at home, doing whatever you’re now doing (eating dinner, watching tv, reading a book, spending time with your kids, etc).  If you sit there and stress or complain about your day, you’re now living in the past (yes, even earlier today, in fact even 1 minute ago, is now the past).  Your energy is still at work in your crappy day.  On top of that, you’re now poisoning whatever is going on in this new experience with something that has nothing to do with the present moment.  Work will be there tomorrow and it will be a new day, where you can create a new experience.  Being present in the current moment will help you do that.

Or perhaps you just had an argument with your partner or spouse (or even a friend). But now it’s over.  Yet often you’ll spend hours (for some, days) in anger and resentment before deciding to let it go or make up even though you’re not actually arguing anymore.  It’s funny because often when we have these kinds of arguments, while we’re still arguing, we’ll see the other person’s point of view, and actually get that we’re not completely right (even if they’re not completely right either).  Yet we’re SO committed to being right, that we hold on to our anger, frustration and upset and pretend they’re 100% wrong anyway (another example of resisting being with ‘what is’ since you can in fact see their perspective).  What we could do is to actually share when we see the other person’s point of view (notice that that alone will ease the tension, not just for them but for you too).  This doesn’t have to invalidate your experience or deem your feelings to be inaccurate.  But when you can be understanding of where another person is coming from, you can have compassion for them.  From there, they’ll likely be more receptive to understanding you as well.

Practice actually telling yourself what’s going on in your current reality: “Right now, in this moment, I am ‘_________’.”  For example, ‘Right now, in this moment, I am at home writing a blog entry.’  Or, ‘Right now, in this moment, I am on a date.’  Or, ‘Right now, in this moment, I am playing with my kids.’ Or, ‘Right now, in this moment, I am working on my business plan.’

The more you can be present to what is actually currently happening, the more power and peace you can have.