Guest Post by Jenna Avery.

Finding and living my truth is like surfing a wave, navigating the treacherous parts, riding high, falling low, and waiting to see where I wash up.

My spirit loves to give me opportunities to dance on the edge of truth and trust.

After 4 successful years working as an urban designer, my spirit said, “Uh-uh, not anymore.”

I left.

Despite the student loans, the degrees, and the lauding from my boss and peers.

When my ex-boyfriend almost died in a motorcycle accident (who I was still half in love with at the time), I was there by his bedside every day, even when everyone around me told me how stupid I was being.

It felt right. It was right.

I helped him decide whether to live or die. He lived. I was right to be there. We’re still friends. I didn’t suffer huge emotional setbacks or humiliate myself.

In fact, it changed me deeply and profoundly.

When the love of my life said he didn’t want kids, and I desperately did, I stayed because my heart knew it was right, even though my logical mind was totally freaking out.

My spirit said, “This will all work out, even if you can’t see how yet.” It did. We have a 2.5 year old son that is the light of our lives.

For me, living my truth often means not knowing, being willing to be in the discomfort of that uncertainty, and proceeding to live and deliver my best understanding of my life purpose and my vision anyway.

It means not knowing how or if things will work out, but trusting them anyway because it feels right to me.

It means not being 100% sure about what I’m doing or why I’m doing it.

So I’ve learned to say, “This is what’s true for me for now.”

It’s darned uncomfortable at times.

I had a fantastic opportunity recently to attend the inaugural TEDxMarin event featuring four creative visionaries speaking about personal philanthropy, building communities by focusing on trust and listening, the power of social media and the internet to facilitate connection and interdependence, and insanely inspiring possibilities for simple mechanical solutions to reduce energy use by 50% in a decade.

It sparked me to think big about myself, my life, what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it.

As I was driving home, a thought flashed in, “I don’t want to do what I’m doing anymore.”

Then I thought, “Crap.”

Then, “What does that even mean? Aren’t I already in the process of changing everything?”

Since then I’ve been in a place of evaluation, examining everything, questioning the lot: where we live, how I work and spend my time, how we take care of our son, how I market my business, my old direction, my new direction, how we’re managing our finances, and, well, everything.

It’s like a giant double-check. It’s something I do fairly often.

See, when my spirit shows up with a message like this, even if I don’t quite know what it means in practical specifics, I pay attention.

And if that means that I have to hang out in that awkward in-between place of not quite being where I am and not quite being sure where I’m going for a while, so be it.

Because this is what’s true for me, for now.

It might change tomorrow, it might not. But this is what’s true for me, for now, so I go with it, trust it, explore it, listen.

The way I look at it is this: My spirit gives me exactly what I need. My Divine Guidance is my truth, and my job is to follow it to the best of my ability.

So I strive to evolve consciously along this delicious path of confusion, growth, self-discovery, and truth, moving ever closer to the core of who I am and what I was put here to do.

All I can do is trust the process and surrender to doing the things I am called to do, even when they absolutely terrify me.

Write a screenplay? Okay. (Breathe.)

Quit saying I’m going to write a book and actually write one? Damn. Okay. (Keep breathing.)

Redefine my tribe and redesign my entire business? (Do I have to?) Right, then. Okay. (Breathe.)

It’s not like I haven’t been through this before. And it always works out for the best.
So when my spirit says, “Okay, it’s time,” I listen.

I listen even when I have to wrestle myself to the floor to do it, because I know it’s the only way I’ll truly be happy.

This is what’s true for me, for now.

Jenna Avery is a life purpose breakthrough coach, mentor to creative visionaries, raving sci-fi fan, writer-in-the-making, and passionate mom. Find Jenna on online as @JennaAvery on Twitter and at www.JennaAvery.com.

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“But Elizabeth, we’re all alone.”

I was a Junior in college, just having broken up with my high school boyfriend of 3 1/2 years and found myself trapped at a intergenerational latino festival with some of my friends. Watching couples slow dancing. Adorable couples who had been married the longest of anyone at the festival. Married for 25, 30, 50 years.

That moment I finally felt the truth of my breakup. For the first time in years, I was desperately alone. I felt those jagged, abandoned pieces inside my chest that were raw and broken. On the edge of collapsing into tears or throwing up on the dance hall floor.

My friend Tracy took one look at me, pulled me out of the room & drove me back to the dorms. While giving me this demotivational, come to jesus speech as I wept in the passenger seat next to her.

“Elizabeth, you cannot trust anyone.”

“Even when you are in a relationship, the only person you can depend upon is yourself.”

“We are born alone, and we die alone.”

Her words still haunt me. Fourteen years later. Today.

Because this morning I woke up with a case of the melancholies.

It’s nothing. It’s everything.

My daughter being in camp full time, a readjustment of my role in her life and the time I have with her, and my definition of myself as a mother and a woman. The instability of my business, where half of my launches fail or underperform, I’m constantly living on the edge, two launches away from going under. The idiosyncraticness of my love life. The status or lack thereof of my bank account. The uncertainty of where I will be, in any part of my life, in 6 months from today. In 6 days from today.

Most of the time all of those things are amazing and exciting, interesting and challenging, full of deliciousness and ecstasy.

Today, I just feel blank. Unclear. Alone.

And I thought about what Tracy said.

And pictured that gapingvoid cartoon.

That cartoon that haunts me. Haunts me in such a way that as much as it resonates with me, I can’t bring myself to buy it and hang it on my wall.

“The price of being a Wolf is LoneLiness.”

I don’t want to believe that I am either a sheep buying into the bullshit of false security, or a wolf who is forced to walk the earth alone in order to stick to my integrity, to my art, to my calling.

I don’t want to believe that that the only way to live my truth, is to be alone.

I miss being part of a team. I miss having people who work with me, where I can depend on them to help with projects, brainstorm ideas, that feeling of “we” instead of everything just being me. I miss having a partner, where together we’ve chosen each other and created a sanctuary from the insanity of the outside world, where I get to be completely myself. I miss building something together, I miss creating something with someone else.

This is the part of the post where I was going to switch gears.

I was going to launch into a brilliant self-help section on how you can get out of the melancholies, based upon what worked for me today.

But nothing worked for me today.

I went for a 2-hour walk by the bay, drank the triple grande nonfat nowhip mocha, ate the everything bagel with plain cream cheese. I worked out hard and drank lots of water. I ate a big bowl of pasta with tomato cream sauce, indulged in dark chocolate, utilized my vibrator, wrote in my journal, made lists of everything that’s good in my life. I had long text conversations with a best friend, watched a movie, chatted with people on twitter and facebook.

Here’s the thing. I intellectually understand that my life is awesome.

Yes, I am part of a powerful tribe. Yes, I am blessed with amazing best friends. Yes, I am not really alone, when it comes down to it.

I intellectually understand that … but today, I don’t feel that. All I feel are the melancholies. No matter what I do.

So today I’m going to give myself permission to just feel that way. Maybe I need a day off from epicness and awesometasticness. Maybe I have real shit going on that I need to work through. I don’t know what the deal really is about.

Today, I’m taking the day off from fixing myself.

I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

No related posts.

My earliest memory is the moment when I realized that other people have thoughts.

Until that instant, I had been operating under the childish assumption that only I had an internal dialogue, that other people were automatons there to provide for my needs, to give me what I wanted, to fill up the world.

That’s what I assumed until the revelation that other people have feelings. That they have their own desires, their own opinions, their own lives. At that moment, I lost a piece of believing I was at the center of the universe.

And from product and business launches that failed over these last few years, from feedback from two of my best friends Ken Moorhead & Allison Nazarian over the last few months, I realized that I still do too much talking about me, not enough quiet listening to others, that I still have a tendency to forget that the world does not revolve around what I want, around how I think things should be, around what’s going on in my life, around what I think people should need.

That’s one of the big things I’m working on – remembering that I’m not the center of the universe. Remembering to quietly listen.

And that’s also the secret of launches. Of business. Of why things fail.

Not because the sales copy was too long, not because the video editing was imperfect. Not because we didn’t use our affiliates enough or didn’t send enough emails or tweets. Not because the price point was wrong or we talked about features instead of benefits. Not because people are sick of launches.

Launches fail because we didn’t shut the fuck up and listen.

Not to what people say they want. You can send out a thousand surveys and ask people in tweets and emails what they need, what they want to buy from you.

The problem is, people don’t know how to say what they really want.

Henry Ford has been quoted as saying – “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Ford knew that people didn’t give a crap about the damn horses. People wanted to get places faster. And cheaper. And easier. And cleaner. With less hassle. And more reliability.

And we forget that. We forget to really listen.

Not just listen to what people say, but to what’s underneath what they say.

To what they really want. The problem they really need solved for them.

So that’s my most important piece of marketing advice to you. And to me.

Yes, we need to write good copy and create amazing products and set the right price points and do testing and ask people questions and develop relationships and nurture our tribes.

But more than anything, we need to shut up. We need to listen.

Not just to the words, but listen to the truth underneath those words, the truth our people feel but don’t yet know how to say. And by listening to that truth, by solving the real problems that our people cannot yet articulate, that’s where we will find our greatest success. That’s where we will make the greatest contribution to the world.

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Guest post by Shelly Gibbens.

I had all these great thoughts for this post… I live my life honestly… I always live my truth… I always have… and… that is where I called bullshit on myself.

I have always known the right thing to do. I have terrific intuition… but I haven’t always followed it… and sometimes have just downright punched it in the face and jumped feet first into something I shouldn’t do.

In retrospect, looking back over every decision I’ve made that I just KNEW was wrong, I realize that I ignored my gut… I knew the correct decision, but for reasons ‘explainable’ at the time – but not now – I didn’t go with what I knew to be true in my heart, head and soul.

I’ve made many mistakes… Epic mistakes… Novel worthy mistakes… I’ve taken many deep breaths and cried so hard at times, I literally passed out…

But here is the best part about that… yes there is a best part…

I paid for every one of my mistakes. I took responsibility. I learned. I grew. I became ME.

AND 99.9% of the time, I actually like me.

Now for the longest and most stressful lesson I’ve had…

Thus far, in my career, I have gotten by… lived one day, week, month, and year at a time, ‘content’.

Or at least that is what I told myself.

I enjoyed the paycheck of a steady job, definitely, but 90% of the time, I did not enjoy the people and became easily bored with the work.

Dealing with people that wouldn’t do their jobs, and knowing I would get stuck doing them…

Sitting in a cubicle, and eventually an office, that held no creative flow for me…

Working without clear focus from the ‘leads’ of the projects …

Long, boring, mostly useless meetings…

All the while, in between stifling yawns and trying not to roll my eyes, I would just take deep breaths.

Until one day I couldn’t breathe at all… and I resigned.

No plans, no backup, no thoughts… just very loud yelling and cussing from me directed at the latest in a line of useless people trying, incorrectly, to tell me what to do.

(I did apologize… “I’m sorry for yelling, that was unprofessional and inappropriate… but I do NOT apologize for what I said.”)

My household lost 2/3 of our income because of my decision. That is a very hard thing to live with. We didn’t budget and plan. Decisions I make now about my work are amazingly epic for my family. I could very well fail at changing my focus and my career… and that doesn’t just affect me anymore.

So my truth in business is all new to me. Unless I am about to lose my house, and still maybe even then, I do NOT want to work for a big corporation ever again. I want to get projects DONE. I want to make things work. I want to create. I want to work for ME for a change.

And that is what I am doing… and it does scare me, but it also thrills me.

Then there are the fun, growing, enjoyed those experiences lessons

Those lessons that we file under love… Most of them aren’t love, they are excitement, curiosity, passion, lust (and YES, there is a difference in those things) and companionship.

Love, wow… my truth in love…

This could be a saga…. But I will spare you…

I have been hurt, but not because I was in love, more because I needed something at the time that was being taken away from me.

I have hurt people… not on purpose, but because I couldn’t live the lie anymore.

Even in junior high school, I never said “I love you” to boys because I knew it was special and I would only say it to those people who really deserved it. (Only one man has gotten that out of me.)

Every single man I’ve dated until this point, I knew I wouldn’t marry. I got what I wanted from the relationships and so did they… I can honestly say that I could call up every man I ever dated and have a conversation with them today, and I love that… Lets me know I met some awesome men, had some good times and made a friend on some level. I almost convinced myself a few times that I could marry one or two of them, but in the end, I was right…

I was right in those first minutes and hours of meeting them. I knew. Really, we all know… we just ignore it sometimes because it’s fun. There is so much truth to the title “Mr. Right Now”.

So the night that I met my husband, I was enthralled… and when he kissed me goodnight at my door, I closed the door and said “I’m going to marry him.” It’s only been five years, but I’m still feeling that… Mr. Right.

So what have these lessons taught me?

They have taught me to question, to listen, to follow my intuition. Before making decisions… get the facts, take a deep breath, LISTEN to my instincts, and do what I feel is right.

I question my role as a mother daily. Am I doing the right things? But I finally realized that I am a great mother, because my son is an awesome person. I have to tell him no, and get mad when he does stuff that is dangerous or disrespectful because he has to learn, I have to teach him. I also know that I have to do everything in my power not to change his personality, let him become the boy, the MAN that he is meant to become.

I question my role as a wife… but I ask my husband and get feedback… and I give it too J

I’ll get back to you on the business truth… since I’m learning as I go… But for now I am jumping in, making choices and listening to my gut.

As for the life and love truth, this is what I have learned…

Friends and family are the most important things in life. Period.

I don’t allow negative people to be a part of my life.

I’m honest. Everyone knows “Don’t ask me a question that you don’t want the answer to” (I do sometimes give strangers and new ‘friends’ a slight break on the bluntness of my answers though)

Mindless drone work is not for me. I am bored easily, and I need to be challenged.

I can’t write the novel of my epic mistakes, because I don’t want to admit the bad decisions publicly.

I’m a hard person to get to know because I hold a lot back, not everyone deserves to know the details of my life… but if you become a friend to me, I am loyal and fiercely protective.

I’ve learned that if you have good people around you, you will thrive… you will help them thrive… and that is the truth.

After 42 years of making these mistakes, paying for them and moving past them, I have learned a few things. I’d like to share them with you now. They are obviously just my thoughts and opinions <<

I’m very aware that a lot of people won’t take strong advice to avoid something, mainly because they need to learn things for themselves… but here goes:

When you’re about to do something, or someone ask you to do something, and you pause, or get a weird feeling… LISTEN TO IT.

If you are dating someone and you break up in the first 4 months… Don’t get back together, it is not right and it will not work… (Yes, that may seem like an arbitrary time, but it’s not…)

If you are fighting with a family member or friend… if it’s petty, let it go. The best way to determine if it’s worth fighting about is to think… “If they die tomorrow, will I regret not making up with them?” (Forget the anger, think about the relationship before).

If there is someone in your life that always puts you down, doesn’t support you (emotionally) or hurts you… get them out of your life. This obviously depends on the situation and the other person’s willingness to modify their behavior, but sometimes, this is the only viable option.

Don’t stay in a job doing something you don’t love.

True friends are rare, hold on to those you have.

The truth always comes out eventually.

I’ll repeat, trust your intuition… It is a culmination of your experiences, common sense, and in my opinion, your guardian angel talking to you.

About Shelly Gibbens: Shelly is a busy working mommy, computer geek, diver, skier, advid debater, writer, and organizer. You can find her as @randomshelly on twitter or read her blog.

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Guest Post by Lori Latimer.

Someone asked me that question last summer, and I really didn’t have an answer. At least, not an answer that was just about me, and not about my family, which was my first, automatic response. But this person was quite persistent, and truly wanted to know what brings me joy. Little did I know at the time that that was the beginning of my search for my truth.

That was the match that lit the fire in me… to find the answer to that question. I’d been a wife and mother most of my adult life. Now divorced, my children grown, I could focus on me, on who I am and what I want. On what brings me joy.

And that scared me to death.

Because for so many years, I lived my life for everyone else. How I thought I “should” live. What I thought I “should” do. What I thought others “expected” me to do. Doing things so I wouldn’t disappoint anyone in my life. Doing things that I thought would make me “perfect” so people would like me and love me.

And it was all bullshit. Total and utter bullshit. Because so much of it really wasn’t me. In trying to be the “good girl,” the “people pleaser” that I’ve always been, all of my hopes and dreams got lost and forgotten. I got lost somewhere along the way.

I realized last year that this is my chance for a new beginning – to create the life that I want for myself. But what exactly is that life?

I knew what I didn’t want. But I had to spend a lot of time alone, getting back in touch with me, with who I am deep down inside, to figure out what I do want. And in the silence of that process I found the truth of who I am and what I want… I found my truth.

There has to be something more.

For many years I’ve felt a fluttering inside of me telling me that there’s something more for me… something more I’m meant to do. And for years I pushed it aside. But I now know exactly what that something is, and I’m going for it. Full out. No holds barred. And no turning back. It’s time. Time to pursue my joy, my passion.

Forgiveness

But to be able to start living my truth, I first had to forgive myself for any past mistakes – or perceived past mistakes. To accept all of me, including – and maybe especially – the imperfect parts of me. To accept that I am good enough, just as I am. That was not an easy thing to do. I’m finding that it isn’t easy for any of us.

I’ve learned that living my truth means opening myself up… to the possibility of failure… to the possibility of rejection… of looking stupid… of all the things that are simply mind chatter that have no basis in reality. And it means opening myself up to being vulnerable. But I’ve also learned that it means opening myself up to the possibility of success.

It means getting out of my own self-imposed comfort zone.

Fear keeps us in our comfort zones. It’s safe there. But staying there keeps us from growing. To find my passion, my joy, I knew I had to get out of that comfort zone. And I have. I’ve done things in the past year that I never thought I could, or would do. Things like traveling by myself, attending an actor’s workshop, letting people know what I’m doing, and putting my true self out there in ways I never have before.

It’s a journey, not a destination.

Finding my truth has been a journey, one I continue to embark on every single day. Living my truth has brought joy and passion into my life in ways I only imagined before.

For me, there is no turning back. Something bigger than me keeps pushing me through my doubts and fears to find more and more of my truth. Each doubt or fear that I push through gives me more courage to face the doubts and fears yet to come… for doing more things that are uncomfortable and scare the crap out of me.

Because the truth is that NOT doing these things, not going for what I want full out… hiding behind an employer instead of starting my own business… staying where I am and accepting where I am for the rest of my life… settling… well, that terrifies me more than anything. That and writing this guest post for Elizabeth. When she asked me to do this, I was freaking terrified. But I knew I had to do it. One more fear to face… and conquer.

A Milestone

I turned 50 years old in January. I look at it as starting the second half of my life. Because I do not want to get to the end of my life with any regrets over not having lived my life to its fullest. To do that, I have to put myself out there. I have to take big risks.

I’ve learned that it’s never too late.

I’ve learned that if you have a dream, it’s never too late to pursue it. If I can do this at 50, anyone can do it.

And that’s the truth.

Lori Latimer has two grown sons and a little grandson. After many years as a family law paralegal and going through her own divorce in her late 40s, Lori is now venturing out on her own, helping women find their passion and recreate their lives after divorce. She can be found on Twitter or at her website, http:\\lorilatimer.com

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Guest Post by Mike Stenger.

“Reach your hand up in the air and you can play with the stars, it’s not the hand that you’re dealt but how you’re playing your cards.” ~ Ludacris

Hey fellow truth-inites! By now, most of us have crossed paths in a number of ways, those ways being Twitter. If not, I’d love to get to know you and what your truth is all about.

Last Thursday, Elizabeth sent me a DM asking if I’d be interested in doing a guest post. I’ve known EPW for a while now, well over a year. She’s awesome and since I’ve been following her work since day 57 (actually, I have no idea), I was more than honored to write this up.

You see, living your truth is an interesting, yet universal thing. It’s who we are, what we want to become, where we are to go. We all have a journey of getting there, but each of our journey’s are a whole other ball game, a unique experience all together.

This is one of those “this totally blows” kinds of experiences.

It was high school, sophomore year. Things we’re starting out pretty rough after the previous year being the best year alive EVER. Football, friends, popularity (I had my circles), you name it. Something over the summer happened though…

Crazy depression. The kind of depression that makes you feel weak and sleep 12-14 hours at a time. The kind that makes you question life itself, then wonder what the heck you’re still here for.

I stopped showing up to football practices, hid from friends, and slept a lot. By the time school started back up, it sucked. That year I missed a ridiculous amount but managed to pass with a D average.

But wait…something started to change. The depression was still there somewhat but the Internet showed me a door to massive opportunity. Not sure how it happened, who said what, but thanks whoever you are. After realizing the simple fact that most people hate their jobs, work paycheck to paycheck, and are never truly happy, there had to be another way.

The belief that jobs suck and slaving away to the man is not the way to go, had “nothing” to do with me missing even more school and eventually dropping out. Ok, I’m obviously joking here. I hated school with a passion.

It was my goal to build and run my own business.

Fast forward several years and I’m now consulting with businesses and companies on social media, my truth, my love. Was it destiny? Was it planned by some higher power?

Not sure about you, but I believe everything happens for a reason. We all have our truths hidden inside of us somewhere. Even when we’re uncertain what it is, it sooner or later finds us or should I say, we find it.

What makes up every truth, whether it’s the most heard of or unheard of, is love. Passion. Desire.

Without love, there is no truth. If you’re not currently where you want to be. If you’re not currently making the money you’d like to make.

If you’re not currently rocking your truth in every fiber of your being, you’re not living up to your true potential.

Granted, I’m still getting there as many of us are. There is no perfection, but there is happiness and fulfillment, which comes directly from living your truth. Consistency and dedication is key.

When you live it, you love it, and when you love it, life is just so much freaking better.

“What things can you do RIGHT NOW to further make your truth a reality?”

Mike Stenger is a social media consultant with a strong passion of the Internet. You can find Mike at his blog where he talks about success, business and social media strategies. You can also follow Mike on Twitter.

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It’s 2:14 AM and I just cleaned my bathroom. Folded the laundry. Tidied the top of my desk.

Because I woke up from a nightmare depicting what I most worried about in one of my relationships.

Setting me off into a sleepless whirlybrain about love and friendship and the future and money and business and motherhood and stuff and my never-ending to do list.

It comes down to this.

When I stepped off the road of employment and marriage and a house in the suburbs, I abandoned the illusion of security that is the shoulds.

I have no idea what I should do. What you should be doing. What I should think. Who I should believe. What program I should launch. What opportunity I should choose. What I should spend money on. Who I should pick to be with me.

I have chosen relationships and a business and a life that are undefined by external standards.

There is nothing objective to judge my life against.

The only measurement is whether it works for me.

Whether I feel challenged and ecstatic and cared for and supported. Whether I’m fulfilled and growing and excited about life. Whether I’m empowered. Whether I’m happy. Whether I’m changing my corner of the world.

Sounds all fun and adventurous in the afternoon sun, but at two in the morning, with no one to ask except twitter and a blank TextEdit document, I am wallowing in the angst of uncertainty.

The shoulds – they felt certain. They felt secure.

Because that’s how the shoulds are designed.

The shoulds are an unspoken agreement in our culture of how we should behave and what we should believe in and what we should want and where we should be going. To conform us to that standard. To control how we feel.

By default, we are opted into that standard. We learn to feel comfortable. Secure that we are doing the right things, feeling the right feelings, thinking the right thoughts. Easy, because we don’t have to decide for ourselves. We can sleepwalk our way through life.

Unless you decide to opt out of the illusion.

Unless you decide to get okay with being uncomfortable.

Unless you decide to live in the uncertainty of the real.

A real that is delicious, challenging, alive. Frustrating, confusing, heartbreaking. Beautiful, energizing, fun.

A real that is everything.

So when I lose faith at two in the morning, when I’m drifting in angst and the illusion of uncertainty, I write. I ask myself the difficult questions. I act on inspiration.

I remember to trust.

Trust in the real. Trust in me. Trust in you. Trust in my truth.

#thatisall

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Transparency means telling the whole story.

Transparency means no hiding truth behind bullsh*t.

But does transparency mean full disclosure of everything?

There are parts of my life that I do not blog. That I do not tweet. That I do not share as part of my public persona.

And I’ve been struggling with whether living my truth – creating a public persona that’s the real me – requires the disclosure of everything.

And if it doesn’t require complete transparency of all aspects of my life … why not?

It can’t be just because full disclosure would be uncomfortable.

It can’t be just because I have some theoretical right of privacy.

It can’t be just because people don’t need to know.

So, to figure out what I think, I outlined this blog post on the 45 bus in route to pole dancing class. Had an #lytchat to get some the tribe’s thoughts on this subject. Revealed my raw thoughts in my last email to the raw truth newsletter list. Of course.

And this is what I learned.

The Reasons Why EPW Does Not Reveal Everything:

1. To create a place of safety in my relationships, a sanctuary from the judgement of the world.

I don’t blog about why my marriage failed. About my current love life. About misunderstandings I have with my best friends. About the inner workings of my family. About other people’s confidences.

Because all relationships require sacred space.

That’s what relationships are, a place of safety to create with another human being.

A sanctuary from the insanity and inspection of others who may not have our best interests at heart.

And to violate that privilege, the sanctity of space created between the two souls … would hurt us. Would rip out part of my integrity. Would violate the honor of everyone I love.

Now don’t get me wrong on two points.

I have screwed this up. I have violated what I didn’t realize was a confidence. And let me tell you, I took that stuff offline as fast as it could be deleted.

And, I do share where my relationships fit into my live your truth journey. I don’t share the story of the relationship itself, but just how it fits into my understanding of my life.

2. To avoid contributing to more negativity by the unnecessary naming of names and throwing of gauntlets.

Ah, the juicy stories I could tell you that would curl your toes.

The snarks I could snarks. The sh*t I could throw.

The bullsh*t being sold and lies being told. The mean people spreading rumors. The trolls. The betrayals.

The truth I could speak that would cause you all to rise up and attack.

But as temporarily fun as that would be, most of the time, naming names is not productive.

Most of the time, no one really wins when one starts a war.

It just ends up in people taking sides, everyone being defensive, nothing of substance being discussed, and the conversation turns into the conversation of the war … instead of the conversation of the truth.

My exception is to name names to protect my people. I’m not going to let people get misled because I don’t have the guts to open myself up for a response. Occasionally starting a public debate is the only way to free the truth for everyone.

3. To avoid #gross and #ahem and #tmi

Um, let’s just say there are places I’m just not going in public.

I’m not blogging about bodily fluids or bodily functions or regularness or lack thereof.

No kiss & tell or sext & tell or what people do when they are alone & tell.

No “things that I’ve done that are technically illegal but really shouldn’t be because no one is getting hurt anyway” & tell.

Not that there is anything objectively wrong with sharing that stuff.

Twitter & blogging are opt-in. If you want to go into that much detail, party on. There is an audience for anything.

But dude. That ain’t my gig.

Bottom Line: Transparency does not require full disclosure.

We don’t have to tell every story.

Transparency simply means telling the whole story for the stories that we choose to tell.

Where do you draw the line between transparency and privacy?

How do you decide what is kept private?

Do you have different rules for twitter vs blog vs facebook?

I’d love to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Related posts:

1. (whine) I don’t wanna write a blog post!
2. Living My Truth: Taking Uncomfortable to the Next Level

I am blessed to have a never-ending skip chat open on my desktop with Allison Nazarian and Sarah Robinson called “the daily confessional” where I can share all of my insanities, the snarks about who’s annoying me, the bizarre yet amusing serendipities of life, everything that’s going wonky in my business or with my daughter or with my love life …

… and be free.

Because hiding behind an artifice of perfection is tiring.

Hiding drains my life energy until I have nothing left to give.

Hiding is a slow progression to death of my soul.

But there is this incessant voice inside my head who constantly judges me, who wants … no, who demands that I be perfect.

Or, at least that I appear to be perfect.

As if that is the only way to succeed.

The only way to get people to read my blog. To follow me on twitter. To buy my stuff.

As if that is the only way to get someone to love me.

Yet in a fundamental irony of life, the exact opposite is true.

Only by confessing my inadequacies, only by revealing the ways in which I deviate from the norm, only by letting out the part of myself that is my greatest fear to be shared … only then can profound, intimate connections be made with other like souls.

So here are some of the things I don’t want to confess to you.

I’m taking alimony.

I can’t afford this amazing apartment in San Francisco, to pay for groceries and clothes for my daughter and plane tickets and new furniture … completely on my own. Yet. Right now a majority of my living expenses are paid for via spousal & child support.

I hate that I’m taking this money. Feels like I’m a failure of feminism, that I’m one of the lame gold-diggerish women who live from ex-husband to ex-husband, instead of financing my own life. Feels like a failure as an entrepreneur, that my newly-profitable business doesn’t yet produce enough cash to support my live-your-truth life.

My secret plan is the very second my business can replace the alimony, I’m releasing my ex-husband of any future obligations.

And from then on, I will be financially independent. Never ask a man to support my life. Always keep money separate from love.

But until that day, this is how I pay a majority of my bills.

I have raised my voice to my child.

Two weeks ago I taught the preview upstream class for the 6 Weeks to Live Your Truth program with my 4 1/2 year old daughter in the house.

Now usually (always) when I teach a class, my daughter is with her dad, or in childcare, or being watched by another person … never in the house with me. But it was a national holiday that are not in my current awareness, meaning that childcare was not available. And I thought, oh, I’m sure she can be quiet for just an hour. And I discussed the situation with her and she agreed (the agreement of a 4 year old? yeah. exactly.).

It did not go well. And everyone listening to the ustream got to hear me get impatient with my daughter. Lovely.

The thing is, I’m an introvert living with an extrovert child. And as much as I need private time to recharge, physical space every day, to energize myself … she needs constant connection, she needs other humans who love and care about her, to energize herself.

And after 3 weeks of being together almost 24-7 … both of us were energy deprived.

So every time people say, oh, you’re such a great mom, look at what you are doing as a mompreneur, it’s so amazing how you balance your life … I am saying to myself, yeah, if you only knew. If you only knew when I stick a DVD in her iMac and shut the door to my bedroom to gain a few minutes of peace. How relieved I am to drop her off with her dad for the weekend so I can have 48 continuous hours to simply be myself.

There are women where being a mom is their calling in life, where they can raise a dozen children and spend 24-7 with them and play all the time and homeschool them and cook them organic food and never run out of hugs.

But that is not me. Sometimes, I am full out of hugs. And sometimes, I just need a freaking break.

I have not been doing my bookkeeping.

Remember how I’m a financial expert? How I teach that “Money Meetings” thing, where you look at your numbers every week, keep on top of your finances, track your marketing stats, use cash flow projections to make important decisions about your business?

Yeah. I agree with all that. I teach all that. But I don’t necessarily do all that.

I mean, I have done it. But the last few months, I’ve been running around on adventures and moving and launching new programs and various other stories I could tell blah blah blah, and stopped doing my weekly money meetings, and even stopped inputting stuff into my bookkeeping program.

Not that I don’t look at my numbers, but it’s random and not I’m tracking historical trends more than late night obsessions over my google analytics.

And … I’m still deciding what I think about that, whether the way I was teaching weekly money meetings (as useful as it is for many people) actually works for me.

I forget most of my marketing.

I have dozen of affiliates that I forget to tell about launches. The last two launch preview calls, I forgot to tell my list about it until 48 hours before. I don’t remember or have a place to track who makes special inquiries about which upcoming program. I rarely remember to follow up.

Doing guest posts has been on my to do list for 9 months. I am a guest on radio shows and teleclasses and get press, but I don’t know why or how they found me and I don’t follow up with them or seek out such opportunities.

I launch programs without any upsells to something afterwards. I don’t let anything get out of beta before I abandon it and move onto the next thing. I even launch free programs with no upsell to a paid program. Up until very recently, I neglected to have anything for sale on my website.

It’s a wonder I any money at all.

And if one of my clients was doing this, I would flip out at them.

This is something I’m working on, and I know (for the most part) what to do. But it’s important for me to let you know … just because I know something doesn’t mean I always do it.

My websites are completely screwed up.

So most of you are on my website right now (and for the few of you reading the RSS feed, go ahead, click through to my site) … and let me ask you a question — what do I do?

rflol.

Yeah, exactly. When people go to my website, they can’t tell what I do.

And that’s not the only thing that’s screwed up. There’s no picture of me in the header or anywhere above the fold. There’s not even a real header. Half the stuff in the sidebar is broken. There are 64 different links off my homepage. There’s no way to buy anything.

And don’t even get me started on my sales pages.

Everything is in one column because I did it all myself. Too much white space in random places. It’s almost impossible to find the buy links. The copy is probably way too long. I forgot to ask for testimonials and didn’t put in pictures or any borders around the testimonials I do have on there. There are no buttons or graphics or colors of any kind.

I’m going to launch a new website soon, and get all of those sales pages revamped. But, in the meanwhile, they are out there on the interwebz, completely screwed up.

I don’t answer all of your emails.

I preach connecting with your tribe, building relationships with your community. Making that your priority.

But I miss emails from you. I have dozens sitting in multiple inboxes and follow up queues on multiple computers. And I don’t think I’ll ever catch up. And I just can’t let go to delegate to an assistant or automate anything.

I miss your @ replies. I miss your DMs. I have thousands of stuff sitting in my Facebook message box.

Sometimes it’s because I’m overwhelmed with amazing replies and just can’t get to all of them. Sometimes it’s because I can’t decide what to respond, so I put it off until the situation resolves itself or the opportunity passes me by. And sometimes it’s because I’m chickening out on conflict.

So yeah, I need to figure out how to balance connection with freaking getting stuff done.

And those confession are just the start of everything I fear you could learn about me.

The hearts of men that I have broken. How I’ve texted while driving. The dirty dishes left in my sink. That I didn’t put up a Christmas tree this year. I can’t iron. I don’t play with my cat. My car is a mess. The mail is piled up. I don’t always recycle. I’ve deleted my entire website by accident. I’ve filed tax returns late.

And I feel so much better from writing this down. And posting it. And that you’re reading this right now.

Because the secret is … some of you will be offended or lose faith in me.

And you will leave. As you should, because we were never meant to be.

But some of you will stay.

And here’s the awesome, amazing, delicious thing … with you I get to be myself. And not only is that okay with you … that’s why you like me, for the whole of me, including those parts of myself that I was afraid to share.

So … what are you afraid to share with us?

What are you thinking and not saying? What are you hiding that is leaching energy and life away from you? Who can’t you tell? What are you not speaking?

Related posts:

1. The Many Ways in Which I’m Awesome
2. Things That Don’t Suck
3. 3 Ways to Use Twitter Lists to Stalk Your Tribe

I get asked questions about making videos all the time.

What camera do I use, how do I set up the lighting, where should I shoot, where do I host the video, how do I to edit, what software should I use, etc. ….

But that’s missing the point.

There’s one thing, one huge most important thing, that must be in your video, or you are wasting your time.

To learn how to make your own videos, check out my newest video program 3 Days to Video live virtual workshop or get the free Quickstart to just learn the basics!

So what questions do you have about making videos? What has your experience been with video?

I’d love to hear from you!

Related posts:

1. The *Real* Reason Video is Hard.
2. How Did I Become a Video Expert?
3. 7+ Reasons to Add Video to Your Website