The rollercoaster of unhealthy relationships
©istockphoto/Pogonici
There is no aspect of life more ripe with opportunities to grow than our relationships. It also seems to be perhaps the most difficult and often painful way to learn. Sometimes, I get the distinct impression that I may have been a little over confident when I signed up for what I wanted to achieve this lifetime.
I can see it now, back in the place it all began, way before I was born. A fluffy, nebulous space of brilliant, white light. There I am, in my shiny soul nakedness, just brimming with enthusiasm about my coming incarnation, having a chat with God about what I might like to learn this time around.
***
” I’m so stoked about this lifetime, God. I’m totally inspired and excited. This is my time, I can just feel it. This is gonna be my last time around. I just know it”
“There’s no reason to rush dear. You have all the time in the world to complete the syllabus. Besides, this is infinity, you don’t get extra credit for finishing ahead of time” God chuckles, being particularly partial to a pun.
“No really, God. I’ve been over the last one, I see exactly where I went wrong – I know I’m ready. You know, you really had me with that parenting thing. You really got me going. I just have to tell you, that is the most brilliant way to teach unconditional love, I don’t know how you come up with this stuff.”
“Oh, well you know… I’ve had a bit of practice, and of course the omniscience thing is handy, “ God murmurs, with customary modesty “Anyway, back to you. Have you had a think about what you might like to try this time? I thought you might like to give Life Purpose 101 a go” He suggests gently.
“Life Purpose? No way God, I want you to really challenge me this time. I want to do Relationships again, but this time, take off the training wheels, I’m going for Gold!”
” Ahh, hmm, I see.” God pauses, for quite a long time, until squirming, I interrupt the silence
“God, I know what you’re thinking..” God raises an eyebrow
“Well, erm, no obviously not” I respond a little sheepishly “The thing is God, I just wanted to say that whilst it may have looked like a bit of train wreck from your perspective, especially towards the end of my marriage, I feel I grew so much and I have given it a lot of thought and… well, I just know I am not going to make the same mistakes again”
God tactfully says nothing and look into the middle distance. In retrospect, I can see he was probably mulling over the free will issue and how difficult it is to uphold when you really just want to steer your creations away from the impending cliff edge of their own self-destruction.
“Trust me on this, God. I’m ready. Don’t hold anything back, I want you to give me your best shot.”
“As you wish, my child, as you wish.”
***
And here I am. Stumbling clumsily between the ego: “why is this happening to me?” and highest self: “what am I being shown here?”. Some days, some years, some relationships it feels like the time I misguidedly imagined I could become some other version of me who isn’t terrified of rollercoasters and got on Space Mountain at Disney.
I’m holding my breath, clenching my teeth and hanging on for dear life. All I can do is try to remember that this crazy rollercoaster ride through the darkness only feels like it is going to be fatal. That it’s going to end and I’ll be back in the light pretty soon. In the light is where I feel like I’m finally getting it. I can see where my patterns are, painful as it is to really see them. But it is in becoming conscious that we can finally choose a different behaviour and that’s when we get to choose to stop the ride and get off.
A prayer or intention for the rollercoaster of unhealthy relationships
Dear God, (or Goddess, Universe, Highest Self…whatever works for you)
Please heal the part of me that permits and accepts unhealthy relationships.
Teach me to protect my inner child from people who hurt her/him, even unintentionally.
Show me that forgiveness doesn’t mean staying connected at the expense of my well-being.
Remind me that it’s not my job to try to heal or change other people but simply to learn the lessons I am being shown.
Help me surrender, to trust and let go.
Amen (or So Be it, Thank you, Om Shanti)
It’s not about the stuff – how organizing can heal your soul
I have become quite entranced by the power of organizing this year and I am recommending it to several of my clients and many of my friends. I have been waxing lyrical about discovering the almost magical healing properties of this seemingly mundane activity. Ironically, given that it is all about the physical detritus we accumulate over a lifetime, I have found that organizing is, in fact, very good for the soul.
- Want to know the biggest secret about organizing? It’s not about the stuff
To say organizing is about the stuff is to say that kissing is about moving your mouth around next to someone else’s. Which is to say that the sum of the whole is far greater than the parts. It’s a process, people and within this process there are many profound revelations and hidden benefits to be had.
To begin with, it’s an eye-opening indicator about just how much attention (or not) we have been paying to what surrounds us. Some people say that the state of your surroundings is a direct reflection of your state of mind and I have to say, that for me at least, there is a lot of truth to that. To begin with is the fact that the times I start to get messy coincide with the times I am feeling overly stressed or rushed. Of course, this easily becomes a vicious cycle if you find it stressful to be in disorderly surroundings.
I happen to think there may actually be some scientific merit to the idea that de-cluttering reduces stress, if only because it must take more energy to be in a cluttered room because each time our eyes survey it, our optic nerves and brain have to fire off so many more times to relay the information about all the stuff they are seeing.
So there’s something to be gained from the end result but what I haven’t heard so much about, is the healing that can happen along the way. Having recently gone through all of my possessions, I looked at, touched and made a conscious decision about the value and benefit of keeping each thing. In my case, needing to decide whether each thing is worth the cost of either storing or shipping pushed the stakes quite a bit higher.
What was astounding to me, given that I have moved a fair bit and most recently within two years, was the embarrassing amount of stuff that I really didn’t even know I had in my possession. I wish I had kept count of the astonishing number of trash sacks of stuff that got thrown away, not to mention all the things that were donated or sold. And at the end of all that, I still look at what I ended up with and feel that there is more to be let go.
Looking at mementoes from the past can be bitter-sweet. Reading love letters from someone who no longer shows us that they love us – for whatever reason – brings grief as we remember and re-experience joys and love lost and feel the pain of its absence.
Organizing gives us the opportunity to come face-to-face with a literal manifestation of how much emotional baggage we are carrying around.
The letting go was at times incredibly painful but when you stop to really think about it, totally irrational. Why do we get so attached to things? Of course, what we are really attached to is the meaning we ascribe to that thing, for a really good explanation of this, check out what my friend Jon has to say about Essentialism here.
What I came to realize was that the reason it was so hard to let go of certain things was because I greatly valued the meaning that I had attached to them. I realized that my reluctance had to do with feeling like I was letting go of experiences and emotions I wish were part of my present. So I understood that it hurt because it was very important to me to be able to remind myself or perhaps even to prove to myself that at this time I felt loved, at that time I felt happy or successful, or creative or whatever that emotion was that I want to be able to hold on to.
One of the most difficult parts of the experience was realizing that I needed to acknowledge that not only certain relationships were over, but also that certain phases of my life are over. That there are roles I wish I were playing in my life and other people’s lives that simply don’t fit or exist anymore. I realized I had been holding on to the props required for the movie set of the life I wished I was living.
Letting go of the things shattered my denial and resistance to being fully in the present – which of course is the only place we actually exist in. When I am able to drag myself (sometimes kicking and screaming) into fully being in the present, which perhaps I fear will be just too painful to even survive, I always experience relief. I need to try to remember that just like throwing up, once I finally submit to the inevitable, I always feel so much better afterwards. And the present is where the rebuilding can begin.
So this, dear reader, is how I came to discover the little known fact that organizing is in fact, a sort of spiritual practice since just like meditation it brings one into the present. Organizing facilitates a healing whereby we can review the past and acknowledge its gifts and lessons. As we take the gifts and lessons into our minds and hearts, we can let go of the stuff and without all that baggage it is so much easier to gracefully move on and grow towards a better future.
Beyond forgiveness – the yoga of atonement
©istockphoto/ artpipi
As I thought about this day and what it means, I was struck by the idea that the desire to make amends or reparation for wrong-doing to another is, at the heart of things, a process of recognition that we are not separate.
Repentance requires from the transgressor an identification with and a validation of the pain of the victim. Sin is an act of separation, but both repentance and forgiveness unite. Thus, atonement can be understood as At-one-ment, a fundamentally yogic practice.
The Jewish prayers said today enumerate the many forms of sin that might need to be confessed. One of the first of which is described as having “hardened our hearts“. The hardening of our hearts may sometimes start as a desire to protect ourselves, yet the armored heart ultimately functions to inhibit our ability to feel another’s pain.
Once our vulnerability is secured beneath the shell of a hardened heart, our compassion becomes hidden alongside it. The hardened heart is disconnected from the other and becomes consumed with the ego of its individuality which need not be affected by the suffering of another.
The hardened heart belongs to both victim and transgressor and in many relationships both parties play both roles, in turns or simultaneously. But there is a cure for this evil malady, it is the practice of unconditional love.
As my yoga teacher Shiva Das would say “it’s easy to love when it’s easy to love”. But it is when it is least easy to love, that it may be the most powerful and the most important to do so. This is a rigorous spiritual practice, it requires faith, humility and discipline.
The revelation I had today was that true liberation from my own suffering was possible through the healing power of love. In order to be free, we must reject the illusion that we are a wounded child and remember the divinity within us that connects us with infinite, benevolent power.
By choosing to love precisely at the moment that it would seem impossible to do so, by loving the person who seems least deserving of our love, we transcend the role of victim. We are able to view the transgressor and ourselves and the similarities between us with compassion.
The division between us falls away and we see that we are both struggling and striving in our perfectly imperfect ways to understand what we are being asked to learn. In this moment of Namaste, all things are possible.
Today I celebrate a deeper understanding of how “Love is the Strongest Medicine”. Even as we feel broken by others, we can heal and grow by consciously going beyond forgiveness and striving to love those who hurt us.
Perhaps the true loves of our life are the people who challenge us the most to love them unconditionally. It is not an easy path. But when we succeed, how sweet the reward. When my heart is fully focussed on giving love, there is no space to fear or recollect it’s absence. In this moment, love will give us a God’s eye view of the situation and miracles can truly occur.
I have to stop going to the hardware store for milk
©istockphoto/sdominick
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein
Today I’d like to talk to you about getting unstuck from unhealthy situations in important relationships. I have heard it said that 99% of the solution to any problem is to become conscious of your behavior first. So I’d like to start by sharing a little exercise with you, for which you are going to need a pen and paper, I’ll pause a minute while you go find one…
Welcome back! To begin, on your piece of paper, write the numbers 1. 2. and 3. underneath each other.
First, what I would like you to do is to think of an important yet frustrating relationship in your life, could be a romantic one, or it could be with a parent or sibling or friend. Got it? Good. Now write the name of that person next to the number one.
Next, think about what it is that you most need and don’t get from that person – could be something like acceptance, affection, consideration, passion, commitment, sensitivity – you get the idea. When you have chosen that thing, write it next to the number two.
Finally, calculate how long you have been in this situation of not getting this important need met in your relationship – could be days, weeks, months or years. Write this answer next to number 3.
Now write this sentence on your piece of paper
I have to stop going to the hardware store for milk. I have been doing this for ten years now.
Crazy or what? You know how Albert Einstein defined insanity? See the top of this post again if you need a reminder.
Now, I am going to have you write the sentence again with some substutions for certain words. You see where this is going? OK, but no chickening out now.
It’s important that you see this written down.
Here we go,
I have to stop going to __(your answer to number 1)_ for __(insert your answer to number 2) I have been doing this for __(answer to number 3)__
Take a look at this sentence without guilt, shame or judgment. Just notice – with curiosity about what might be motivating you to keep up this – shall we say – level of optimism about this particular relationship. There has to be a reason that some part of your brain is telling you to keep showing up at the hardware store for milk. It’s probably not a rational part. It’s likely to be part of you that is totally stuck on the idea of How Things Ought To Be. It might well be a younger part of you that says with sad confusion,
But this person is my fill in the blank they are SUPPOSED to fill in the blank.
You might respond to this younger part of yourself kindly ’Yes they are sweetie. And they ought to and you deserve to have them do that. But… I’m a little worried about how much it hurts you to keep getting your feelings so hurt when you are disappointed.’
Just saying.
Always remember that the only person you have any hope of changing is you.
Take this piece of paper and stick it on your bathroom mirror for a month. Each time you brush your teeth, take a look at it and try to come up with some ideas of how you might try to do this differently. It doesn’t necessarily mean ending a relationship. But it might mean working on laying down the expectations you have of how things ought to be, so that you can have a little more peace about how they are.
Think about it. Ask yourself this question
If I could give up the belief that ******* should be ******** how would that change how I feel about the way things are?
Chances are if you didn’t have the expectation that this person should behave in a certain way – you wouldn’t be suffering when they don’t. Try this on for size. And let me know how it works for you. I’m going to be working on it right alongside you.
Let’s do this in three dimensions
Hello there,
How about we do this in three dimensions some time? I am booking individual and couple sessions in April at this time and have some limited availability for Skype sessions in March. Also, today I updated the Workshops and Seminars page so please click on over to check out the Spring workshop schedule which includes the Freedom Peace & Power one-day life-makeover workshop for people who want to give their healing, growth and living at their full potential a super boost and the highly successful Vive La Différence weekend workshop for couples interested in more relationship goodness and joy than they will know what to do with.
Hope to see you soon, even if it’s on Skype.
Mirabai
My purpose is love
©istockphoto/Creativeye99
I had an amazing weekend facilitating the Vive La Différence Weekend for Couples with Bruce Gold. I am awed and humbled by the transformational power of love. It truly is the strongest medicine. This morning, one of the participants forwarded me an email she had received today which I would like to share with you along with a song – MC YOGI Give Love.
Daily Inspiration for Monday, February 27, 2012 from Renaissance Unity
Purpose
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.”
~Emily Dickinson
Today’s Affirmation
My passion is freedom and my purpose is love.
Today’s Meditation
Dear God,
Your presence in my life is like a burning fire and a cool breeze.
Your truth pushes and cradles me.
I intend to be a better person today than I was yesterday.
With Your help, I passionately live my purpose.
With my help, You transform the world.
Thank You!
And so it is.
Amen
Today I hope that you feel connected to and inspired by your life’s purpose.
Come on Baby, re-light my fire – how to get date night out of a rut
istockphoto/spiderstock
Unless you live in a cave, you are probably aware that it was Valentine’s Day yesterday. All things romantic are foremost in my mind not just because it’s THAT month again, but also because I’m majorly excited that next weekend I’ll be offering the Vive La Différence Couples Workshop in Collegeville, PA. Last week I wrote a post for Lifehack on how to make Valentine’s Day last all year and I thought it would be fitting to share one of the tips I shared on how to re-kindle the spark.
This hot date idea is entitled Strangers in the Night and it is quite the fire-starter, especially when you have been together for a long time and/or are married.
For the purposes of this exercise you will need to select a time and date to meet in a bar that neither of you have visited before. An hotel bar is ideal for the purpose of this exercise for reasons that will become apparent.
Without discussing any details beforehand, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to invent an alter-ego for the night, complete with name, age, personal history etc. Venture outside the box a little and experiment playing the role of someone who has a little different lifestyle to your own. For example, you might pretend to be a traveling pharmaceutical sales executive and power dress in heels and a business suit – perhaps with racy lingerie underneath (-of course, if you’re the guy and you try this role you will need to be prepared for quite a bit of extra attention.) Get creative and play against type – if you’re a dentist by day, how about going as a contractor complete with tool belt? Or a secret agent on a dark ops mission? You get the idea. Whatever you come up with, invest a little time in creating your character as fully as possible. Where do you live? How old are you? Kids? Not?
When you arrive at the bar, if you get there first pull up a stool with your back to the door, order a drink and enjoy the thrill of anticipation as you await the arrival of a mysterious stranger. Play hard to get or flirt like mad, the choice is yours. One of the most fun and unexpected benefits of this game is the reaction of the bartender or guy next door who is eavesdropping on the conversation and just can’t believe what he’s hearing. Especially when one of you proposes that you should leave together (or better still slips a room key to the other).
Whether you head off home or head upstairs to a room together, try to keep up the act as long as possible. This game is a sure fire cure for date nights that have fallen into a rut. Especially when you make a conscious effort to see, hear and touch each other with the curiosity of never having done it before. While you’re at it, you might want to try new foods or -ahem- activities that you perhaps might not usually explore. You get all the adventure with none of the risks and the best part is, you can pretend to be a totally different set of people as often as you want.
How to survive the most wonderful time of the year when it sucks
istockphoto.com© hartphotography1
Holidays can be the most wonderful time of the year but they can also be the most difficult. There is something about the message that this particular time should be full of joy that can create a lot more pressure for people who aren’t feeling particularly joyful for various reasons. One of the keys to getting through it is to remember that, in fact, you are not alone in feeling this way. Many people are suffering from sickness or depression, are dealing with being separated from loved ones, or coping with personal challenges or financial issues that are overwhelming.
Even if you are lucky enough to be surrounded by loved ones, ironically, this season of cheer and goodwill to all men is the time of year that families and couples fight the most. There is nothing quite like an extended period of time in an enclosed space with your nearest and dearest to push your biggest buttons and, when you add alcohol to the mix, things predictably go downhill.
Being single during the holidays is arguably worse than being part of a fighting couple: For some reason, being unwillingly single for the holidays sucks even more than on Valentine’s day, presumably because you at least have a fighting chance at ignoring the existence of the latter.
All this pales in comparison to how hard it is to get through the holidays when you are mourning a loved one. It is particularly painful, not just because it is a time full of memories, but because everywhere you turn, the message is that this is the time to be together with loved ones. The joy that the rest of the world seems to be experiencing can make those burdened by grief feel particularly isolated.
The most important survival skill at this time of year is to give yourself permission to have the feelings you are having. Stop telling yourself that you ought to be feeling differently just because the calendar is on this particular page. It is hard enough to deal with difficult feelings without heaping guilt and shame on top of them. Quit Should-ing yourself. Expectations are 99% of the cause of all suffering. Give up the expectation that you should be feeling or reacting any differently to the way that you are. At a minimum, accept that the reality is this is how you are feeling. Even better, show yourself a little compassion and respect the fact that if you had a choice, you wouldn’t choose to be feeling like this.
Step 2 is to imagine yourself as someone else that you care about and think about how you would treat them if they were feeling this way. Perhaps you would be a little more patient? Give them a break? Give them permission to curl up under the covers until they felt stronger? Everyone is unique and we all have different things that make us feel better – and crucially for some people, the most important thing is simply having permission not to feel better until we do. Sometimes it takes a heck of a lot more time and energy to try to stop yourself having a feeling than to let it run it’s course. Sometimes, little things can help a lot. Be brave and ask for help. If that’s too much or there doesn’t seem to be anyone available, come up with a short list of things you can do for yourself that might help. Maybe it’s going to the movies and escaping reality for a while, finding someone to talk to, getting some exercise, making yourself some nourishing food.
Step 3 is to remember that practicing gratitude can be a very helpful aid. Sometimes, even coming up with a list of things to be grateful for is a major challenge (click for a link to a post on some suggestions to get started). If that’s the case, try an appreciation list instead. When all seems lost, sometimes it helps to focus on appreciation for the things we have experienced, the ability to feel, the breath that still carries hope that there will be a better moment ahead. If these holidays are hard for you, I truly hope something here will be helpful. Please remember that you are not alone and that everything changes. This too shall pass, I promise. I wish you peace in your heart.
The alpha woman in love – does your success hurt your sex life?
I saw this photo on the w
eb today and I just had to buy the poster. To me it says so much about what so many women I know yearn for in relationship: To be able to be the driven woman, charging ahead towards her goals and yet to also enjoy the feeling of being held by powerful arms. This guy is so clearly un-threatened by her power. He doesn’t have a problem letting her drive, he exudes confidence, intellect, sexiness and fun. He trusts her enough not to second guess the direction she’s taking and is on the look out for something awesome on the way that they can share and enjoy together.
The alpha woman and relationships
The subject of the alpha woman and relationships has come up twice this week, once in a fascinating chat I had with a dynamic woman who is a highly successful entrepreneur and mega star of the blogosphere and again on Twitter, in tweets between Patti Stanger, of Bravo tv’s Millionaire Matchmaker fame (@pattistanger) and reality tv star and Pageant Queen, Monica Pietzrak (@Monicawickedfit).
The first conversation revolved around the fact that for women entrepreneurs success can actually put more strain on a marriage than failure. We got to talking about the subtexts in a relationship to do with money and power. The Twitter exchange went like this: Monica tweeted “Why do successful alpha women crave the alpha guy? Will it truly never work? I’ve always been told “can’t have two #1′s” and Patti quipped in reply, “Ha! Yes it’s true we want a man to overpower us. So when you get an alpha man you become a beta woman!”
Patti’s use of the word “overpower” makes me flinch a little. This is a highly controversial area, not least because of the historical abuses of power and violence between the sexes. Many women fear to disclose a secret desire to be ravished, lest it is taken as an invitation to rape. But it’s worth venturing into the breech and talking about because it’ s an issue that many of the brilliant and beautiful women I know wrestle with: How do we reconcile our desire and ability to equal and even exceed men in business with our secret yearning to be “treated like a woman”. Just to be clear, whilst referring to straight women here, this issue relates to anyone of any gender whose preference lies in predominantly “feminine” traits and who enjoys intimacy with someone whose preference lies in predominantly “masculine” traits.
Why do I have to choose?
This is the dilemma of the modern woman - whilst I may be an expert at skilfully utilizing the “masculine” traits of my personality to kick butt in the world, when I come home, akick off my shoes and wonder in to the bedroom, my comfort (and pleasure!) zone lies in being in my feminine in relation to a partner who is exhibiting “masculine” traits. Critics accuse us of wanting to have our cake and eat it but why can’t I be an equal in the boardroom and still get the door opened? Why do I have to choose? For more on this ideology, check out the work of David Deida, no stranger to controversy himself, and his best-selling book The Way of The Superior Man.
The feminine feminist
Living 21st century, post-modern, industrial society, the pace of life is overwhelmingly masculine. It’s all about action and achievement and the faster the better. I wonder if that’s why we sub-consciously absorb this assertion that the feminine traits are in some way less powerful and judge them in ourselves. Growing up as a girl in the seventies, equality of the sexes was drummed into us at school at every opportunity, our anthem was “Anything you can do, I can do better”. The underlying message was that Pink was both Powerless and Pathetic. I exchanged it for black as soon as I could and didn’t wear it again until my thirties, when I decided to come out of the closet as a feminine feminist.
In theory the battle of the sexes should be over, but have we really come that far? What messages about being feminine and being powerful are we offering to girls – (or even more pointedly to boys who exhibit feminine traits) today? Women are certainly seen to be powerful, yet the power they exhibit often follows limiting stereotypes. Look at the media and you would be forgiven for thinking that there are only two ways to the top. One involves selling your body and the other selling your soul. Where is the middle ground between “pussy power” and being “an alpha male with a vagina”?
Vive La Différence
I think the answer for these successful women lies in giving up competition – not in favor of becoming submissive, (heaven forbid), but exchanging it for a paradigm of cooperation (which is of course, the feminine model, technically speaking). The road to peace and passion lies in embracing the concept of complementary opposites. I’m in favor of valuing our different qualities equally instead of trying to dilute them into an equal similarity, or as the French put it, Vive La Différence.
Ten Tips for tremendous first dates and one of the best holiday gifts you can give each other
I have a new post on Lifehack this week, with some advice about first dates which you can check out here if that pertains to you. If on the other hand, the days of first dates are happily far behind you, I also have something for you! Have you have been wondering about what to get your beloved for the holidays? Have you just been seized with minor anxiety because you hadn’t even thought about it yet? Let me help you out here. For a present with real and lasting value, how about coming along together to the couples retreat weekend I am presenting on December 10th and 11th? It’s the ultimate in quality time and I guarantee that this weekend will be the gift that keeps on giving, with more fun, intimacy, connection and great communication for the year to come and beyond. If you’d like to have a chat to get an idea of exactly what it could do for you and your other half, I’d be happy to hear from you. If you’re already convinced that this is clearly a) a gift that gets you mucho brownie points and b) one that will actually be pretty awesome for you too, hope on over to the registration page on
“This is not what I signed up for” How talking about the sub-text can heal your relationship
One of the biggest relationship mistakes that people make is to express anger instead of fear or sadness. That anger often arises from a sense of betrayal derived from the idea that an unwritten rule has been broken, the thought being ‘This is not what I signed up for’. But more often than not, instead of sharing the thoughts and feelings underneath it all, we ignore the elephant in the room and fight about the symptoms instead of the causes.
For Brad and Julie it all started when they had twins, right around the time he got his big promotion. All of a sudden their worlds were upside down. Between recovering from the caesarian and taking care of two babies with colic, Julie was completely overwhelmed and couldn’t wait for Brad to get home from work to give her a break.
How to know when to let go.
I wrote a post for another blog
, which I just discovered for complicated google reasons, I shouldn’t copy here, but I wanted to tell you let you know about it. You can read it here: Breaking Up is Hard to do: 20 Questions to help you know when to let go. (You’re not supposed to put in links that take people away from your website but I think this is some really helpful stuff and I didn’t want you to miss out!)
