You are so busted! You know what you did. Or didn’t do. Where you’ve fallen short.

Think about it. I’ll wait . . .

I hope you’ve had time to reflect and figure it out.

This was the single line my youngest daughter said to me: “You are so busted.” Though she was imitating something from a TV show, it struck me and really got me thinking. I scanned. Was it something I ate, drank or smoked? No. Was it something I promised her and went back on? No. How is my marriage? Pretty damn great. Is my money in good shape? Yup. Doing well with my family members? Check.

I kept thinking and of course came up with a good one, since you know how addicted to personal growth I am. But I also got very curious what other people would come up with if they got stuck with that same charge: “you are so busted.”

Scan the same areas I did and then dig even deeper. Long pause.

Here is what I came up with: I have a dream to be a world changer, a leader, someone who helps bring new levels of peace and happiness to humanity. And, as inspiring as this dream is, most moments of the day I “cheat” on it by being somewhere else in my consciousness. Some of my favorite states of consciousness include “control freak,” “mistrustful” and “better than.” Neville, my favorite author on manifesting, explains that we can only be “being” in one state at a time. So here is my plan–so far–for inhabiting my desired state of consciousness, called “spiritual leader,” more often than one of those others:

1) Track my thoughts throughout the day and keep a log of thoughts that go against my dream. Don’t get upset by these, but be excited to catch them. This never gets old and is never a waste of time.

2) Spend as much time as possible, using any idle time, to imagine myself as a spiritual leader and taste, touch, hear, speak the words I would if it were so.

3) Catch negative “thought trains” and choose not to get on them. Even if they feel comfortable or familiar, like worrying about an upcoming event or rehashing a “bad result,” just don’t go there, change my mind. Instead, go back to #2.

4) Do things I wouldn’t normally do in honor of my dream. For example, I am going to record a product to sell with myself as the star!

How about you?

You can see the point here is first, ‘fess up to where you are betraying your own dreams, standards, or even simply avoiding doing the right thing. Then, change your mind, your feelings and your actions. I am not trying to make it seem simple (though the directions are) but I am urging you to START NOW.

Please make getting busted the best thing that ever happened to you! Start now by posting your confession in the comment section below. I admitted mine, now I want to hear yours.

Love,

Laurie

P.S. Need help getting busted? The Handel Group™ Life Coaching Crash Course is an immersive workshop that leverages the main components of The Handel Method® to quickly set your life on a new and exciting trajectory. This is the most intense of our offerings, and also the most bang for your buck! Workshops are held year round in New York, Boston, California and D.C. Check for future dates and register with promo code: lipman to save $100.

A video excerpt from “A Philosophers Notes” discussing the importance of paying attention to the fundamentals if you wish to achieve your goals.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is it that makes us feel helpless in our lives? How best can we handle our perceived powerlessness? How too might this feeling instruct us in more deeply knowing ourselves?

Awful as it may be, the anatomy of helplessness is fascinating in all its trickery. When struck by it, we feel impotent to and victims of its torment. We scamper madly about in our panic, in search of any external source of aid to bail us out, convinced as we are in those sputtering moments of our own incompetence. This is understandable given how helplessness holds within it the distinct and scary sense of being utterly out of control. But the dominant trouble when we skip over ourselves in sole favor of outside supports is that we actually re-initiate and compound our helplessness.

For the entirety of 2007 and 2008, when in the relentless throes of my illness, the bulk of my days were spent shuffling from one imagined savior to the next. Trying to escape my suffocating helplessness, I ran in desperation for other people to fix me. I basically lived on healing tables and in examination rooms, until more than two years later my wonderful nutritionist suggested to me that I try going one full week without seeing a single expert, and instead just practice being with myself. Somehow, somewhere, her words resonated. I realized that I had been so crippled and broken down, that I had taken myself entirely out of the healing equation. Ironically, only when I gave up the chase, and instead connected with and leaned on myself, did wellness appear.

What’s palpably hard is that helplessness is so unbearable in its de-invigoration that it of course makes us want to bolt. Yet it is crucial that we break the cycle of running from our powerlessness, and instead stop to look at it. This is where the revelatory work resides: In being tolerant of feeling feeble, and in understanding, even in our acute discomfort, that there is more at play than this feeling. In taking a leavened, eyes-open view of our controlling emotion, we see through it and experience the curious and novel landscape beyond that of incapacity. When we honor its transparency, and accept it for what it is, helplessness is transformed into helpfulness.

I love this clean merging with self-reliance. Still, on my more at-sea days, when I start to fray and have the urge to search somewhere else for strength, I listen to Bob Marley’s ‘High Tide or Low Tide’ where he says, “In high seas or in low seas, I’m gonna be your friend, I’m gonna be your friend. In high tide or in low tide, I’ll be by your side, I’ll be by your side.” Quietly, I change the lyrics to “I’m gonna be my friend, I’ll be by my side,” and imagine holding out a stable unwavering branch to myself. In other words, I guide myself back in.

The prolific Zen teacher Norman Fischer also writes of this action, of calling out to and answering self. He asserts, “That’s a beautiful moment: to just drop everything and say to yourself, feel for yourself, here I am. It’s collecting yourself, recollecting yourself, recalling yourself from whatever it is you have been lost in.”

Next time you are discombobulated or at a loss, remember the spirit of help. Try this call and response. You’ll be amazed at how sweetly the moment opens up, brimming in full with the calm solidity of knowing you are in fact your own best ally.

Perfumes and fragrances are the single largest category of cosmetic and personal care products, especially hair, facial, and eye. These products represent nearly 50 percent of all prestige beauty dollars now spent in the US Fragrances are also extensively used in a wide range of everyday household cleaning products.

Exposure to toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products is predominantly through the skin. In contrast, exposure to toxic ingredients in household cleaning products is predominantly through inhalation.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has direct authority under the terms of the 1938 Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act to regulate toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products. However, seven decades later, it has still failed to do so. Similarly, the Environmental Protection Agency has also still failed to regulate these toxic ingredients in household cleaning products.

In the disturbing absence of any federal regulations, the policies and practices of the cosmetics and personal care products industries are determined by its International Fragrance Association (IFRA). This is an international trade organization of over 100 perfume and fragrance manufacturers, representing 15 regions including the US, Europe, South America, Australia and the Far East.

The primary objectives of IFRA are to protect the self-regulatory practices and policies of the industry by the development of a Code of Practices and safety guidelines. However, these include maintaining the “trade secret” status of perfume and fragrance ingredients, and pre-empting international legislative labeling and safety initiatives.

Of the more than 5,000 ingredients used in the fragrance industry, approximately 1,300 have so far been evaluated by the industry’s International Research Institute for Fragrance Materials. This Institute is a “non-profit” organization, created by IFRA in 1966 to conduct research and testing of fragrance ingredients. However, this testing is minimal and restricted to local effects on human skin, and short-term toxicity tests in rodents. Evaluation of ingredient safety is then made by an “independent” board of toxicologists, pharmacologists and dermatologists, without disclosure of their qualifications, let alone conflicts of interest. Their findings are presented to IFRA’s Scientific Advisory Board, and then published in its trade journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology. The information reported in this journal is the basis on which IFRA formulates its own “safety guidelines.” However, due to the “trade secret” status of fragrances, manufacturers are still not required by the FDA to disclose their ingredients on the label or in any other way.

These ingredients include a wide range of allergens. They also include synthetic musks, particularly tonalide and galaxolide, designed to mimic natural scents derived from musk deer and ox. They are persistent and bioaccumulate in the body, have toxic hormonal effects, and have been identified in breast milk.

In efforts at damage control, IFRA agreed that information on allergenic ingredients in perfumes like Eternity should be made available, but only on request from dermatologists, for diagnostic purposes. This “Fragrance On-Call List” action denies the public its right to know.

In 1973, in further efforts at damage control, IFRA created a Code of Practice listing prohibited ingredients, based on its own safety analyses. This listing has been subsequently periodically updated.

In May 1999, in response to repeated complaints of respiratory, neurological, and other toxic effects following the use of Calvin Klein’s Eternity perfume, the Environmental Health Network of California hired two testing laboratories to identify the ingredients in the perfume. Analysis of these results by the Cancer Prevention Coalition, summarized in the author’s 2009 Toxic Beauty book, reveal the following:

• 26 ingredients whose “Toxicological properties have not been investigated,” or “toxicology properties have not been thoroughly investigated.”

• 25 ingredients that are “Irritants.”

• 5 ingredients that are “Skin sensitizers,” or allergens.

• 3 ingredients that show “Fetal, hormonal, and reproductive toxicity.”

• 2 ingredients that “May cause cancer.”

More disturbingly, Dr. Vey, president of IFRA, failed to respond to repeated warnings from August to October 2003 from the Cancer Prevention Coalition. These urged “all fragrance products be labeled to the effect that, apart from the absence of known skin and respiratory allergens, they contain no known carcinogens, gene damaging, hormonal, or otherwise toxic ingredients.”

As reported in “What’s That Smell,” a June 2010 report by Women’s Voices of the Earth, faced with continuing criticism of unresponsiveness, IFRA initiated a “compliance program” in 2007. However, this is based on testing of a mere 50 fragranced products from the global market place to detect prohibited ingredients.

Clearly, IFRA is recklessly irresponsible. Also, clearly the public should be protected from further exposure to toxic ingredients in cleaning products, besides those in cosmetics and personal care products. These objectives would be implemented by passage of Senator Frank Lautenberg’s Safe Chemicals Act of 2010, and Congressmen Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush’s companion Act of April 2010. Both these Acts were based on the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. The new Acts require manufacturers to provide information on “chemicals of concern” in consumer products. This would also provide the public with information on the dangers of cosmetic and personal care products, especially as the FDA has recklessly failed to do so since passage of the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Click here to endorse these concerns.

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health; Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition; Recipient of the 1998 Right Livelihood Award (“Alternative Nobel Prize”) and the 2005 Albert Schweitzer Golden Grand Medal for International Contributions to Cancer Prevention; Author of over 270 scientific articles and 20 books on the causes and prevention of cancer, including Toxic Beauty (BenBella Books, 2009) and Cancer-Gate: How To Win The Losing Cancer War (Baywood Publishing, 2005).

CONTACT:

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition
Author of the 2009 Toxic Beauty, and the 2005 Cancer-Gate books
Professor emeritus Environmental & Occupational Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chicago, Illinois
Tel: 312-996-2297
Email: epstein@uic.edu
www.preventcancer.com
Please join the CPC on Facebook.

Brian Johnson from his Philosopher’s Notes. This one is called the 3P’s of Optimism, which is about disciplining our minds to create more empowering explanations about what’s going on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Over three decades ago, amidst a sea of healthy, young gay men whose consciousness and life-styles could be described as expansive, I celebrated a hard-earned freedom some people will never know. Then suddenly, many became very sick and started dying. I, too, became terminally ill. It wasn’t even called AIDS then, and HIV had yet to be discovered.

Those were the horror years: going to the hospital daily for myself or sick friends, going to memorial services, caretaking sick lovers. This poignant history, and the unique perceptions I’ve drawn from it, are what I bring to this writing. Disease has become a teacher of love and wholeness for me.

Disease transformation is the naturopathic shifting of our perception and experience of a disease. It is cultivating a transcendent perspective about our ailments that is nonlinear and multidimensional, evoking an experience of peace and spaciousness.

A shift in perception and experience of a disease can actually alter how an ailment chooses to manifest: becoming more aggressive or receding. Like all of us needing to be loved, disease responds well to acceptance and nurturance. Loving all parts of our selves, including the diseased parts, yields only love and renewal.

Disease transformation occurs below the cognitive mind, where a history of traumatic conflicts is locked in the body. By tapping into our most meaningful and primal energy vortex, we can access a potent resource for our journey toward wholeness. When energies are awakened and allowed for, the healing transformation is an organic, gentle process.

Focalizing for Disease Transformation allows a lightness to fill the air. Though subtle, this kind of shared pleasurable experience and energy expression is very restorative. It is exactly what we want in disease transformation: a shift from exhaustion and struggle to one of ease, insight and a grateful re-awakening.

Focalizing is a dynamic and effective process that allows us to respectfully set aside familiar thoughts and feelings and instead access our innate intelligence. It can benefit anyone who is in a crisis of consciousness, or in a state of feeling stuck, or feels trapped by life’s circumstances, including disease. We reconnect with a natural resource that conveys new perspectives, often illuminating previously unseen possibilities for moving forward with grace. In learning how to transform overwhelming life situations we can suspend our everyday thinking-mind to a timeless source of change. Focalizing allows us to develop a newly enlightened intelligence that becomes integrated in all aspects of our lives.

My personal experience with HIV/AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and addiction is that disease transformation graces a further awakening of holism. It provides the recovery of personal wholeness and transpersonal connection: a feeling of being whole and complete in oneself, with the cosmos, with nature, and with all things.

Reprinted from GoodTherapy.org – June 2011

What does Ubuntu mean?

Ubuntu is a Xhosa word which serves as the spiritual foundation of African societies. It basically means what makes us human is the humanity we show each other. It articulates a basic understanding, caring, respect and compassion for others. Ubuntu is a belief in a universal bond of sharing that unites all of humanity – the conviction that no person can be truly full while his neighbor remains hungry. It represents a world-view that sees humanity as a web of family, rather than a mass of individuals. This philosophy affirms that a person is a person through other people, that we are all related, interdependent and connected to each other. This is similar to what we know as compassion, compassion for ourselves, our families, our community, the global community and the earth.

When did you first became aware of it?

In 1981 and 1982, when I worked in Kwandbele. In those days during apartheid, Kwandbele was a “homeland” where the government forced blacks of the Kwandbele tribe to live. I was working as a Physician there and when I went driving into the rural areas to get to the various clinics. Even though I was a white man they didn’t know, I was never seen as a symbol of white oppression in spite of the suffering these people were undergoing because of the apartheid system. Wherever we would stop along the way, people would invite me into their homes for a meal even if they had hardly anything. Whatever they had, they would offer to share with me.

How do you think the practice of Ubuntu effects one’s health?

I think we all tend to get caught up with our own “dramas” which keeps us in our heads and takes up a lot of energy. When we stop focusing on ourselves and when we are sharing or being compassionate to others, we let go of a lot of unnecessary anxiety about our own dilemmas. So we often actually receive more than we give. It is a selfish thing, but if you want to feel better, helping others will probably help you as much if not more than whoever you are helping. Giving without receiving or expecting anything in return is extremely uplifting. I believe what it does physiologically to you is the opposite of the stress response, it stimulates the parasympathetic system. But also when one sees how others are living and they are happy even when they have nothing or very little materially, it often shifts one’s perspective on life and what’s important and how you feel. And often when people learn to give or start volunteering and caring for others, they in turn learn then to care for themselves as well. For many giving to others is easier than giving love to themselves, so it can help people learn self love.

Can you think of any patients whose health improved via Ubuntu?

Yes, I once had a patient who was exhausted, burnt out and unhappy even though she was very successful. I had tried dietary changes, supplements, all the tricks I have in my bag. Nothing was really helping, so eventually, exasperated, I suggested she quit her job and go to Africa (sort of as a joke). I never heard from her after that visit and then I got a call 6 months later from her telling me she followed my instructions, went to Africa, fell in love with the people and was now working for a non profit doing work in Africa. And she was feeling fantastic. I have seen it a number of times, people giving up their high powered jobs, switching to something more meaningful and not feeling Spent anymore. I would guess it is quite common.

What do you recommend for someone to kindle in them a sense of Ubuntu?

Find something that is meaningful to you, that you can connect with. It needs to be more than just giving money….which is nice but impersonal. When you connect with the person or persons you are giving to, it is probably the best thing you can do for your health. Partly, I think this is because what has happened in our culture today, many of us feel isolated. Whereas in Africa, there is still community, extended families, people feel less isolated, the support systems are usually better. I think what happens is we are so busy trying to survive in this crazy hectic world, we don’t have time to serve others or give back because of time constraints. But it is in our nature, everyone wants to give, we have just been numbed by our culture. That’s why if you look at most “slower” societies, there is more Ubuntu. So I would say, it is in our nature, it is a part of us, let it out.

When I qualified as a Doctor at 25 years old, I thought I knew everything there was to know about health and medicine. By the age of 30, I realized my medical training was limited and I didn’t really know much about health and wellness. So I went on a journey of discovery to expand my horizons and studied acupuncture, Chinese medicine, Functional medicine, nutrition, yoga and Buddhism. By 50, I realized my life training was limited too as my daughter (a teenager at the time) was pointing out “how stupid” I was.  And now that I am 55, I realize I have amassed a lot of knowledge but have so much more to learn.

As I get older and hopefully wiser with every year, certain insights become clearer. Here are some of them gleaned from the wisdom I have gained from 30 years of marriage, having a 22 yr old daughter, 30 years of practicing medicine and being a perpetual student of life.

More Real Food,  Less ”Food-like Substances”

More Fruit and Vegetables,  Less Sugar, Wheat and Corn

More Organic,  Less Chemicals

More Clean Products,  Less Toxic Products

More Chewing, Less Eating

More Water, Less Soda

More Walking, Less Driving

More Exercising, Less Watching TV

More Recycling, Less Waste

More Outdoors, Less Indoors

More Sleep, Less Worry

More Slow, Less Hurry

More Smiles, Less Anger

More Love, Less Hatred

More Fun, Less Serious

More Letting Go, Less Holding On

More Being, Less Doing

More Generosity, Less Greed

More Forgiving, Less Blaming

More Ubuntu, Less Me!

Ubuntu means what makes us human is the humanity we show each other. It is a Xhosa (South African) word and philosophy emphasizing community, sharing and generosity.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu says:

“Ubuntu is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being able to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe that a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms and therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in belonging”.

Let 2010 be the year of UBUNTU

In our hyperlinked world, we can know anything, anytime. And this mass enlightenment is our first step toward Buddha nature.

Bob Thurman is one of the most brilliant, nicest and humble of people I know. I am honored to be a student, friend and colleague of his and overjoyed that Bob will be guest blogging for us in the future.  A great clip I found of him discussing dualism.