Coach Elliott

Apparently Oprah went to a high end store in Switzerland and asked to see a very expensive purse.  She asked to see the bag repeatedly and the sales clerk said "No" and tried to lead her towards other less expensive ones, until finally Oprah walked out.  Oprah felt badly that this incident got so much attention but I am glad that it all came out because it is a statement around where we still are in the world.  We are still in the race battle and in my opinion we are still dealing with people who profile people of colour as ones who cannot afford to buy in stores that are higher end or buy an item that they deem reserved for the elite class, that elite class not being us.  Although Oprah wanted to let it go and not focus on it being of real importance (nice of her), she truly brought a point forward by simply being at the right place at the right time to show us all that race is still an issue and that the battle is not over. As a man of colour I have to say that my own exp

"When it looks like something is missing, the reality is that it is on it's way".  This comes from a show on TV called the "Secret Millionaire" and was shared by one of the people who ran a charitable organisation that the millionaire ended up giving money to.  It of course prompted me to think about how many times in my life I have thought the bottom of the box was going to drop out and suddenly out of nowhere something wonderful would happen to teach me to have faith and know that the things that was missing was actually on the way to me, that I would be gifted and all would be well. Sometimes we just have to know that something is on the way and sit back and wait for it to arrive.  We are not always sure that it will come but we have the faith that it will.  Because of our faith it ends up that what we were awaiting does in fact arrive.  Looking at what we don't have and thinking we will never have it isn't always that best thinking.

Today I am motivated by an email sent to me by a friend who is a doctor.  I cannot imagine how stressful a job this could be at times and now she is transitioning out of that work in a hospital and going to a university.  I am not certain what she will be doing there.  She is a young woman who is originally from India and she is a lovely spirit.  In the email she talked about the stress of announcing her departure to her "boss" and how poorly he reacted to her decision to leave.  She mentioned how hard it has been for her to make time for her husband and that although my invitation to go out dancing "sounded fun" she would be passing on it.  Frankly, I was uncertain as to why yet it all sounded so familiar to me. Something about all the twists and turns in her life reminded me of how important it is for me to not get caught up in the story and to just live life with some amount of joy, making time for what matters, like going out dancing and calling my grandkids.

Remember what Don Miguel Ruiz said: "Don't take anything personal".  Try not to take someone else's emotional baggage and make it about you or make it your fault.  It is likely that the person acting out the emotional murder is acting out of his or her own inability to be present and to allow their feelings to flow.  In the end it if our decision to make whether we would like to stay in a relationship with anyone who is an emotional killer and withholds love to get us to comply.  It isn't easy to let go but when if nothing esle we need to know that self-love is the most important kind of love we need. Activity: Who in your life was an emotionaly bully and withheld love from you? How did you survive that emotional murnder? What emotional games have you played and with who and why? What can you do to shift when emotional abuse is present in your life? Write about what it looks like to be emotionally present and emotionally loving:

I realise that the last blog that I wrote was about emotional absence but this blog is about something more serious which is the side effects of emotional shut down in relationships.  I, like some of you, have had plenty of experience in this area as the culprit and the as the recipient.  I will admit that after giving this some thought over the past two months or so I feel like I have been more the recipient but that may just be me behaving or showing up in victim mode.  Like many of you who have a spouse I too have felt the side effects of emotional cut off and emotional bullying. Speaking of bullying let's begin our conversation right there, because as some of us are aware emotional cut off is a way to bully us into doing what the other person wants us to do.  The mistake that we make is that we fall for it and do give in, doing things that we don't want to do or that are against what we feel is in our highest good.  When someone we love cuts us off emotionally we tend to

Today is a day for emotional self-talk and a talk about emotional absence.  I was up earlier than usual this lovely sunny day, 6 am to be precise.  My heart felt heavy and I began since my wake up call by Goddess I have sat here wondering why I have been tapped on my shoulder so early and been asked to address my own emotional cut off never mind that of others in my life.  At first I started to get upset at other people for what I deem their emotional cut off of me and their lack of support but it is more about me than it is about them.  It is my invitation to others that each of them is responding to.  When I  pretend they pretend.  When I say I am OK they say they are OK with it.  When I cut my emotions off they cut theirs as well.  The universe and it's people are responding to me according to how I respond to me and to the universe and it's people. God has an emotional investment in me and in everyone else that is his child.  I am his child and that is at the core of what

Don't spend a lot of time trying to get people to love you.  Spend all your time loving the people that already do.  This came from somewhere in my experience lately and I know we have all heard this lesson put in many words and in many languages.  We seem to be so invested in those people who don't like us or are not paying attention or that are not capable of loving us that we forget where to place our energy and our focus.  These may be just words and we may have heard them a million times before but boy is is ringing some bells for me, quite loudly and super clearly. Back when we were all younger in elementary school we struggled at times to get those bad asses in school to not dislike us, in fact we kept hoping they would like us and perhaps not beat us up after school.  It is sometimes that far back that we can reach and realise that we have been wanting someone to like us at some time or another for a lot of our life.  Even those little assholes in school that we were

It's no secret that I have deleted some Facebook and phone contacts recently, in fact I have made public announcements about it.  I think in the beginning it may have been about me venting, needing to let go of the hurt, resentments or anger and I am so OK with that.  I feel like my saying it out loud has been helpful and maybe even helped others who responded by telling me that they too deleted some toxic folks.  For me it all ended in this one thought: Letting go of the things and people who are not serving me and moving into a new  place in my life with a willingness to open another chapter, that chapter including some new friends.  And finally just blessing the old acquaintances or people I thought were my friends.  The reason that I finally deleted people was not about them so much about me and setting my own boundaries.  I have a history of reaching out to folks who rarely if ever reach back to me, especially with the zest and love that I attempt to give.  After a while it

I cannot believe, in a way, that what has inspired this particular blog is a quote from RuPaul.  It is: "You're going to have to get your feelings hurt to walk through the fire".  As is usual for me I want to interpret this and I want to make sense of it.  Not just because it a rather neat and wonderfully whimsical source like RuPaul but that it is really so true for some of us a lot of the time.  I think it to be different from kicking and screaming through life which most of us are familiar with but rather a reality of life.  Yes, we are going to be willing to get hurt to evolve.  Yes we need to be willing to be hurt and take that chance if we are to fall in love, for example.  Yes we must be at times willing to trip and fall and injure our self-esteem to get through it. When we are faced with a walk through the fire we are faced with the chance that we will get a bit burned but what is the alternative to this?  The alternative is that we will not walk through the fir

There is nothing more telling of life than being with family, sometimes pleasant and sometimes not so lovely.  Being with family today was mostly a good experience and there were reminders of some of the dysfunctional connections and the emotional games we play. One of the things that I noted was how we vie for attention.  We all long to be heard by everyone else and each of us takes our turn at dancing the ritualistic "see me" dance.  Each of us want to know that everyone else loves us and we reach out to each person, one at a time, exchanging jokes and exchanging loving touch.  I would say that especially us Latino folks, we have a higher expectation of fun and we love the colorful language and also read the subtle nuances.  We are having a high level of amusement and we are passionate about our social interaction. At family functions we practice how we will be and we reminisce about how it should be.  We give each person time to be with us and we look for any clues in

Today I had a friend come and visit for a couple of hours from Santa Monica.  I had not seen her for years and it was so great to see her.  We went to eat in Wicker Park at Feast, a place that does a great egg sandwich.  We shared our deepest thoughts about life and where we were both at.  It was too short for me but it was nevertheless wonderful to see her and I feel such gratitude that over all these years we are still willing to invest in each other, communicating as though we had never been separated all this time. One of the subjects that kept coming up was friendship and how difficult it can be to get others to connect and how often people are so unresponsive when we reach out.  Both of us pondered the reasons why in our own wise ways at our seasoned time in life, both of us showing some gray hairs.  I have long thought that like any intimate relationship friendship requires some work on our part and a willingness to commit to another person we call "friend".  Yet a l

I must admit there are times when I relive my old stories and I feel just as upset, angry, sad or resentful as I did when it happened.  Things that occurred to me so many years ago can still have this electrical charge inside of me that one would not imagine, but yet the truth is that it does. For me it has been an incident that happened with a family member of my partner that takes me back to such darkness that my stomach aches.  I think about the mean things this person said to me and how cruel it was to be whipped with information that I had shared with my partner in confidence about my life and struggles.  Having someone insult us with our own information without any compassion or consideration of privacy is simply a one way road to sheer and utter rage.  Yet what we must learn from these situations is that people use others misgivings to make themselves feel important or worthy or even better than others and that this kind of mean behaviour will eventually come back to bite them

For those of you out there that are single and happy this BLOG is not for you.  The truth is that relationships are work and some of us are better off single and happy.  There is nothing wrong with being single at any age and when relationship calls to you then that is when you may want to look back at this BLOG and ponder my not so wise and simplistic wisdom.  This of course is shared with the thought that I have a lot of my own relationship work to do so please hear that.  We in marriage and love have ongoing work to do but then again that is a BLOG in itself.  If you have decided to be in relationship the first person that you want to ask out on a date is YOU.  The first person you want to hold into the light is YOU and the first person you want to start to give a lot of love to is, yes you guessed it right, YOU.  In order to be in relationship with anyone else you have to get truly and intimately acquainted with yourself: spiritually, physically, emotionally, creatively and finan

Just yesterday I saw an episode of "Extreme Weight Loss" and to my surprise it is actually a great show about taking a journey that is not just physical but more emotional.  It is about accepting who we are and getting back the love of self.  It is about the relationships between the people on the journey and the relationship they have with food and with themselves.  At the core of it is the discovery that we are all worthwhile and that an addiction to food is like any other addiction and will always fail us.  At one point in the show the person on the show received a room filled with exercise equipment and a saying on the wall that said: "Be the woman you want to be, not the one others see".  I was impressed by these simple but profound words and it motivated me to write this BLOG.  I can only hope it serves one person who is struggling with their image, specifically a woman.  We are bombarded by the media in every direction and we are seeing a rather limited vie

I was on Facebook again for a brief time and to be honest I often times feel like I go there out of some need to be validated and receive some love.  Unfortunately more often than not I go away feeling empty and even at times I go away feeling a bit dark inside.  I feel sad for myself and for others about how we have resorted to a social media venue to communicate and at sometimes even insult each other.  Admittedly, I h ave likely said some dumb things and later regretted it like the time I commented on someones comment about the royal wedding and how wonderful a memory that was of Dianne to which I stated something like: "I don't get all the worshiping of this royal family stuff when the there are kids in the world starving and women being beaten down by abusive partners.  I think that person deleted me as her friend and frankly that was OK with me because we were technically never friends to begin with except on Facebook.  The question in my mind is whether Facebook friends