Clarity Rocks!


Curiously – particularly as I Am Fabulous was born out of a bottle of prosecco – and without any rhyme or reason, I find myself on the wagon. It started about a month ago after a bit of a fizz-fuelled evening. I’d been doing quite a bit of meditation at the time and was feeling pretty in tune. Then I managed to throw myself a curve ball with the rather injudicious application of a large quantity of alcohol. To be honest, it wasn’t a major decision to never drink again, but I just didn’t like how it had made me feel. So here I am, four weeks later, still somewhat surprised by the turn of events, but finding abstinence very easy to uphold.

That’s the odd part. Every time I’ve tried to give up something before, it’s always been a bit of a battle. Yet, when the time is right, the bad habits just slip away without any effort. The same thing happened when I struggled to give up smoking many, many moons ago. I tried everything – cutting down, scare tactics, ear acupuncture, even smoking menthols because I loathed them, which only resulted in a big-time St Moritz habit for a few years. Even when I managed to give up for brief periods through sheer grit and will-power, I would still crave cigarettes. Then, one day – again during a period when I was doing a lot of meditation practice and feeling more in tune – I got up in the morning, smoked the one cigarette I had left, thought to myself that I really didn’t enjoy it, and decided to give up. I never smoked again and never wanted to either.
This time, it’s less of a conscious decision, but it seems to be working beautifully. I have absolutely no desire for alcohol and find it really easy to say no when others keep asking me to join them in a drink. I don’t feel deprived or that I’m missing out on anything. I do suspect that I shall fall off the wagon at some point, but for now it suits me and I’m very happy with the way things are – I’m enjoying my current clarity and all the other benefits that come from dropping that particular indulgence, such as improved sleep and a bit of weight loss to boot. Can’t be bad, can it?

So here’s my theory of the week – when we are in resonance with our higher purpose, what no longer matches that will naturally fall away. Take this ‘on the wagon’ business, for example. I didn’t set out with that intention, but having put a lot of energy into working on my own personal purpose and spiritual focus lately, I’m noticing how the things that do not resonate with that are simply dropping out of my life. Consider it the ‘spin cycle’ of personal development – when you make a personal shift, what’s around you either shifts with you or gets cast out of your orbit.

Try it for yourself. While I was working on a spring feature for the rather fabulous women’s site http://www.ivillage.co.uk/ this week, I came across the idea of taking an ‘addiction break’. That’s where you pick an addiction like coffee, cigarettes or booze and replace it with a healthy option like fresh juice, walking or swimming. You can do it for a day, a week or a month. At the end of the experiment, you just might like how you feel enough to make it permanent.

Super-charge the change by linking the ‘addiction break’ to something positive you want to create for yourself, like focusing on a health goal or finding more personal clarity so you can up the ante on your career or life purpose. Spend time daily immersing yourself in the positive feelings that this new focus gives you. When you genuinely enjoy making a change, there’s no will-power required.

Never underestimate the power of clarity. As Marianne Williamson says in her book, The Gift Of Change, “I’ve noticed in myself that if something small and ultimately meaningless has gone wrong – I can’t find a file I left on top of my desk, my daughter failed to do what I asked her to do before going to a friend’s house – I can easily get rattled. But if someone calls to inform me of a serious difficulty – someone has been in an accident or a child is in trouble – I notice a profound stillness come over me as I focus on the problem.

“In the former case, my temptation to become frantic does not attract solutions, but rather hinders them. There is nothing in my personal energy that invites help from others, nor do I have the clarity to think through what I need to do next. In the latter case, however, all of my energy goes toward a higher level of problem-solving: my heart is in service of others and my mind is focused and clear. When I am at the effect of the problem, I become part of the problem. When I am centred within myself, I become part of the solution.”

Become part of your own personal solution this week, by dropping whatever gets in the way of finding clarity on your own purpose. For a little extra help, HarperCollins have generously made the full edition of The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance For Living Your Best Life available to read online for the next 30 days at:

http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780060816117

For the Coach Fabulous archives, go to www.coachfabulous.blogspot.com and for the I Am Fabulous archives, go to www.fabcentral.blogspot.com. You can email me at coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 31 Mar 08)

Life On Purpose

I had one of those dinner party conversations this weekend. You know, the kind that makes you lose the will to live. Whoever said that the three topics to avoid in polite conversation were religion, sex and politics was definitely onto something. I was feeling particularly mellow, having had a good old dose of spiritual stuff throughout the day – bit of meditation, some inspirational reading and looking up new developments online – so I walked straight into a conversation about the common threads between religions without paying close attention to who was participating. Big mistake. Huge.

There I was trying to gently discuss how the true essences of the various major traditions shared common ground, while one of my dinner companions was working up to a lecture on the finer points of comparative religion by stressing all the differences in dogma. We might as well have been discussing two entirely different subjects for all the good it did us. To be honest, I should have known better. If someone wants to engage in a topic on a purely intellectual level, but you’re more interested relating to a deeper spiritual truth, then you’re on a hiding to nothing. It’s not about winning or changing someone else’s view, but understanding that you’re effectively speaking two entirely different languages.

The Jesuit priest and psychologist, Anthony de Mello, has a wonderful expression about this kind of scenario, when never the twain shall meet. He said “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It upsets you and frustrates the pig.” That might sound a bit condescending, but that’s not the intention now or in the original quote. It’s simply an acknowledgement that we have our own ways of being and perceiving, so battling to join with someone in a point of view that is radically different from their own will be frustrating for both of you.

My own conclusion from the evening is that it’s simply reinforced the need for me to spend more time with people who share similar interests. I don’t want to have to hold back because I’m not with those of like mind. It’s not about always agreeing, but at a bare minimum it helps to at least be on the same page! Never underestimate the power of community in helping you to feel uplifted, confident and on purpose – being a fish out of water is not a helpful environment if you want to live an inspired life.

So, back to all that ferreting around I was doing on the weekend, during which I came across some serious gems. In an aftershow clip following a programme about Marianne Williamson’s latest book, The Age of Miracles, Oprah Winfrey gives a rare insight into her own motivation, the sense of purpose she’s had all her life and the influences behind her show.

Discussing how important it is to have a clear and positive intention in mass communication, she says “I consider this to be sacred ground. Your words have power. The way you think about your life and yourself determines your reality. You have the reality that you have because of everything that you thought, acted on and believed to be true for yourself … you are where you are because of every choice that you made, because of thoughts that you had and actions that you took.”

Talking about her own sense of purpose, she adds, “I have always seen for many years when I was doing this show, that this was only the beginning for me. People would say because of all the fame and attention that I received, ‘what more do you want – what else can you ask for?’ I’m not asking for anything else, I’ve just known that there will be more.

“I’ve always known that this show was the foundation for greater things to come … I always knew this wasn’t about me buying more shoes. I have as many shoes as any woman can handle. Even in the process of buying them, I knew there was going to come a time when it’s not going to be about shoes, about houses, about art. There is a bigger message here. I’ve always understood that. If I’d not understood that, the doors of possibility wouldn’t have opened for me …

“The same is true of your life. There is no difference between my life and your life. My mission and purpose in life is to be an inspiration … The only difference is how I choose to use my calling. Everybody has been called to do something. You wouldn’t be here unless you were called and your real role in life is to figure out what that is … If you’re in a place in your life right now where you think you don’t know [what is your calling], that’s because you’re allowing the voices of the world, the voices in your head, the voices of other people to drown out the voice of God in you, because everybody has it.

“My hope for you is that you create the miracle for yourself that you have this shift in perception that allows you to see the miracles that are already there. The real truth is that it’s like Glinda the good witch said to Dorothy – it’s my favourite spiritual teaching – ‘you always had it, my dear’ … You’ve got to get still enough to let it come through you, but it’s there. That’s what your real purpose is, to figure that out. If you align with whatever that is, when you line up with it, when you are in purpose and on purpose, the universe rises up to meet you.”

That’s a rather fabulous philosophy straight from the mouth of perhaps the world’s most successful and influential woman - definitely worth taking note! If you’d like to see the whole thing, go to www.oprah.com, select the video channel and you’ll find the aftershow clip on The Age of Miracles in the Spirit section.

This week, let’s expand our minds to include greater possibilities for ourselves than we’ve ever dared to believe. Get still and imagine what life could be like for you if this was only the beginning. What more might there be for you? If you could expand way beyond what you’ve already envisioned, what else might be possible? Give yourself some quiet time to ponder your purpose this week and to dream it into reality. What have you always felt a strong pull towards? Do you have a sense of what your calling might be. If you get stuck and think you don’t know, trick your mind out of it by saying “If I did know what my calling was, it would be …”. You’ll be amazed how well that little twist of thinking can work.

Surround yourself with friends who have similar interests and shoot the breeze. New possibilities can open up when you spark off each other. Try describing your calling to each other in a single word or ask each other to pick a word that encapsulates your purpose. Have some fun with it – humour is a great way to get some surprising results.

If you need some further inspiration to get in touch with your purpose, Oprah’s running a web event based on Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose, with weekly webcasts, plus video and audio downloads. You can watch it live or download it later. If you prefer just to read it, there are transcripts too, as well as a workbook for each chapter. It’s an ongoing workshop that you can join at any time at www.oprah.com.

For the Coach Fabulous archives, go to www.coachfabulous.blogspot.com and for the I Am Fabulous archives, go to www.fabcentral.blogspot.com. You can email me at coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 3 Mar 08)

Taking Care Of Business



We’ve been revisiting the basic concepts of confidence, self-worth and self-acceptance over the past few weeks. Before we wander off piste to visit whatever else pops into my mind, it’s probably timely to take a look at the concept of service and how that fits with the inner-directed process of building self-confidence.

Whether or not we later embrace any form of religion in our lives, our early conditioning by the authority figures of our childhood sets up a credo – or set of commandments – by which we are exhorted to think always of others. That in itself is fabulous. What isn’t so great is the way that is subtly translated into a belief that we should always put others first, even when that comes at great personal cost to ourselves. Then, effectively, we are in sacrifice, not service. There’s a competing voice we hear daily, too, that says ‘nice guys finish last’ – reflecting the fact that we’ve become a more or less permanent ‘me’ generation. No wonder we’re confused.

For many of us, learning to tread the fine line between service and sacrifice is a life-long challenge, as we ricochet between giving till it hurts and shutting down because we have nothing left to give. We treat taking care of ourselves as a selfish act and question if it’s OK to be successful when so many others have so little. It’s a moral and ethical debate that can paralyse us from action in the outer world and prevent us from maintaining even the most basic of personal boundaries. Until we develop clarity on our own concept of service, then we will wage this inner war with ourselves, bouncing back and forth between sacrifice and service.

Marianne Williamson – one of the greatest spiritual teachers of this age – addresses how she wrestled with these issues in her new book, The Age of Miracles, recounting “I woke up once to a late-night epiphany that shone like a neon pronouncement: that the key to human salvation lies in our living for each other … The line I heard in my head that night was not ‘give away everything you own’. It was ‘live for others’. And I’ve wondered what the world would look like if we did.

“We’ve been so thoroughly programmed to look out for number one, as though ‘me’ is so much more important than ‘we’. But the shift from living for ourselves to living for others is clearly the spiritual imperative calling humanity back to the garden. What, then, about healthy boundaries? Does living for others mean I’m going to give everyone everything – as in my time, my energy, my money, my heart? I’ve tried to do that … be the paragon of self-sacrifice … never having time for myself, making myself wrong for wanting to take care of me, always running around to please or do for others. And it got me nowhere. If anything, it left me angry, resentful, vulnerable to thieves and feeling much more stuck in a rut on my spiritual path as opposed to being sped up on it. Wrecked half the time, I rarely showed up as my best for anyone.

“Healthy boundaries are loving; they show respect both to the person who sets them and to the person who’s asked to honour them. I think it’s best to seek a balanced life, at peace with ourselves and our own loved ones; then when we do turn our attention to the world, we can bring so much more to it. We bring a higher version of ourselves. According to A Course In Miracles, sacrifice has no place in God’s universe. Taking care of ourselves in a righteous way is meaningful service to a greater task because we cannot give what we cannot be. From that space of peace and the moderate behaviour it produces, comes more than enough money and time and energy to give to the world. Service is very serious work, but co-dependency is not.”

If we have any hope of eradicating the concept that taking care of self is innately a selfish act, then what we really need to learn to do is to receive without guilt. Many of us are hard-wired to give constantly and have little experience in receiving gracefully – whether that’s the love of another, a gift or even something as simple as a compliment. What lies beneath that inability to receive is a profound lack of self-acceptance – and often a deep self-loathing – that deflects any incoming appreciation like a computer firewall bounces back spam. You might be being given plenty of love and support, but without self-acceptance, it’s impossible to take it in.

The relationship therapists, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, were shocked to find that even when clients were given the tools to provide the support their partners had asked for, those same partners couldn’t accept the love they were being offered. As they wrote in Receiving Love, “Who wouldn’t be eager to accept the gift of love freely given? We never thought about the fact that the ability to receive love isn’t natural and inborn for everyone. We have since discovered that some lucky souls blossom and heal when they are offered what they need. But most of us have some trouble taking in affection, praise, support, compliments or gifts from others. For some reason we are not always able to swallow, digest and use this food for the soul. We can taste these morsels of love, but we can’t digest them as nourishment. Like many people with food allergies, we are left craving the very thing we cannot digest.”

Bottom line, we will have no sustainable ability to offer anything to the world until we can first learn to nourish ourselves, and the bedrock of that nourishment is self-acceptance and self-esteem. Unless we think we’re worth something, all the love in the world is wasted on us as we remain incapable of truly receiving it. Having a deep sense of self-worth is an inner process and not a function of how we appear in the world – it’s not about what you do for a living, how you look, who you know or what you have. It’s about being at peace with who you are.

Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations With God, describes meeting the extraordinary Ram Dass, who was left disabled, wheelchair-bound,and barely able to speak after a stroke. He says, “I met Ram Dass, after his stroke, in a hotel room in Denver, and I want to tell you something, I never met a healthier man. I sat in that room with a master. I said, ‘Ram Dass, how are you?’ And he sat in his wheelchair and took a long time saying the words ‘ I am wonder-ful’. That’s health … that’s peace, that’s joy. And when you have so much happiness and peace and joy that you spend your life sharing it with everyone you touch, that’s enlightenment. You have become a master. When your life is no longer about you, has nothing to do with you, but is about everyone whose life you touch, you have become a master. For in the end, that is why you came here. Not to somehow ‘get better’, not to work on yourself. Consider the possibility that all the work you will ever need to do on yourself is already done. All you have to do is know that. Then you will realise that the wonderful message from Conversations With God is true – ‘There is nothing you have to do, nowhere you have to go, and there is no one you have to be, except exactly who you are being right now’.”

This week, learn to live the paradox that seeming to be selfish can be a selfless act. Take time out to nourish yourself, choose to receive compliments gracefully, and think of yourself with love and compassion. While you’re doing that, you can begin asking yourself what you can do to live for others – what’s your special form of service? How can you share your joy with those you touch?

As a final clue, I’ll leave you with a little more guidance and wisdom from Marianne Williamson, who says “So how then do we live for others? The best I can come up with is that service is a way of being. It means I can make the person who just carried my bags into the hotel room feel how much I appreciate what he did for me. Tip him generously as well, of course, but match the tip with an attitude of honour for what he does. Both are important. It means that in any moment, as part of my spiritual practice, I can do what I can to show love and respect for the person in front of me.”

Become a master of the fabulous art of true service, not sacrifice.


Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link inthe Favourite Sites section on the rightor by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com.
For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 4 Feb 08)

Retrosexual Rules!


Now that I’m living at a more laid-back pace, I get to hang out a lot more at my favourite restaurant, Annie’s, and sometimes there’s an added bonus of guy candy to brighten my day. Friday’s treat came in the form of half the England rugby team popping by for a slap-up brunch. My, they are a strapping bunch – and don’t they make footballers look like beta males!

Not being a sports fan, my impression of rugby players was cast in stone many years ago on long, boring teenage afternoons of being forced to watch short, squat males with thighs the size of sequoia tree trunks ramming into each other on the pitch. It’s given me a life-long aversion to any form of sport and particularly Neanderthal-looking men. That’s why the England rugby players were such a delightful surprise. They looked well-built, manly and personable – a far cry from the intellectually-underachieving prop forwards of my mis-spent youth.

If football considers itself the beautiful game, it’s now got some tough competition in the shape of classically retrosexual rugby. As Newsweek describes it, retrosexuals are “men who shun metrosexuality, with its often feminine aesthetic, in favour of old-school masculinity.” And, quite frankly, thank god they do. Who wants a man who spends more time in the bathroom than you do?

In the gender wars of the late 20th century, the rise of feminism has left a lot of men struggling to adapt to a world where masculine traits are not valued and they’re pilloried for not having a feminine level of emotional intelligence or a fashion sense to die for like all of our gay friends. I’m beginning to think this is one case where the rule of ‘don’t wish too hard for what you want or then you might get it’ absolutely applies. Some of us are finally realising that we don’t want men to be shopping companions, gossipy confidantes or househusbands – in fact, we’d quite like them to be … men.

One piece of unforgettable wisdom from Marianne Williamson, the author of A Return To Love, is that – whatever the form of the intimate relationship – there will always be a man and a woman in that relationship, in the sense of the partners playing out the masculine and feminine roles. This has nothing to do with gender or sexuality and everything to do with an enduring relationship being a counterbalance of those two energies.

A friend told me a while ago how, in her native New Zealand, as women became more successful (particularly in politics) and took on more masculine characteristics, their men became more passive and sensitive, tending to become the ones who stayed at home and looked after the children. Rather than a question of who should embody those roles, it’s more of an indication that Marianne Williamson is right on the money – the emotional male/female balance of a relationship will seek to sustain itself, regardless of whether it’s the man or the woman who’s playing the masculine or feminine role.

Given that I’m on a one-woman mission to honour the feminine, you’ll have no trouble guessing why retrosexual men are so appealing. It’s about time we got comfortable with the fact that men and women are different and sought to see the inherent value in both sexes, rather than trying to make them conform with each other.

This week, try getting retrosexual, whatever your gender. Let’s celebrate the joys of being a girl or let it all hang out on the masculine front in an anti-metrosexual revolt. Let’s think ‘boys will be boys’ with a secret smile, rather than a glare of disapproval. We don’t expect them to understand why we need a vast array of shoes or handbags, so let’s not quibble over that strange guy stuff either. It might not be our cup of tea, but perhaps we should be very thankful for that!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 27 Aug 07)

The Resurrection Shuffle




It’s Easter and my mind naturally turns to the story we all associate with this time of year – crucifixion and resurrection. The fabulous twist is, of course, to look at it from a spiritual standpoint rather than a religious view, finding the deeper meaning beyond the dogma. Such a potent tale should never go to waste.

Just like any good piece of theatre, this is a three-act play: first the crucifixion or death-like experience, then the symbolic three days, and finally the resurrection and return to life in a new form. Notice that Jesus did not go back to business as usual after the crucifixion. He returned to the world in a different way. The Easter story is a metaphor for how we deal with crisis in our lives and how willing we are to learn from it. Do we just hang about on the cross, getting stuck on what happened to us? Do we look beyond the experience and begin to integrate it and open to its deeper meaning in our symbolic three days? Finally, do we take what we have learned and rise again, changed and ultimately stronger from what we have endured?

Crucifixions come in all shapes and sizes in modern life. For some of us it’s chronic illness, for others the loss of loved ones or jobs, missed opportunities or the breakdown of relationships with friends, family or lovers. At the risk of mixing my metaphors, I consider the big challenges in life to be shamanic tests – opportunities to find strength and resources deep within ourselves by facing trials or traumas. Much as I adore the new-age concept of learning through joy, it’s painfully obvious that most of us have such an inner level of inertia that we wouldn’t shift out of an uncomfortable situation unless we were dynamited out of it. That’s where life kindly obliges with the crucifixion process.

If you’re willing to see whatever you encounter as an opportunity to reveal something deeper about yourself, then any crucifixion experience can be moved through more gracefully, making sure that you garner the gifts along the way. Without that perspective, it’s very easy to stay stuck in the pain of the experience, unable to move forward. That’s not to say that everything magically becomes easier, only that it’s an awful lot more bearable to negotiate the darkness if you have faith that there’s a treasure to be found in it.

Staying stuck in the story is the first trapdoor in the early stages. Initially, we’re in shock when something challenging hits us with the force of an oncoming truck. Then come the huge range of emotions – everything from denial to anger and despair – and it’s vital that we feel these authentically and don’t try to repress them. That’s all par for the course. The pitfall is the very seductive trap of getting stuck in the story of what happened to us and being so identified with it that we permanently cast ourselves in the role of martyr, reliving the story over and over again. I’m sure we can all think of one or two people we know with a great line in victim schtick, who’ve taken up permanent residence on the cross and give off more than a gentle whiff of burning martyr. It’s not just a temporary glitch either – years, decades and sometimes even whole lives can be lost at this stage.

Harking back to last week, it’s forgiveness that sets you free. The choice to liberate yourself and to move on lets you off the cross. It may not be total forgiveness, but just a choice to move beyond the story, out of perennial victim mode and into some level of acceptance can be enough to open the path into the integration phase. If you have a friend who is living through the darkness of the crucifixion phase, be gentle with them. You can never truly know the weight of another’s burden, so be gracious and be very cautious when offering advice about when it’s time to move on. Even so, be conscious that while listening to a friend’s story when they are in pain is one of the greatest gifts that you can give, you also need to know that there can come a time when the re-playing of the story is no longer helpful and you are simply enabling them to stay stuck. You can then use your intuition and discretion to find a gentle approach to help them see where they might be mired in the past.

The symbolic three days have their own unique qualities and traps. Their purpose is to allow you to integrate the experience and to find meaning within it. On some level this will manifest as a kind of retreat from the world, a turning within for healing, inspiration and spiritual sustenance. A couple of dead ends we tend to encounter are looking only outside ourselves for the solution or attacking ourselves for not finding the answer immediately. The first is all too common, particularly in health challenges. We think the answer lies in some miracle cure or healing technique, yet fail to do the inner work necessary to see how our own behaviour, emotions or mental habits affect our wellbeing. The second is endemic, partly due to low self-worth and partly due to our instantaneous consumer culture – we think everything should happen as soon as we snap our fingers, but life is by its own nature inconvenient. In the case of illness or grief, we need to learn that it will take its own sweet time to pass and that failing to accept it only makes matters worse.

Again, this period has its own use-by date. Seeking is not a permanent occupation. At some point you need to take up your bed and walk. The purpose of the entire experience is not to remain the eternal student, but to return to the world armed with your insights and to live life in a new way. Sometimes this also means accepting that you will never return with all your old powers intact. Some illnesses don’t heal, some wounds leave lasting marks. The aim is not to be exactly the same person, but a different one, with a deeper, richer appreciation of yourself and of life.

Marianne Williamson – oft-quoted in these pages and very definitely a fabulous woman – highlights the redemptive power of crisis, saying “I have heard people with critical illnesses say that their lives only really began when they were diagnosed. Why is that? Because whenever we are diagnosed with a critical illness, much of our superficial personal baggage is dropped in the first five minutes. Why do I act so arrogantly? Why am I pretending to be so tough? Why am I judging so many people? Why am I not appreciating all the love and beauty that surrounds me? Why am I avoiding the simplest and most important element of my being, the love in my heart? Dropping our illusions is healing in itself. Within each of us there is a core – our essence, our true being. Finding that essence … is the purpose of our lives, and even our most painful experiences can serve that purpose.”

All roads lead to self-knowledge, if you’re willing to see them that way. So where are you in your own life right now? Got a freshly-minted or rather shop-soiled crucifix? Trying to make sense of it all? Or getting ready to step out into the world anew? Wherever you are in your own personal three-act passion play, the fabulous thing to do is look for the gift, however scary or challenging that may seem to be. As my old favourite, the mythologist Joseph Campbell, says “The cave in which you fear to seek holds the greatest treasure.” Get busy with some inner treasure-hunting and bring a new story to life this Easter time.

Coach Fabulous is now online and updated every Thursday. Click through to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com or use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right.
For alert emails on new postings, with added inspirations and confidence tips, send a blank email toIAmFabulousCo@aol.com with 'Subscribe' in the title field.
All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 17 Apr 06)

Radical Acceptance

Fabulousness comes from being exactly who you are. Being relaxed and comfortable with yourself creates an inner radiance that is highly attractive. It's not about the clothes you wear - although God knows that helps - it's about the essence of you that you're willing to let shine.

Real confidence can never come from anyone or anything outside yourself. At best, they're a temporary fix. At worst, we start to believe that how we look is who we are. The growing trend for plastic surgery is a sign that we are so mis-identified with how we appear that it has become our total reality. We have forgotten that our beauty comes from our authenticity and that the clothes and the makeup are the icing, not the cake.

In A Woman's Worth, Marianne Williamson writes that "Beauty is an internal light, a spiritual radiance that all women have, but which most women hide, unconsciously denying its existence. What we do not claim remains invisible."

The road to reclaiming genuine beauty and confidence begins with radical acceptance of who you are. It's radical because it's total, unstinting, gutsy acceptance of everything you like and dislike about yourself. We're as frightened by our talents as by our failings and we're all trying to meet some mythical standard of perfection that is, in reality, unachievable. So, take a deep breath, let yourself off the hamster wheel and just stop trying. It's very liberating!

That doesn't mean not taking care of yourself or not enjoying looking good, it means quieting the shrill voice of criticism in your head and giving yourself a break. We all have bad hair days, make mistakes, are less than kind, and generally stuff up. It's no biggie.

Just letting go of those expectations of perfection will create some space for you to be the quirky, fun and fabulous person you actually are, not a carbon copy of someone else's ideal. We are all drawn to people with their own sense of style and way of being in the world. We find them fascinating, and they are. So are you, if you're willing to let your true self see the light of day.

Finding that true self means breaking out of the limiting roles and options you've given yourself, that fail to express who you really are. Lasting change comes only from looking inward. Of our inner life, Marianne says, "Here, we are our real selves, while in the outer world we are impostors. We're not sure why we're posing, except we have no clue how not to. We have forgotten the part we came here to play. We have lost the key to our own house."

It's time to reclaim the truth of who you are and a quick dose of 'I Am Fabulous' - enough to make you laugh - is a very fine place to start. It's your inner life that gives you the juice to make your outer life a full and rich reflection of who you really are. Make some space to stop and say 'I Am Fabulous' and really breathe that in. When that critical voice rises up, say it again. You're just too fabulous to care!

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All material © 2005 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 15 Nov 05)