AMY SANDLER
A LETTER FOR YOU
Are you a people pleaser, a perfectionist (trying perfectly to not be a perfectionist), an overachiever…
Doing well in the world, but not taking care of yourself the way you know you could…
Sorry, the way you “Should” be taking care of yourself...
Do you say “sorry” a lot for things you don’t need to apologize for? Like for not living the life you feel – on some level – that you were MEANT to?
Do you feel like an Outer Success…and an Inner Mess?
…or maybe not even an Outer Success the way the “world” defines it?
I get it. If we were playing tag I’d say “You’re It” and you’d say “Tag, you’re It.” And we’d already be having fun with it. Whatever “It” is…
[Wait, I shouldn’t be having fun. Healing is serious work!]
"NO MUD, NO LOTUS."
I know, I know. You’re doing a few eye rolls. You’re imagining inspirational posters in corporate elevators with a cat “hanging in there”; a bowl of lemons resting peacefully below a Comic Sans Font “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
I love Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings so much – for example, “No mud, no lotus” – but when I am in the mud it sure is hard to actually believe it.
So go ahead, do an eye roll. Technically less caloric than a cinnamon roll; definitely less delicious.
Here’s the thing: I’ve realized, after tens of thousands of hours of personal development work, as both student and teacher: it’s true.
With a (cinnamon) twist.
YOU ARE HERE
I thought I had to get rid of my mess(es). I thought that I could get rid of my mess*.
I thought that one morning I would wake up and leap out of bed with child-like glee. The way I used to.
I thought I would stop wanting french fries.
I haven’t gotten there yet. Maybe I will one day.
Whether I do or don’t…what I have done is accepted that I am often in this messy, muddy place.
So Step 1: accept where you are. If you can’t accept it, at least start where you are. As they say.
Like the sign at the shopping mall you keep getting lost in (because you're in an Auntie Anne pretzel-haze), “You are here.”
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YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT YOU "SHOULD" BE DOING.
I'm pretty sure you already know what you “should” be doing. Maybe you don’t have the 3 copies of Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui I kept buying, the decades of years of practicing mindfulness (more off than on), or the tens of thousands of hours of personal development work I’ve done since the mid-1990s.
Maybe you haven’t read the hundreds of books I’ve read on the topic (resources guide at the back), the multiple training certificates I’ve earned (first 30 SIY teacher worldwide); maybe you haven’t been an instructor on mindfulness apps since 2016 or taught thousands of CEOs around the world mindfulness, emotional intelligence and other healing practices. RC
Maybe you’re just getting started with your mindfulness and healing practices; maybe, like me, you’ve known about these practices for decades.
There’s just one pesky problem – another Gap.
WHAT IF?
How We Got Here
What if you