In Iron Pentacle class, we explored the point of Self. Part of this involved stripping away all our roles. Wife, mother, daughter, entrepreneur, witch, scientist, lesbian, bisexual, poly, and so on and so forth. Stripping it all away to see what Self is underneath. Who am I when I’m not being myself for someone else?

All of a sudden, WHOA. I realized that “female” is yet another role. People feel like it’s an intrinsic part of themselves, and in some sense they’re right, otherwise there’d be no transgender people, but in another sense it’s not true at all.

Take me, for instance.

Six years ago, I identified as male. There I was, boy Pace, bopping along, doing my thing. I have friends, I have girlfriends, I have a job.

Then *BOOM* something hits me, I have a massive gender avalanche, and now I identify as female. So I take steps to shift my body and my gender role from male to female.

There, look! I said “gender role”. It has “role” in it. Gender is a role!

It’s a mask we put on when we interact with people. It’s a set of assumptions and scripts about how we expect others to act and how we’re expected to act. For instance, when I was wearing the boy mask, I went to the men’s bathroom and it wasn’t okay to chat with other fellow bathroomers. Now, when I’m wearing the girl mask, I go into the women’s bathroom and it is okay to chat with my co-bathroomians.

Male and female are roles that we play.

Whether it’s socially okay for me to talk in the bathroom has nothing to do with my Self. But whether I’m happier playing that role versus playing a male role does have something to do with my Self. One is comfortable for me, and one was unimaginably uncomfortable for me.

When I transitioned from male to female, everyone started treating me differently, because I was switching gender roles, and roles tell people how to treat you. But I was basically the same person. In other people’s heads, there was this switch that got flipped. One day, I’m boy Pace, and the next day, I’m girl Pace. But from my point of view, one day I’m me, and the next day I’m still me. My core sense of self didn’t change when I changed my gender role.

One day, I’m having heterosexual sex with my girlfriend. The next day, I’m having lesbian sex with my girlfriend. Same girlfriend, pretty much the same me, and kinda-different-but-not-entirely-different sex, but the labels change as if I had crossed a huge chasm.

It’s like clothes.

I can wear bellbottoms or I can wear slacks. On any given day, whether I’m wearing bellbottoms or slacks doesn’t change who I am. My pants don’t define me. Heh. That would be a pretty funny thing to say out of context, so I’ll say it again.

My pants don’t define me.

But I do have a fashion sense, and what I prefer to wear is part of my Self. So if I really really prefer bellbottoms to slacks, I’ll change, even if it costs $30,000 and is very physically and emotionally painful. (;

This metaphor is silly.

Pants are easy to change and gender role isn’t. But I hope you get my point. That there’s a difference between your core Self and the roles that you play. And that a lot of things you might take for granted as part of your Self, like for instance “I’m male” or “I’m female”, might be, at least partially, just roles.

People are people.

Before I transitioned, when I’d meet someone, I’d immediately say to myself either “I’ve just met a man” or “I’ve just met a woman.”

Now I say to myself “I’ve just met a person.”

Because when you get down to it, past all the stereotypes and all the bullshit, people are people.

Okay. I’m done talking now. Your turn.

What roles do you play in your life?

Which parts of yourself are core parts of your Self, and which parts of yourself are just masks that you take on and off?

I used to walk in everyone else’s paths. Pre-made paths are easier to follow, even if they’re uncomfortable because someone else is right in front of you.

I spent many years in an unhealthy relationship. There were times when I knew I needed out, but I was always convinced to stay. I ignored my intuition and my instincts. I ignored my primal self. I ignored my talking self. I ignored my divine self. I pretended I was fine, everything was okay, life was good – and sometimes it was. Sometimes it was terrible, and I stopped knowing how to tell the difference.

I stayed for so long because I didn’t have the tools to leave. It took strength, knowledge, self-awareness, and a circle of support, and I utterly lacked those.

It also took dedication to myself and my own path.

Leaving my partner meant leaving the path I knew so well, the path I stepped onto even before I was an adult. Even though there was abuse, there was also comfort. My partner was my caretaker; she ostensibly did the house work I hated, she made the meals, she (again, ostensibly) took care of our child, and she offered me comfort and a well-forged path. I never needed to make decisions for myself, because she made them for me. She walked in front of me, bushwhacking and blazing brightly so I didn’t need to do much of anything. She was everything I ever needed, right when I needed it – I never had to look in myself for anything because she was always right there being what I needed.

It felt safe, even when it wasn’t. It felt good, even when it wasn’t. It was comfortable. It was easy.

Change moves slowly.

When we moved to Chicago, I found a spiritual path that was steeped in self-work and self-knowledge. I’d never heard either of those phrases until then, but once that can was opened, I found that I was starving for it.

I devoured rituals. I inhaled classes. I steeped myself in the community, in the path. I made friends – real friends that cared about the me that was actually me. The chains loosened, but didn’t yet break.

I wasn’t ready. I was still looking for someone else to forge my path for me. And, rightly so, when my friends realized that, they pushed me away. They didn’t want the kind of relationship I was seeking, because they were strong in themselves and I was not.

It was a hard lesson.

But the seeds had been planted.

It wasn’t until I found myself that I could leave her.

We moved away from Chicago, from the community. I was again friendless, but this time I was stronger.

We met Pace. During our first ever conversation, Pace told me my life sucked – and she was right. I used my new found tools to evaluate and renovate, and turned my life around.

And I started resenting my partner.

It was like I was a teenager all over again, only this time I was rebelling against my wife instead of my mother. I hated how she treated me. I hated how she acted. I hated spending time alone with her. We started arguing for the first time in our relationship – and we’d been together over a decade at that point.

I started really growing. I found myself resenting the easy path and drawn toward forging my own – but with a partner who wanted to control me, wanted me to walk in her footsteps, it was difficult at best. Self-work and self-knowledge were her enemies but my most cherished allies.

I found myself drawn to strong, fierce people. I started forming friendships with incredible people. Real, deep bonds based on mutual love and trust and respect. I created a support network full of friends I trusted with my life.

And the inevitability happened.

After a time, I got out of the fog. I spent a week outside of the control and abuse, and realized that I needed out – right now, no waiting, do not pass go, full stop.

I broke out of our relationship. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

But even then, I wanted someone else to forge my path for me. I’ve never forged my own – how could I? I don’t even have a lantern or a machete! I don’t have a map! Now I’m lost in the dark and it’s cold out here and the wolves will eat me!

Okay, but I had a support network. Friends. Pace. My mom and brother.

And I continued to learn. Continued to grow, to develop myself. In a lot of ways, I’m very young – my growth was stunted. I learned to stop holding myself to standards I had no way of meeting, standards for those without a lifetime of abuse. I learned to love myself and to stop abusing myself.

And I learned to see when I would jump on someone else’s path.

Like being raw.

Being raw was hard. It was ridiculously hard. But it was still a path – and a path others had forged for me. Like being vegetarian or vegan or omnivorous or carnivorous, food labels are a clear example of pre-formed paths. You’re a vegetarian, so you eat (and don’t eat) these things. And so on.

But being raw brought this to light for me, quite sharply. In food and in most things, I’ve always wanted to do my own thing, follow my own path, and do (and eat) what feels right for me. But I’ve also always had someone else tell me what to do, so I grew to want that, too. Or instead. Having someone else make decisions for you, whether you want them to or not, weakens your ability to make good decisions for yourself.

Again, it’s a teenager thing. Teenagers struggle with independence because they’re used to being treated like idiots who can’t make decisions, and then they make stupid decisions because they don’t know how to make good ones. We aren’t taught how to make good decisions – we’re taught to let others make them for us. Parents and partners alike. And in an abusive setting, it magnifies.

My decision muscles needed buffing.

When I decided to stop being raw, I decided to start eating what I wanted. Not to go back to being a vegan or a vegetarian or anything else, but to be a Kyelitarian. To listen to my body, to learn what I need for nourishment and health and fitness.

And I freaked the fuck out.

I spent over a week eating by default. I had no idea what I wanted, so I just ate what Pace wanted to eat because (again) it was easy. I looked in the fridge and freezer like I was searching for the Holy Grail. I’d mope in front of the pantries as though moping would suddenly make food appear, all ready for consumption. Yummy! Mope flakes in misery milk!

And then, I realized what was happening. I was pathless! I was flailing because I no longer defined myself with handy food-based labels, so I no longer knew what to eat. My little inner child was desperate for comfort, so all I wanted to eat was comfort food (most of which is craptastic for health). But I didn’t want to eat those things because they’re so bad for me in general, so I was really stuck.

Becoming an Edgewalker.

I sat on my porch swing with my beautiful wife and whined about food for about an hour. In the process, I realized the whole “why won’t someone else do it for me” desire to walk a pre-formed path thing.

I started bawling.

I cried for what felt like several hours. And then I sat up straight. I realized how badly I want to forge my own way, to walk my own walk, to sing my own heartsong. I realized how amazingly afraid I am, and cherished my fear and my self. Honoring the fear makes it easier to work with myself instead of against myself (or in spite of myself). And I realized I was ready.

I forgave myself for being afraid. For wanting to take the easy path. For not being as “advanced” as many of my peers and friends. Forgiveness made forward motion possible; the act of accepting myself as I am now, and loving myself fully, gave me the courage to further act.

And I deliberately chose the Edgewalker path. I took myself off the easily marked, beaten path and joyously started blazing my own trail. And you know what? It makes all the difference.

Today, in the bookstore, I wandered over to the spirituality section. I always wind up spending a lot of time there, every single time I visit a bookstore. I’m looking for something, searching for that path, the one that’s perfect for me that’s already been carved out and marked.

Today, I stood there for about fifteen seconds. I scanned the books, then threw back my head and laughed. I’ll never find it, I realized, because my path is not beaten or marked. I walk on the edges.

Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:

Chapter 7: What problem are you trying to solve?

Sometimes we get caught up in a conversation and forget our original motivation. We’ve found that it often helps to ask, “What problem are you trying to solve?”

Pace’s Story: Don Needs a Widget

One day at work, my coworker Don came to my office to ask me for help.

…and here’s the rest:

• Read The Usual Error ebook, Chapter 7: What problem are you trying to solve? (web page)

When Google Chrome came out, I was inspired. I read the comic and thought to myself, “This is awesome. This is what a web browser is meant to be.” So I switched. I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser since it came out, and I’ve only been using Firefox for FireFTP and a couple of finicky sites that don’t work perfectly under Chrome.

Chrome is slick and fast. It made me feel cool to be using it, because it’s Google and it’s a geeky thing to do. It also made me feel good about myself to be using it, because I was supporting design principles I believe in.

Today I switched back to Firefox. Here’s why.

1. Add-ons. Tab Mix Plus (Duplicate Tab!), Greasemonkey, Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, All-in-one Gestures (Right-drag to go back a page!), Googlepedia, Word Count Plus, the Remember the Milk extension, FireFTP, and many more.

Each one of these add-ons makes my life a little simpler and a little more pleasant. I’ve been getting by without them. But I’m breathing a sigh of relief now that I’m using Firefox again. I’ve been choosing the browser that was better in principle instead of the browser that’s better in practice. Today, I don’t need the browser that best supports good web development standards. Today, I need the browser that best supports me getting my work done efficiently and happily.

2. Compatibility. There are a few sites that don’t work perfectly with Chrome, like the registration for AmazonConnect, Neilsen BookData, and the pop-up window at the Kitchen Table. I sometimes ended up having both browsers open when I visited one of those problematic sites. But I’ve encountered zero sites that work with Chrome but not Firefox, so I won’t ever be using Chrome again, unless I really can’t remember a password I created during the last few months. (;

Chrome made me feel cool.
Firefox makes me feel happy and productive.

It’s like I’m dumping my glamorous, glitzy, Gucci-wearing girlfriend for a woman who wears overalls and has some dirt on her knees, but knows how to wrestle a pig to the ground, solve differential equations, paints watercolors in her spare time, can kick you in the face with her mad Krav Maga skills, and does a little sysadmin work on the side.

That woman is hot.

I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you, baby. I’m back.

Our friend WebWendy interviewed us about our book, including the story of how we got started on this whole adventure. It’s 27 minutes long, because we chopped out a 3-minute technical glitch. We hope you enjoy it!

Listen to the MP3

When the points of the Iron Pentacle are in balance, it’s healthy and good. There are two ways that each point can get out of balance: rusted (deflated) and gilded (inflated). For example, if the point of Pride were rusted, it would be Shame or Guilt, and if it were gilded, it would be Arrogance or Hubris.

One of the personal growth techniques a lot of people talk about is putting yourself in a mindset of having instead of wanting. Instead of thinking “I want $5000/month”, instead think “I have $5000/month”, and this will send out vibrations that resonate in the universe and make it come to pass.

I sort of get the idea, but it feels inauthentic to me.

But the general idea is that one way to grow is to raise your mindset to be a little bigger, then you will grow into your newly biggified shoes. Take this one for example: “I am a well-respected expert on relationships and communication.”

So here’s the big question:

Is this biggification mindful or gilded?

(If you prefer business-speak, substitute “marketing” or “business image” for “biggification”.)

On the surface, they seem an awful lot alike.

On the one hand, it seems gilded (Arrogant and full of Hubris) to make yourself out to be bigger than you are.

On the other hand, it seems mindful to embiggen your shoes so you have room to grow into them.

Intent: Is that the answer?

A big difference between the two is intent. Are you trying to puff yourself up to feel better about yourself, or are you trying to mindfully embiggen yourself to be a better (more effective, more helpful, happier) person? In other words, if you’re biggifying your shoes, are you biggifying your feet too?

That’s a step closer to the answer, but bottoming out at intent doesn’t satisfy me, because of Honest Hal. So let’s talk about roots instead of intent.

Is your biggification rooted in fear or in love?

Are you puffing yourself up because you’re afraid of not being good enough? Are you telling everyone else how awesome you are because you’re insecure and don’t believe it yourself?

Or are you growing your self-image because you wish to grow your self? Are you expanding your words and thoughts because you want to bring more love, care, and goodness to yourself or to others?

That’s it. That’s how to tell the difference between mindful and gilded biggification. Rooted in fear, or rooted in love? As of today, I have some of each.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

From now on, I will be more mindful of where my biggification is rooted.

I’ll remember that it’s okay to feel afraid.

And if I find myself reacting to my fear by shouting “Look how awesome I am!”, I’ll listen to my fear. I’ll acknowledge it. Then I’ll take a breath, think about it mindfully, remember the iron and gilded pentacles, and listen to my heart.

Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:

Chapter 6: I already know this, but I need to hear you say it again

Let’s face it, folks: we’re scared. Even the most stable and well-adjusted of us are occasionally nervous and insecure. Our work, our friendships, and especially our relationships are plagued by issues, fears, and hangups, and we need reassurance. We need to hear “I love you,” “I think you’re awesome,” “I forgive you,” or “I appreciate you,” even when we’ve heard it before. Reassurance is no substitute for healthy self-esteem, but even the healthiest of us need to hear it sometimes.

…and here’s the rest:

• Read The Usual Error ebook, Chapter 6: I already know this, but I need to hear you say it again (web page)

If you have questions or would like to discuss this chapter, please leave a comment!

Eating only raw food for the past two weeks has been horrible in every way imaginable.

The food tastes horrible.

There have been a couple of things that don’t taste horrible, like Kyeli’s Tangy Twitter Salad, a cacao/avocado pudding thingy, and some fruit smoothies. But almost everything else has tasted either meh, bad, or too horrible to consume. It’s gotten to the point where I’m dreading meals because I know I’ll have to force icky-tasting crud down my gullet.

It’s ridiculously expensive.

We bought a $500 blender, and it doesn’t even work that well. It’s shorted out a couple of times, and some of the smoothies it makes are still a little gritty. It wasn’t the cure-all it was made out to be. The actual food is ridiculously expensive, too, especially when we buy organic. We’ve spent between $800 and $1000 on groceries in the past two weeks. Sure, some of that has been staples that won’t get used up quickly, and some of it was stuff we threw out because it was disgusting, but even accounting for that, it’s still ridiculous.

It takes a huge amount of time.

Kyeli is doing all the food preparation (*huge crazy appreciation*) and she’s been spending about four hours a day on it. And this is when we’re making recipes from The “Lazy” Raw Foodist’s Guide and Raw Food Made “Easy”! If this is easy, I can’t even imagine difficult.

I’ve had less energy.

At first I thought I might have found an advantage of raw food, because I was sleeping better. But I think I’m just sleepier. I’m getting sleepy around 9 or 10 instead of 11 or 12, and getting up at the same time. I’m more awake in the mornings, but I get nappish throughout the day.

I’ve been spacy.

I’ve been getting spaced-out a lot. It’s not quite the same thing as the “cottonheaded” feeling I’ve described before, but it’s close.

I’ve been miserable.

All these accounts of euphoria and an increased sense of well-being that raw foodists report? No signs yet. In fact, I’ve been significantly more miserable for the past two weeks. I’ve been grumpy, depressed, and irritable. I’ve had a couple of brief hour-long spurts of feeling happy and good, but for the most part it’s been all bad emotionally.

The food cravings are driving me mad.

I’ve been craving food that’s far less healthy than what I was eating before I went raw. Greasy jalapeño poppers with ranch dressing. Meat Lover’s Pizza. A Big Mac. I’ve never even eaten a Big Mac! The meat cravings have lessened over the past two days, but they were very intense and difficult to resist for about a week. Oh, and now Kyeli’s talking about bacon on the phone and now I want bacon. Augh! It’s so weird! And now I’m craving Amy’s Southwestern Vegetable Soup. A lot. And I have been every day for the past two weeks. I’m so attached to these food lollipops that I’m driving myself depressed over it.

So why is this happening?

I think it’s happening because we’re doing it wrong. When we decided to do a 30-day raw trial, we thought it would be roughly like our 30-day vegan trial. We would stop eating a bunch of foods, we’d have cravings, and we’d see what it’s like.

WRONG.

Being a raw foodist is not a diet change.
Being a raw foodist is a lifestyle change.

We didn’t understand what we were getting into. You just eat different food, right? No. It’s so much more than that. Let me enumerate the myriad ways in which we’re doing it wrong.

1. We didn’t do enough research beforehand.

We felt intuitively called to going raw, and a couple of our friends whom we trust say it’s the best thing ever, so we jumped in headfirst. We had no idea. Without knowing a lot about nutrition, we don’t know what to eat. We have a meal plan, but we haven’t been able to follow it accurately because of taste and time. When we fail to follow it, we don’t know what to replace it with, so we just eat whatever’s at hand, like fruit, raw nuts, and sundried raisins. Since we have no clue about the nutrition side of things, we’re probably eating all the wrong things in all the wrong combinations, so it’s no wonder we’re feeling crappy.

2. We didn’t allocate enough time to eating raw.

We started eating raw a week before we moved to a new house. It was a very busy and stressful week. We didn’t want to put off the trial due to busyness, because we’re always busy. But we didn’t understand the time investment it takes to do raw properly. We ended up making every single meal while we were blindly delirious with hunger. We didn’t make time to prepare things in advance, so we’ve been constantly scrambling. It’s been a huge source of stress in our lives. And whenever our routine gets out of whack, for instance when we moved and packed our blender, or when our internet was out and we spent several hours at a coffee shop, or when our house smelled like gas and we needed to evacuate until they could fix it, we were screwed! We either ate random raw snacks we had on hand or we just went hungry, which led to more blind delirium when making the next meal.

3. Umm… I guess “a myriad” is two.

There are oodles more things we’re doing wrong, but they all break down into not realizing that being raw would be a lifestyle change instead of a diet change.

All this leads to two questions. One is the obvious one: “What now?” I’ll save that for last. The second one is a tangent, but I think it’s a very important one. Oh, wait, there’s a third question, too. Let me come in again.

1. Did you lose any weight?

Yup, we lost about 5 lbs each in the past two weeks.

2. Why did bad-tasting food make me so depressed that I didn’t want to
get out of bed in the morning?

None of the raw food information I’ve read has placed a strong emphasis on taste. They say “If it doesn’t taste great, add berries, agave, or raw honey,” but they don’t talk about what to do if all the recipes make you want to gag, you have to force-feed yourself to get them down, and the thought of eating another salad makes you want to vomit. So perhaps I’m in the minority here.

I have two theories about this, one psychological and one chemical. The psychological theory has to do with the part of myself that wants to feel safe and warm and comfortable. It’s part of my primal self, and it’s very childlike and simple. Food has a direct tie to this part of me, so it equates “yucky-tasting food” with “not safe, not comfortable” and gets scared.

The chemical theory is that since I wasn’t eating raw in a healthy, well-balanced way, my brain chemistry got all wonked up, so I got depressed. Maybe due to vitamin B12 deficiency (although I’ve been vegetarian for a decade, so go figure) or maybe due to some other nutrient deficiency. When I’ve gotten depressed in the past (thanks, Elly, for helping me realize this) I feel like everything sucks, regardless of the root cause of the depression. If I’m depressed for an emotional reason, a circumstantial reason, or a chemical reason, I still feel like everything in my life is horrible.

So, the depression isn’t necessarily a sign that everything in my life is wrong. It’s a sign that something in my life could use some attention and improvement, and that if that something gets better, the other horriblenesses will (*poof!*) away like magic, since they were made of illusion and cotton candy in the first place.

We’ll see.

On to the final question:

3. What now?

Kyeli and I are, as of tomorrow, aborting our raw food experiment. We do still feel called to raw food, but now that we know the costs involved in terms of time, money, yumminess, and focus, we’re choosing to put our time, money, and focus elsewhere, like on our business, our son, and our relationship.

We know that we’re missing out on all the awesomeness of being raw if we started doing it right and got through the rough bits. But right now, we’re already feeling overwhelmed with being full-time entrepreneurs and full-time moms, and we feel that adding “full-time raw foodists” to that would bring us too much stress and badness to be worth the potential goodness.

We’re definitely going to change the way we eat, though.

• We’re going to eat more fresh vegetables in various forms.
• We’re going to eat much less refined sugars and processed food.
• We’re going to avoid wheat, either entirely or mostly.
• We’re going to cut down on starches and carbohydrates.
• We’re going to supplement our vitamin B12 and see if that makes a noticeable difference in how we feel.
• We’re going to experiment with various foods and combinations of foods to see how they make us feel and how they affect our bodies.

We’re going to put time and effort into educating ourselves on health and nutrition, and eat more mindfully and informedly.

We’ll let you know how it goes. (:

If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you’ll know that one of the big things I work on is deepening the connection between my head and my heart.

My internal dialogue talks so loud I can hardly hear my heart.

Yap yap yap, yammer yammer yammer, blab blab blab. Constantly chattering away to myself, constantly remarking on everything and analyzing everything.

Once, to show Kyeli how very chatty my internal dialogue is, I gave it voice. I narrated every single thought that went through my head, including reading all the street signs. Of course, this slowed it down a lot, but it gave her a much clearer picture of what it’s like inside my head. Two words: VERY NOISY.

During Iron Pentacle class, there were several times my internal dialogue would shut up. Some of them were obvious; when we were doing a ritual, a trance or meditation, or another sort of magick. But I also noticed that my internal dialogue had quieted during one of the discussions, which is exactly when it’s usually most active. Talking makes me talkier inside.

It was because I had taken off my glasses.

I have this automatic reading thing. I read everything that enters my field of vision. I’d say it’s obsessive or compulsive, but it doesn’t even enter the realm of consciousness. If you look at a TV and I ask you what shape the screen is, you’ll say “rectangular.” If I ask you to look at the TV without analyzing what shape the screen is, I doubt you’ll be able to do it. It’s automatic and happens below the level of consciousness. It’s the same for me and reading.

When my brain sees words, it automatically focuses my vision on them and reads them. This produces a piece of my internal dialogue, a not-too-interesting narration of signs, book titles, and labels. Given that I can’t read anything without my glasses on, it’s no wonder that I associate internal dialogue with my glasses!

When I take my glasses off, it’s quieter inside. Not just the narration, but the analysis, the worrying, and the round-and-round circling quiet down too. I’ll remember this, and be sure to take my glasses off when I want some internal peace and quiet.

But even more importantly:

The glasses are just a symbol.

Yes, there’s a historical reason why my glasses came to be associated with internal dialogue. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because at this point it’s Pavlovian. You ring the bell, I drool. You put on the glasses, I mindchatter.

Our primal selves, our animal selves — they respond to symbols. They respond to repeated actions. You have a hard time concentrating? Do something specific (create a symbol or anchor) each time you settle down to a quiet place in a clear mental state. For instance, spread your arms wide and sigh deeply. After a while you’ll be able to evoke a clear mental state simply by spreading your arms wide and sighing.

You can switch the cause with the effect.

How’s that for empowering? (:

Each week we give away the next chapter of our book for free. We hope you enjoy it! Here’s this week’s chapter:

Chapter 5: Checking in

In this hectic world, we often feel like no one truly listens to us. Our listeners rarely give us careful, full attention. No one teaches us to listen deeply, and it’s not something we know to practice on our own. Checking in allows us to experience the power of listening and truly being heard.

…and here’s the rest:

• Read The Usual Error ebook, Chapter 5: Checking in (web page)