Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Please note: If you want to be send notifications of my new videos about “Carpet Work Facilitation,” you must sign up by clicking this link. Only if you sign up will you be sent notifications about new facilitation training videos. – Dmitri

There’s a weird thing about how people generally handle traumatic experiences.

They often don’t say, “Wow, I’m glad that weird aberration to my normal experience is over.”

Instead, they unconsciously say, “That bad thing must have happened to me for a reason.”

Then they’ll often conclude, “The reason that bad thing happened to me because I’m on a bad, dark path in life.”

Then that new belief — that they are essentially stuck on a dark path — makes healing difficult.

They start to expect (and even seek out) bad experiences, and ignore the opportunities for good ones.

“I’m on a dark path” easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In this new 6-minute video, I talk about how you can recognize when you’ve gotten on to a path of darkness, and how you can get off of it. I also share some examples of people making that shift

If you are interested in healing, you’ll almost certainly want to know the ideas I present in this video.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Too often we use “integrity” and “accountability” to beat ourselves up — or to beat up other people.

I think we can do better than that.

And after blowing my own word — right after teaching about accountability on a recent men’s weekend — I learned some great new stuff about integrity, accountability, and the state of your heart.

I’ve posted what I learned in the video above.

Integrity is an important tool for creating great things in your life. There’s no doubt about that.

But if you blow your integrity, you must know how to handle it so you can get back on track, feeling even better than before.

… And that’s where most of us fail.

When you blow your integrity, it’s not enough to “own” that you did it. It’s not enough to “get back into integrity” with other people.

You have to look at what happened in your heart when you didn’t keep your word.

In this video I share a new view of accountability that takes your heart into account… Because it does no good to “get back into integrity” with other people, if, deep inside, you’ve given up on yourself.

If you are at all interested in integrity and accountability, I really think you’ll want to watch this video.

P.S. Please share this video with anyone you think might appreciate it. I know it’s an issue a lot of people struggle with; hopefully this will help.

If you’d like to be updated when I post new articles and videos, sign up in the sidebar to the right.

Here’s the transcript of this video if you’d prefer to read it…

Hi, this is Dmitri Bilgere, and I’d like to talk to you today, real briefly here, about a conclusion that I’ve seen in myself and in others, that we unconsciously draw.

…And when we draw this conclusion, everything goes off the rails.

I’ve been seeing it in myself, I’ve been seeing it in clients, I’ve been seeing it in other people. And I want to share it with you so that you can start to develop an awareness of when this is happening, and begin to make a choice about it, rather than having it be something that just occurs, and you are left with the aftermath of it.

“I have to step out of the light”

Now as you may have guessed from what I have written on the board here, the conclusion that people draw is “I have to step out of the light.”

Let me give you an example of this to show you what I mean, and to show you why this is so toxic. I’ll give you an example from my own life.

We all have longings

We all have longings of our hearts that are worth taking the time to get in touch with: they are great longings. And one of the longings that I have to be really a fountainhead of light, a source of light, a source of inspiration for people. To really encourage people to continue to step into goodness, to continue to step into virtue, to encourage them in believing that a better life is possible for them, and to go for it.

This is important to me, it gets me out of bed in the morning. I wake up in the morning, and that prospect, of being that kind of a light, it works for me. It moves me forward.

But life happens

So, what happens? Life happens. The other day I started the day with this intention, but, as the day was going by, I was noticing that nothing was working the way it was supposed to work. It seemed like everything was breaking.

• My body wasn’t working the way it was supposed to — I felt lots of inflammation, and headache, and joint pain.
• My relationship wasn’t working the way it was supposed to — Fawn wasn’t doing things the way I would like her to do things.
• And other things just weren’t working out — even the car was breaking.

There’s a breaking point

There’s this way that things “stack up” in us. And it was “stacking up” in me.

So before my day went wonky, I was “I want to be a source for the Light. I really believe in goodness, and I’m in touch with it, and it’s all great.”

But as the day went on, I became “Oh, the car doesn’t work. Oh, I’m feeling really sore in my body. Oh, Fawn’s not doing what she said she’d do.” It was one thing after another.

And you can imagine what happened. They call it “reaching your breaking point,” but what’s really happening is we say, “in the face of this much stuff not going my way, I have to step out of the light.”

And we decide we have to step out of the light

So I want you to start asking yourself, what is the moment where you draw the conclusion that “Ok, at this point, I have to step out of the light”?

What that looks like for me is this: I say, “Okay, trust and faith are all well and good, but in this circumstance, where this many things haven’t gone my way, it’s time for me to go fix things.”

So I go into what I call “Mean Dad mode,” to really make people “straighten up and fly right.” Or I get into “fix it” mode, where I really double down on stress and pressure to “make it happen.”

Perhaps you can relate to this kind of thing. These are the kinds of actions we take AFTER we have decided that we have to step out of the light.

So, what I did was, I stopped for a moment. I turned and opened up, and said,

“Wow, I really see that in the face of enough things not going my way, I believe I have to step out of the light until I get things fixed.”

But the big question is, is that really true? When I turn to the light with that question, what do I see?

The question I’m always asking

It seems like I’m always asking, “When you turn to the light, is that really true?” Looking to an authority higher than your own mind is a core of my work.

So, in this case, when you turn back to your deepest inner knowing, the Light, God, Source, whatever you call it — is it really true that, under certain circumstances you are destined to have to step out of the light?

For me, I get this answer: No, it’s not true.

Seeing that I am not fated to step out of the light when enough things don’t go my way has opened a whole new door for me.

Now when I reach that point that I normally reach — where I start to decide that I have to step out of the light and fix things, and be in the darkness till I have things working again — I know, deep inside, that I have the option of staying in the light.
So my experience is different. Instead of being “I have to make this work,” It’s more like, “Wow, I don’t know what I’m going to be like staying in the light in this circumstance.”

• I don’t know if I’m going to be more patient.
• I don’t know if I’m going to have more forbearance.
• I don’t know if I might be stronger with people, and be more demanding — but be demanding in a way that’s heart to heart with people.

I actually don’t know who I am on the other side of the decision to not step out of the light.

But I am certain of this: however I behave in the light will be better than how I’d behave out of it.

Because surprises happen when you stay in the light anyway. That’s even when miracles happen, because you are living your day in a completely new way.

Give it a try

I know this is a fast way to explain this, but I want to get these ideas across to you quickly, so you can start playing with them.

Here’s what I suggest:

Start keeping an eye out for where it is your “breaking point” is…

…And start to see that “breaking point” as the point where you lose heart and make the decision that you have to step out of the light.

Then ask your Inner Self of Something Higher, “Is it really true that I have to do that?”

If it’s not true, then stay with the light, and start to see what happens when you go even further with it. I think you’ll really be surprised by what’s possible.

Posts about related topics

Go for what you want by understanding your longings

How to get back in touch with the source of your motivation

If you want to be generous it’s good to be rich

The fundamental mistake that causes you to lose heart, and how to avoid it

Too much is happening, and you’re emptied out.

You need to find some way to fill yourself back up… But the problem is, when you are “running on empty” you don’t have the energy to go and get yourself recharged.

It’s as if the exact circuits that could get you filled back up are the ones that are “offline” because you are all emptied out.

In this less-than-3-minute video, I outline a quick 4-step process you can do at any time to get “filled back up,” even when you feel like you don’t have what it takes to get filled back up.

Other posts that explore this topic

How to get back in touch with the source of your motivation

If you want to be generous, it’s good to be rich

The fundamental mistake that causes you to lose heart, and how you can avoid it

Self-compassion: Healing’s secret ingredient

It’s called “Fortuosity.”

In the movie, a happy-go-lucky guy dances around and sings about how “My philosophy is do your best, and leave the rest to fortuosity.”

The message of the song is simple: “Do the best you can, and have faith about everything else.”

http://youtu.be/k-mDrxLVuVU#t=1m20s

I remember I really loved that idea when I first heard the song.

But even as a kid I remember thinking, “How do I do that? How do I do my best and have faith about everything else?”

It’s a great deal — with a catch

It certainly sounds like a good bargain:

If you

• do your best, then you
• get permission to relax and have faith in the Divine (by whatever name you call it) to take care of the rest.

“Just do your best and leave the rest to fortuosity.”

But there’s that catch…

But it’s a deal with a catch… And the catch is this:

You rarely really know, with certainty, that you did your best.

And if you don’t really know that you did your best, the whole deal falls apart.

If you’re going to do your best so you can relax and have faith, you actually have to achieve “doing your best.”

And it turns out that asking yourself “Did I really do my best?” is a great way to drive yourself crazy … Because you can always find a way in which you probably could have done what you did even better.

Because you never really know you did your best, you don’t get to “just relax and trust.” You just get more tension as you strive to do your best “good enough,” so you can finally relax.

“The Deal” has it exactly backwards

The fundamental problem is this:

The deal that life offers isn’t “Do your best, and then you can relax and have faith about the rest.”

The actual deal is “Relax and have faith. Then you’ll be able to do your best.”

It’s a completely different approach… and it has a completely different result.

You can’t do your best from a poor state of mind

If you are feeling unsupported in life, alone, or afraid, you’ll inevitably set the bar for “doing your best” impossibly high. That’s because when you are upset you confuse doing “your best” with “doing everything so well that I finally feel safe in life, once and for all.”
Fundamentally what you’re saying is “I’ll be perfect, then I’ll be able to feel good inside.”

And that’s exactly backwards.

You have to care for your heart first

You need to say, “I’ll care for my heart first, so I feel good inside. Then I’ll discover what I’m moved to do in the external world.”

Once you’ve cared for your heart, you’ll

• be in your best state of mind
• be authentically you
• feel faith, feel taken care of, and
• feel in the current of Divine Love and Mercy.

And from that state, you won’t need to make any deals about “doing your best” so you can finally relax. You’ll automatically know when you need to strive, and when you can let go and relax.

The state of your heart = the state of your life

I know I’m always on about “caring for your heart first.” That’s because I want these posts to be a constant inspiration and reminder for you to look to and care for your self in every situation.

We live in a world that does not value taking care of your heart. I don’t have to tell you that. But if you really want to actually enjoy your life — not to mention live it well, and have the best chance of achieving what you care about — you have to be one of the people who goes against the crowd and who makes it a priority to care for the state of your heart.

As I’m fond of saying on this blog, “the state of your heart equals the state of your life.” Please take that seriously. It’s my hope that these posts help you start to see that every situation is one in which the state of your heart is important.

Many people go through life disconnected from their Source of Mercy, so they inflict merciless lives on themselves. Or, like in the case of “do your best, then you can relax,” they wait to achieve some sort of perfection before they open to Divine nurturance.

But the Source doesn’t say “perfect yourself then open to Love.” If anything, the Source says “open to Love and be perfected.” There is mercy for the hearts of those who look. I suggest you go to that mercy first.

Related Posts

The fundamental mistake of losing heart

How to get back in touch with your motivation

The “healing examples” video on the coaching page

Maybe you shouldn’t jump off a cliff

How to be the “empty cup” that calls forth compassion and healing

Self-Compassion: Healing’s Secret Ingredient

There’s a Fundamental Mistake at the core of every loss of heart:

Believing that if you can’t see a way towards achieving your heart’s longing, it means that there is no way forward.

There you are, pursuing your heart’s longing. Perhaps it’s to find a great job, or to build a great relationship, or to lose weight and develop stellar fitness.

You’re buzzing along, but then something gets in the way.

What “gets in the way” will vary. It may be that you’ve tried everything you can think of, but still can’t seem to land the job you want. Or it may be that you’ve tried “spicing things up” with your spouse, but your spouse hasn’t responded. Or it may be you tried dieting, but diet food all tastes like sawdust and is flat-out boring to eat.

You hit a problem that is in the way, and you can’t seem to get past it.

In the face of that problem, you make the Fundamental Mistake: On a subconscious level you conclude, “I’ve tried everything, and nothing works to bring me closer to achieving my heart’s longing. Therefore, there must not be a way forward.”

And that’s the moment you lose heart.

From then on you are likely to head in the wrong direction

Once people have lost heart, they usually go into analysis mode. They ask, “Why didn’t it work? Why did I hit that problem?”

After they’ve figured out the “why,” they go into “fix-it” mode. They start taking action to fix their situation, to try to make it go the way they want it to.

For instance, a person might say, “The reason why I can’t achieve my heart’s longing is that I’m too lazy. I’ll fix it by making myself work harder.”

Or a person might say “The reason why I can’t achieve my heart’s longing is because my family isn’t supportive of me. I’ll fix it by confronting them and getting them to be more supportive.”

There are endless numbers of “whys” and “fix-its.” But the bottom line is this:

The “whys” and “fix-its” don’t help, because you haven’t cared for the state of your heart.

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You have to look at who you are being when you ask “why” and when you try to “fix it”

Once you’ve lost heart, you pursue your “whys” and your “fix its” as the person who has already accepted that there’s no way forward.

And that doesn’t work well.

You can verify this by answering these three simple questions:

• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how good are you at taking truly inspired, innovative action? Probably not very good.
• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how good are the decisions that you make? Probably pretty poor.
• When you’ve already accepted that there’s no way forward, how well are you able to analyze why something didn’t work, and what your next actions should be? Probably not very well.

Once you’ve accepted the idea that there’s no way forward, you’ve become a person who already knows that you are doomed. Yes, you can take action as that person, but those actions will be guided by your loss of heart, so they probably won’t work out very well.

You can’t just think your way out of it

Upon hearing this, many people say, “I’d better stop doing that! I’ll stop deciding that there’s no way forward!”

That doesn’t work, because losses of heart happen in the blink of an eye. You are pursuing what you long for, you hit a big enough problem, and you subconsciously accept that there’s no way forward. Subtly, something inside of you crumbles. The loss of heart occurs. It happens fast.

You can’t prevent loss of heart retroactively. You have to get good at noticing when it has happened, and at caring for yourself when it does.

Pretending that it doesn’t happen, or trying to police your every thought to keep it from happening, will only make you go nuts.

The good news: Just because you can’t see a way forward doesn’t mean you can’t be shown

Fortunately, just because you can’t see a way forward, doesn’t mean you can’t be shown one.

However, you can’t be shown a new way forward, unless you

• admit that you’ve lost heart, and
• are willing to open to the healing of your hurting heart.

Admitting you’ve lost heart. First, you have to admit that you’ve lost heart. For most people, the experience of accepting the idea that there’s no way forward is so painful that they don’t admit that it’s actually happened. They “double down” and try harder, acting with increasing force and desperation.

To be shown a new way, you have to be willing to admit that you’ve lost heart. You need to be willing to say, “Wow, when I’m pursuing my heart’s longing, and something gets in the way, I do lose heart. And the way I lose heart is I accept the idea that there’s no way forward. Wow, I really do that sometimes. Ow.”

That’s a fundamentally different approach than simply asking “Why didn’t it work?,” and trying to fix it, as a person who believes there’s no way forward. When you admit that you’ve lost heart, you are taking your healing process in an entirely different — and far more effective — direction.

Being open to the healing of your hurting heart. Second, if you want to be shown a new way forward, you have to be open to the healing of the hurt your heart experienced when you accepted the idea there’s no way forward.

I help people do this by guiding them to turn to their Source — by whatever name they have for it — and to bring their hurting heart with them to that Source.

This is where you use your compassion to “gather up” the part of you that has bought the idea that there’s no way forward. Then you turn, with expectation, to the Highest, Most Merciful Reality that you can imagine.

As you turn, you ask this question: “Is it really true that, just because I can’t see a way forward toward my heart’s longing, that there really isn’t one?”

You then bathe in the Light, until you experience some sort of transformational answer to that question.

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What sort of answer will you get?

I can’t tell you exactly what sort of answer you’ll get when you do this, because the thing about transformation is, it’s unpredictable.

When you open yourself to be transformed in the areas where you’ve accepted that there’s no way forward, you can’t know in advance what you’re going to be shown.

I have noticed, however, that transformation tends to fall into a couple of distinct categories:

The transformation of Insight. Sometimes when a person turns to Something Higher, they get a clear insight. They see something new, generally along the lines of, “Hey, it’s not true that I’m fated to never find a new way forward. In fact, I really could think about my problem this way: [New insight about a way forward, or a new way of thinking about the problem].” They feel charged up to take a new action and often have a clear direction.

The transformation of Assurance. Other times, a person gets a new sense of being loved and cared for even when they don’t see a way forward right away. They feel a new level of compassion for themselves, generally along the lines of, “Wow, I start to see that there is love for me, even when I’m having a hard time. Now that I see that, I may not know the exact route forward, but I know if I keep following this love, there’s a good chance I’ll be shown one.” They feel calm, warm, and able to “stick with it” in the pursuit of their longings.

And, of course, sometimes you get both.

Having told you these things, I feel I also should give you a warning: While it’s a good idea to turn with a sense of expectation, it’s always a bad idea to turn with a specific picture of what your transformation “ought to” look like. The key is that that you are opening to something beyond your own thoughts, in order to discover how transformation comes to you. It’s a process of discovery — don’t let your thoughts about what you “should” be receiving get in the way of what you are receiving.

What you can change, starting right now

To review:

You lose heart when you are pursuing something your heart longs for. Something gets in the way that you can’t seem to get past. And you accept the idea that, because you can’t see a path to what you long for, there is no way forward.

In the face of that happening, you are likely to try to figure out why you got stopped, and to go into “fix-it” mode.

That doesn’t work well, though, because when you take action as someone who’s accepted the idea that there’s no way forward, you’re actions aren’t going to be particularly innovative or inspired.

I’m suggesting that, from now on, you start to notice when you’ve accepted the idea that there’s no way forward. And I’m suggesting that, when that happens, you take the time to care for your heart that is hurting.

Rather than asking “Why did that happen, and how can I fix it,” try admitting that you’ve lost heart. Turn to your Source with the question, “Is it true I’m fated to not find a way forward toward my deepest longing?” Receive healing and insight, and bring that renewed energy and resource into your pursuit of the life you long for.

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It takes attentiveness and practice, but the result — being able to keep moving toward the life you really long for — is worth the effort. I’ve seen this happen with scores of people I’ve worked with, and experienced it myself.

If you’d like help with any part of this process, you can send me a private message with your question on my coaching page (link opens in a new window), or leave a comment here in the comments section below. Either way, I’d love to hear how this lands with you.

Related posts:

• Maybe you shouldn’t jump off a cliff
• Everything is personal
• Why can’t you just visualize a crosswalk, then step into traffic?
• Self-compassion: Healing’s secret ingredient

First, by how hard it is to precisely define compassion in a way that really encompasses it — and

Second, by how well you can be guided in being compassionate by simple “do and don’t” -style rules.

Today I want to talk about the experience of compassion… And to give you the first surprising thing I’ve discovered about using compassion to bring healing to yourself and to others.

What is compassion?

Of course, I’m not in any way the first person to write about compassion — it’s a BIG subject. The Buddha said that “Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others.” Some have described it as an “emotional resonance.” I think of it as “feeling for” or “feeling with” someone as they are going through difficulty.

But rather than struggle with definitions, let’s talk instead about the sensation of compassion — where the “rubber hits the road” in your experience.

How do you know if you are feeling compassion, for yourself or for someone else?

– Compassion is the “awww” moment, when your heart is moved to say “awww, that’s rough” to someone.

– Compassion feels like the “arms of your heart” reaching out to surround someone who is in difficulty.

– Compassion is a feeling of flowing from your heart to someone who is in having a hard time.

Additionally, in the moment of compassion you have stepped away from judgments about whether or not the person SHOULD or should NOT be feeling the way they feel. You’ve also have stepped away from the great advice you’d love to give them, but that they are not in a place to hear.

You are simply sitting with them (or with yourself) in the authentic acknowledgement of how difficult something is.

Compassion “feels with” the upset, not “all of” the upset

Now let’s talk about pain. How much of a person’s pain do you have to feel in order to be compassionate with them?

You probably already intuitively know that, if you are being compassionate for someone who is upset, you don’t have to get as upset as they are, or feel as agonized as they feel.

Well, here’s something that is a huge relief for some folks:

You don’t have to feel every ounce of YOUR pain and upset, either, to have compassion for yourself, and to get healed.

I like to say that this is “feeling WITH the upset, but not feeling ALL OF the upset.”

Let me explain…

A lot of healing work emphasizes the importance of feeling your feelings fully. This way of thinking says that if you are sad, you should cry with your whole heart, and if you are angry, you should express it with your whole body.

While there’s a lot to be said for this approach, it also has drawbacks. Upset feelings are often scary, and most people have no interest in feeling and expressing them fully. Therefore, those folks will never get the benefit of that kind of healing work. In fact, they run from it.

Also, the “feel it fully” approach also requires a supportive environment in which to express those feelings. It also needs competent facilitation to help you find a new meaning through that expression. These things are not always available.

If you are working with some upset of your own, it is worth knowing that you do NOT need to experience the pain, anger, fear, shame, or whatever “fully” in order to get the benefits of self-compassion, and the healing that comes with it.

This is really good news.

So how much do you need to feel it?

So how much DO you need to feel those painful feelings in order to heal?

The answer is simple:

You must step in to feeling the upset enough to know, in your heart — that is, on an immediate, emotional level — that in order to get through this, you need something more than what you’ve been able to generate on your own.

Put another way, you’ve got to experience the upset enough to feel the urgency of your need for some new resource to come to you.

If you don’t do that, the “well of compassion” won’t be able to open to you. Instead of feeling a flow of love, your experience of compassion will be dry.

Put even yet another way (don’t worry, I have plenty more): If you are completely separate from the emotions of your upset, then your heart can’t open to your need for compassion … because your heart is NOT INVOLVED. You have to involve your heart in the upset in order to feel the compassion.

But, by the same token, you DO NOT need to become absolutely overwhelmed by the feelings of the upset, either. You only need to feel the upset enough to really be present with it, and to reveal your own need.

There’s a saying in spiritual healing that “Nothing pleads with the Divine on your behalf better than your own needy heart.” Whether or not you believe in a “Divine,” I do think it’s true that an authentic admission of your need helps open up the flow of compassion, whether it comes from Somewhere Else, or from deep in your own Heart or Mind.

How to do it

Here’s how you can start building your “muscle” of opening with compassion to yourself.

First, pick some upset in your life. You may want to start with a small upset; a problem with a coworker, frustration with morning traffic, a surprise bill that came that you weren’t ready for, or some other annoyance of life that is sticking with you today. It can also be an old upset… something that happened a while ago that isn’t wrecking your life, but that you still aren’t quite complete about.

It should be big enough that you actually are upset about it, but (to start) not the biggest upset of your entire life. (You can build to that later as you start to get this circuit really working for you.)

Second, imagine yourself, standing in front of you, experiencing that upset, almost as if you are looking at someone else who has that exact same problem as you do.

Allow yourself to step away from any judgements or advice you may have for this person, and let yourself feel the need of that person’s heart for something beyond what he can give to him- or herself.

Third, begin to notice how you can gauge and control how much or how little you feel the painful feelings of this person before you. You can touch the pain a little bit, a lot, or none at all. I think of it like a “slider switch,” that I can slide up or down to increase or decrease the intensity. Experiment with coming closer to the pain, and moving further away.

As you allow yourself to move toward the upset, ask yourself, “am I connecting with this person’s pain enough yet for their need to open my flow of compassion?” Remember, you only need to experience the upset enough to get your heart to open in compassion. You may be surprised by how little suffering that takes.

Once you start to feel the compassion — the sense of “aww, that’s hard” — notice how a Blessing Current starts to flow to that “you” in front of you. It may be a small flow at first, just a trickle, but that’s okay.

Let that Blessing Current guide you in delivering a blessing to that person before you. It may simply be a touch, as if you are putting your hand on his or her heart and letting a blessing energy flow in.

Or, you may experience some sort of freeing insight, or some new way of seeing the upsetting situation.

Or it may just be a general sense of a new peacefulness around the upset, and a new will to let go, and move on.

Whatever it is, let yourself experience the good feelings of that. That’s how self-compassion can bring healing.

Being the empty cup

I once heart Mark Silver, from heartofbusiness.com, say that “It’s the empty cup that can be filled.” By acknowledging your need, without being overwhelmed by your pain, you can become that “empty cup” that attracts compassion and healing. You can even attract it from yourself… And that brings healing and peace.