Courageously choosing for this environment has done miracles for me. Pukeko birds on our driveway.

Learning to live a sustainable different  lifestyle is a scary business and paying attention to the environment you are in, is imperative if you really want to learn and become the change you want to see.

Why am I saying this?
Because we all have book cases full of books with exciting content about how we can live a joyful and healthy life; so why then are many of us NOT living that promised healthy and free life?
Or when we are seriously trying to change are we having a joyful exciting ride or do we find ourselves engaged in a fearful and difficult business,  often taking one step forward and going back two?

So what is going on?

To explain that let me introduce how learning works based on ‘The Biology of Belief’ by Bruce Lipton Ph.D.

Bruce explains that our environment is crucial to learning and he developed this concept from his work in cell biology.

Lets see how this applies with a story about my learning and my environment. 
Here I am, 15 years ago, wanting to change my life because what I see around me no longer feels that good.
I do a self development course at Landmark Education and learn to observe my dramatic, victim stories I create about my life. The environment on the course is lovely, everybody is open and willing and supportive. It feels great and the course content makes a lot of sense. I feel excited and I am determined to apply the learning in my daily life and change the relationship with my then husband. I can see what a difference it would make. 
After the course I drive home to my husband who is  very hostile towards these self development courses. I arrive all delighted with the prospect of a better relationship but do not get a chance to share. He complains about what happened during the weekend while I was ‘having fun’, the kids played up and before I know it, I am uptight and irritated and reverting back into my dramatic story that life is hard and nobody understands me. 
I know that I am not saying anything new here; we all have had these experiences of getting excited about something we ‘learned’ only to have the balloon deflated before we have even paid off the course costs on our credit card.

Despite my desire to make a difference in my life and my relationship I couldn’t and here is the biology explanation that shows how come me and my learning had no chance.  
According to Bruce Lipton our body is a community of cells whose functions are influenced by stimuli from their environment.   
During the course, my community of cells (my body) was responding to a very nurturing and friendly environment and therefore very receptive to taking information in. As I was relaxed, energy was available to the cells in my forebrain to process this information.  
After the course I leave that optimum environment that stimulated the information receptive cells in my forebrain and on the drive home I cannot help but start to anticipate with dread the welcome I expect I am going to get from my husband. 
These anticipatory thoughts are influencing my cells. My cells respond to the thoughts of an anticipated hostile environment by going in defensive mode to survive the onslaught, like they would do on a battleground. They take the energy away from my forebrain as the stress hormones get ready for battle by stimulating the blood flow to the hindbrain where the life-sustaining reflexes to deal with fight and flight behavior reside. 
While it is useful that stress signals in real life emergency situations repress the processing conscious mind in favor of the survival reflexes of the hindbrain, in this type of daily life ‘battle’ situation these reflexes come at an unwanted cost . . . they diminish my cognitive ability to retain and communicate my new learned insights. 
While the stress hormones are doing their job, they rob ME of  MY ability to think about my insights and how to apply them when I come home. Thus within a few hours of leaving the course I am back to behaving as I did before, reacting to my environment and with the cognition of my new learnings quickly fading from consciousness.

That is why it is important to notice that most of our daily environments do NOT support us to retain and apply new insights; as a rule of thumb when doing things differently we find ourselves on a battlefield of resistance with the status quo.
That means to learn and to do things differently, most of us have to deal with the scary business of facing our battlefields and that is where courage and programs like WomenLikeMe come in.

To have learning be effective means that you have to get up the courage to move on from those battlefields, your current hostile environments and who wants to do that?
Addressing hostile environments is very scary and difficult and therefore I have seldom seen anybody courageously change their life from choice, have you? 
But I have seen plenty of stories in the blogosphere about woman getting a kick in the backside by a life threatening or life altering circumstances such as cancer, relationship break-ups that does act as the catalyst to change their lives for the better.

Once John and I understood this connection between environment and learning, we have been quite radical with our change of environment and reducing our stress hormones. But I must admit that has not been easy. 
You all have read about my struggle with voluntarily giving up my work environment and a stressful marriage. 
The cold turkey shift from the city to rural living also had its moments for me.
When I say environment I do not only refer to toxic relationships, work environment and food though. I also refer to our own internal Little Voice, our beliefs about money and our out-of-integrity way of being. Most of my blog posts are pointing out the diversity of the toxic environments we need to pay attention to.

Because understanding the tension between learning and environmental stress is so important, our first concern at WomenLikeMe is to create awareness that learning requires you to look at the wholesome ‘what is so’ of your circumstances. Courageously taking action based on what you observe is a must for developing a strong basecamp.

When learning you have to, like Tess says, be fearlessly bold.

As Gloria Steinem said; “Any woman who chooses to learn to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke . . . She will need her sisterhood.”
I agree and I would add; ”as long as most of our environments are hostile to change, learning takes courage but you knew that, didn’t you.”

Only courage will bring change.
Only courage will allow you to face your environment and its hostility to your learning.

Choosing supportive environments like WomenLikeMe is key here.

Learning to do things differently is YOUR responsibility,
MINE is to support you.

THIS is the food nature provides for us, if we let it. Our broccoli.

Last Monday my post was about how; ‘I believe in the power of the individual, YOU‘ where I suggested that “Our current crisis was created by each of us acting independently and establishing a personal and professional lifestyle that was environmentally deaf, dumb and blind.”

Change is upon us, the Aquarius era is dawning, there is no stopping that but Erin observed;

We are in transition, yet we don’t want to be. It seems safer if everything remains the same and we know what to expect.

Evita Ochel too can see the resistance to change;

I know that our world does not support “different” – in fact it doesn’t just ignore it, it makes whoever is trying to be different and enact a change know that it is not welcome.

I agree with Erin and Evita that the status quo is making change most unwelcome, however that doesn’t stop any of us from taking our own responsibility and acting as Evita does;

I have found that what has helped me the most is establishing personal standards. I know what I can do and want to do to help myself and the Earth, and I intend to follow through no matter what the occasion, no matter what others say.

Sure we can go off the deep end and take things to the extreme level, but it is not about that. As long as we silence the noise and listen within, listen with our hearts, our actions will always be for the good of all.

Megan Bord too is in action;

But it had to start with each of us first.

The same goes for being the change we wish to see in the world. It can seem daunting at times, but I know that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. ONE STEP! I can do that.

I can eat less (leaving a smaller environmental footprint). I can love more (causing love to multiply and spread throughout our world). I can laugh, dance, forgive, and do all sorts of “one step at a time” things each day to initiate change on a global level. And when people see me living successfully in a more enlightened way, they, too, want to follow suit.

Yes Megan, we can all do that; in fact that is the greatest thing we can do, take the next step, set an example and be in action for the good of all.

In my Monday post I also said;

For a human soul to function on earth, it must unite with Nature -in essence our soul forms a partnership with Nature. … we have a sacred mutual partnership.

In spite of the disconnection and alienation with Nature that the status quo currently practices, many of you already know of Nature’s intelligence and how you get your questions answered in the company of Nature. Tess agreed with what Joy had to say;

Every door has been revealed to me through my time in solitude in nature. I may sit under a tree and breathe in its essence, walk along a path, sail the ocean, explore an island, walk near the surf; if I have only a moment I may sit outside and look at the sky. The Answer is within, always, and my time in nature allows that to be revealed to me.

I am thrilled to see how we are all working towards change, one step after the other. I am also becoming aware that our context is very important and I’m realizing this more and more especially now I currently learn to work with the techniques that Machaelle Small Wright teaches on how to communicate directly with Nature’s intelligence. I’m actively and consciously co-creating my life with the Nature Spirits and I have created a context that is allowing and supporting that, how cool is that.

Desiring isolated beaches requires letting go of fear of rocks and surf.

The world as it stands is not geared to make desires the vocal point of our lives, is it? 
Desires are different beasts and differ hugely from everything we have learned about success and goals.

Desires are delicious anticipations of  great things to come.

Many of us experienced the feelings of desire when we were children looking forward to Christmas, birthdays and holidays. 
As an adult many of us have remained at that ‘childish’ level of desire, looking forward to ‘things’ , but the difference is that once we got what we desired we still were left with feeling unfulfilled.

But once we allow desires to mature from that initial child level they become more like a ‘calling’.
I now prefer the word ‘calling’ over desire as it better describes how adult desire works, it calls us forward. 
Saying that I have a ‘calling’ for my return to nature feels more accurate.
‘Calling’ also makes more sense when I look at how my ‘calling’ is taking shape. It is not always fun and I never really associated letting go and having faith and being scared stiff with the word desire from my childhood and for some time that had me confused.

What I have found and understand now that I consider desires to be more like a ‘calling’;
having a ‘calling’ requires a transition into a different way of Be-ing and Do-ing.
In short we, human beings, need to let go, to change how we operate and learn to operate at the level our desires call us.

The biggest thing I have learned from my ‘call’ to live differently in nature is that it requires letting go of the tried and true, it has me jumping into the unknown and having faith.
All things that are unfortunately in short supply if you look around you.
Not many of us seem to have faith and trust; predictability is our middle name and the way we hold on to materialism and our beliefs says it all.  I was no exception. 
BUT . . . No change, no go.

When following my ‘calling’, I have found myself hanging onto the cliff by my finger nails unwilling to jump.  ’Calling’ or not, jumping is never easy, is it?

At one point I had to let go of my job.
Money and my job were at that time my biggest imprisoner of all, they had me NOT aligned with my ‘delicious anticipation’ of doing life differently in nature and yet I hung on for dear life before jumping!
To add insult to injury I was also being out-of-integrity because I ignored John’s income stream and support. Ouch, that wholesome ‘what is so’ was hard to swallow once I saw that. 
At that time my job had reached its ‘use by’ date. I started to bite the hand that fed me, I was no longer able to add value as I had withdrawn my support and in such a state I was focused on anything but desires.   
Letting go of the job was necessary for me at that time to allow me to focus on more productive things, to pay attention while working out my calling and how to return to who I really am and how to trust.
I could NOT live in the old way and at the same time deliciously anticipate my future.
I needed to jump to operate at the level my desire called me to and while my ego resisted the jump big time I started to realize I could NOT be half pregnant. It was one or the other and finally I jumped and lo and behold John was there to catch me. Me of little faith.

And it didn’t stop with that jump either.
At least I was still in the city living in the house we owned, reasonably close to my daughters and friends. So when worse would come to the worst, I had always somewhere to run to and the chance to earn a bit of money here and there when necessary.
BUT as I became more intimate and knowledgeable about my ‘calling’, another jump awaited me; the jump into the unknown of rural living. In hindsight that seems obvious BUT at that time I wanted the security of the city AND the joy of rural life, what was that about being half pregnant again?  

However I have gained a lot from letting go and from jumping, I am pleased to report.
Letting go simplified my life and that makes a huge difference in freedom and finances.

With letting go, liabilities that were an emotional, time and financial drain disappeared.  
Commuting, city entertainment, needy friends all gone; it is amazing how a city can drain you. 
Since I have increased my time in nature from 7 weeks annual holidays to total emersion, I have become congruent in who I desire to be and who I am. I eat, I work and I live where I love to be and that is awesome AND very healthy.  
I have removed distractions such as television, newspapers, neighborhood and work environment noise and in the emerging quiet I can hear what is important.
After jumping I have become a lot smarter, more creative and as a result I see solutions where before I used to see none AND this is helping me to cope with the unknown.  I have a growing ability to think for myself and my need to copycat other people’s success is diminishing.
Oh sure, there were times when I was tempted to copycat Leo Babatau of Zen Habits to get his success and those dollars. But as Leo obviously uniquely follows his desires, how could I ‘uniquely’ copy him????? 
I am finding my own way in the internet world by paying attention and fighting off the urge to go for quantity rather than quality. I learn from my blogging community by paying attention, NOT by fearfully rushing around. By paying attention I am seeing all your wonderful contributions and I have taken the opportunity to have them add even more value by writing the weekly Friday posts. 
I am also realizing that my holy cow of owning a house is no longer that holy. Renting in our current situation allows for flexibility and freedom and it gives us financial relief as the mortgage is gone. THAT was a big one, letting that security blanket go but I sure can see the win in it now.

My ‘calling’ to live differently in co-creation with Nature Intelligence has me learn and unlearn a LOT.
I understand now why desires have NOT lead me down a path of roses. I now realize that until I adjusted to the rhythm of their way of operating we were not collaborating very well!

And all that learning and unlearning is now calling you to WomenLikeMe, if you so desire. I highly recommend you do if you desire a ‘calling’ that deliciously has you anticipating your future. A scary but exciting ride awaits you if you register which if you want to, you can do today.

John and I working towards our desire to be warm.

On the Monday’s post; ‘She has no desires only goals‘ I described how my daughter is typical of so many of us; she has been taught to be goal focused, is achieving goals and yet lives an unfulfilling life where her unique personal desire and passion are missing. I too was once doing just the same, appearing successful but failing to love my life, until now that is.

Why might we choose ’safe’ goals over ‘unknown’ desires? Jenn shared her own experience of how her desires did not go to plan;

I stopped desiring things after an incident in my past where I made plans (full-out passionate plans) and then it got turned on me… I didn’t want to believe, and hope and desire again to that fullness… because I assumed it would be taken away again, and that was a lot of wasted good quality energy.

We all have seen our desires come to grief and leave us thinking we won’t do that again; lets play small instead. Little Voice then has the chance to come up with all kinds of justifications such as Jenn went on to share;

I think of it as selfish sometimes, or as an extra, or high-maintenance…
If I was to desire out loud, I feel it wouldn’t come true.
I secretly desire to … but I don’t want to believe entirely it could be real, or I might get crushed again.
…I feel what right do I have to desire too much … I don’t want to ask for more than I should and be ungrateful,

Many of us can recognize our own brand of Little Voice (ego) chatter that steadily undermines our right to desire and our courage to boldly declare our desires OUT LOUD for the Universe and everyone to hear. Congratulations Jenn for daring to declare your secret desire out loud on your blog.

Aysel sees clearly how goals are a set up by society and that goals on their own are not our desires at all or as she so eloquently puts it;

People spend years chasing the goal that was never theirs and once achieved they don’t really know what to do with the outcome… As a result we have a crowd that follows the same  fit-all “dream” template to discover later on that apparently there was more than one train leaving the station. What a disappointment it must be to discover that you got on the wrong train after going such a long way, what a hassle to go back and start over.

We have a dichotomy here, between Jenn’s experience of struggling to come to terms with desires that do not go to her expected plan, giving her lots of grief and Aysel’s realization that we get persuaded to take the wrong train, and pursue a society inspired fit-all ‘dream’. 
We each face the challenge of choosing between an apparently knowable society inspired dream or the Great Unknown of going for our unique desire. Peggy Nolan knows this;

Right now, I’m standing in the middle of this huge unknown landscape. I have no idea how things will turn out, I just know that I love being and doing what I truly desire. I’m excited, a little nervous…
I’m off and running towards my desire, with full open arms, and an open heart.

Robin Easton shares how it is for her to live in her desire’s Great Unknown;

Ever since I let go all that I thought I “should” be in society, and allowed myself to return to Nature and become what I ALREADY was and am, my life has taken me always, forever, into the arms of The Great Unknown. I embrace it willingly, hungrily, as my soul’s sustenance. The Great Unknown keeps me vitally alive. Even writing my book is a journey not of my ego, but rather a calling by Nature to let her speak through me, a calling that fills me with such intense Love that there are days I sit, write and weep because I’m filled with such piercingly intense Love.

While the ‘how’ of our desires belongs to the Great Unknown, it doesn’t mean that clear fixed goals, like milestones along the way, are not a useful and necessary part of the journey as Kristie Ryan recognizes;

I know what I do desire and I know that this job position will help to get me there.

A job or writing a book is a goal along the way, part of our desire rich journey but is not the desire itself. Once this is understood, it allows us to accept the challenges and difficulties as stations along the way; as part of our bigger dream. The details of our desires evolve too, an example of which Robin, the queen of living life from desire explains;

I am thinking of a way to bring people to ME and NATURE as opposed to me ONLY going to cities and towns to talk “about” Nature. It’s something that I feel will find it’s own course, if I just trust and “put it out there”. The way will reveal itself in the right time.

For a nature girl such as Robin, I can see that choosing to “go to cities and towns to talk ‘about’ Nature” is a considerable sacrifice that comes from desire and a true act of love.

Nature and me, both here on my blog and on Robin's blog, desiring real food.

I have a guest post today on Robin Easton’s blog and it fits beautifully with all the posts on intimacy and LOVE and what it means when I observe that my daughter doesn’t have a life.

It means my daughter is pursuing goal after goal with no real desire where to take her life. She is missing out on a life that is rich with diverse experiences and LOVE and she is fooled into thinking that distractions like holidays and material things are her desires.

I know how hollow life is that follows a predictable pattern, I once lived like that too and I was as Peggy Nolan said in her comment “a rat running around in a cage going nowhere“ until it finally dawned on me;
But damn it, I am NOT a rat, I am a creative being with a purpose who should follow her growing personal desires with actions of Love.

Within purpose I can achieve goals, but goals on their own are like dead end railroad tracks, useless for expansive travel plans.

When I was thirty I had it all but was bored. Ironically I worked in career counseling assisting people to find their desires and how to make them come true. How ironic indeed.

I was lucky enough to anchor one ‘unconscious’ desire and that was to be in nature. 
My annual seven week holiday in nature was the highlight of my life, there I blissed out and tasted what loving life meant and at the time I never gave it a second conscious thought why I did this.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked my job. It was a very good one. I had the privilege to hear a lot of life stories and learned a lot about how life never goes to plan.  BUT although the job had a noble goal to help people, it had nothing to do with a personal desire and it didn’t give my life a purpose. All it did was make me feel good, earn me money and give me status and security.

Thank God that I got a chance to experience the difference that following a heart felt desire can make to the quality and intensity of one’s life. 
The difference is huge BUT . . .
Like intimacy, committing and following a desire has consequences and requires letting go of the very things society says you must have.

A desire requires being intimate with pure heart-felt JOY. Money, security and a fixed waterproof plan have no place when pursuing desires. 
Desires lead you astray from what you have been taught you must have.
Desires take you into the unknown, they go against what the ego perceives as ‘good economical practice’.
THAT makes pursuing desires extremely difficult and not for the faint hearted.

I followed my desires twice in my life.

The first time was when I migrated to the abundant nature of New Zealand without really knowing what I was doing. 
The second time I am following my desires more consciously and I am doing it NOW. 
Both times had me scared witless, had people around me frown and I was and still am unable to explain and predict how it all would and will work out.

Pursuing my desire the first time has payed off. I adore living in New Zealand and that vague dream has grown into a very ambitious desire; to return to living on this Earth as we are meant to;  to co-create with the, until now, unknown intelligence of nature. This desire will make a huge difference to me and to the world as well. It is ME and yet far bigger than ME. 
It has me write this blog, it has me work on becoming a strong basecamp so I am resourced enough to make this happen despite the status quo, it made WomenLikeMe.
It urges me to think and act differently around money, security and who I am being.

THAT is what desire does.

It leads me into the unknown, it makes me courageous and committed to deal with insecurity and it makes me smart as I have to find my own unique solutions. It makes me grow in ways I could never have imagined and it gives my soul the experiences it longs for. In my case I am to fulfill my ultimate desire to live in God’s Garden of Eden, in my Space of Love in a way that God intended us to live with Nature as the mighty co-creator that it is.

Desire lets me live from the purest feeling of all, Love, all day every day as I go about ordinary daily life.
And yet there is nothing ordinary anymore about my ordinary life.

As I said there are consequences though when becoming intimate with your heart.
You have to learn to do things differently and become a strong basecamp to handle going out on a limb like some of my blogging buddies.

Peggy Nolan’s desire from Infinite Yoga and Reiki and The Stepmom’s Tool Box is very clear when you read her blogs. Peggy wants to teach. Her passion is definitely Self-Care and she too understands that only a strong base camp can create a life how it is meant to be. Peggy pays attention to what there is to learn and thus increases her own understanding and ability to become the change she wants to see.  She too has to go down paths unknown. When learning you obviously are not practicing things you already know! And of course teachers who learn from their own experiences are the best teachers!

Hilary from Positive Letters is following her desire to be with her Mother, it sure is giving her ‘rich‘ experiences although some of them must have left her scared witless. But I see Hilary as vibrantly alive while she pays attention as her desire is taking her on a very unknown path. As a result she is curious, she is doing things she never dreamed of and she is creating a whole new future for herself.

Joy from Unfoldingyourpathtojoy is committed to her desire to sail and live on a boat. She too oozes Love and makes her life joyful despite what circumstances bring. But she is also honest enough to share the frights and uncertainties as she veers off the trodden path.  However Joy is also paying attention as she creates her life full of wealth and richness while letting go of security and old fashioned money ideas.

Then there is Robin Easton from Naked in Eden.
Robin committed to her desires when she lived in the Australian Rain Forest and ever since then Robin’s desires has kept her free, fully self-expressed and authentic in connection with Nature Intelligence. You only have to read the comments on Robin’s blog to know how her pursuit of her personal desire is inspiring others.

Desire filled people recognize each other, they live differently and they do things differently.

I have a guest post on Robin’s blog today where I show how accessing Love makes our lives rich and how ‘cold’ our lives are when we don’t. Of course I desire you to go and have a read.

What I am doing with WomenLikeMe is give women the strength and clarity on how to dream and go for it.

My biggest desire is to have you be a strong basecamp who is resourced enough to follow your desire; that is why WomenLikeMe is created for you and me.  I love you to join, why not give it a go for one month so that you can taste what is possible.

Following your desire is a personal path and yet it is the most generous act of Love you can give to yourself and your loved ones.