You see, my nature in plan-making-and-executing mode is to keep it secret. Keep it safe.

That’s what the caveperson inside of me desperately wants to do. Protect the plan. Prevent sabotage of the plan. Focus on the plan. Implement the plan.

And while all of that is awesome, it creates a problem.

If I keep the plan a secret, then you can’t help.

You can’t get excited about it. You can’t ask questions. You can’t see if you’d like to be part of the plan.

It can’t turn from my plan, into our plan.

It can’t turn from something small, into something kinda bigger. Kinda better.

Even into something lots bigger. Lots better. Bigger & better than I could ever create alone.

So against all of the frantic grunting of my caveperson (and also the nagging from the bitch in the corner who doesn’t want any of the plan disclosed until it is perfect), I’d like to share the plan with you, my fellow Live Your Truthers.

On May 23rd I will open the 18 Days to Live Your Truth ecourse for enrollment.

(that’s 18 days from today. hum, funny how that worked.)

The 18 Days to Live Your Truth ecourse is for those of you who:

• want to live your truth but don’t know what that is.
• know your truth & want to live it, but can’t because of time, energy, money, him, her or them.
• want to do that thing that is your truth but something is holding you back …. and you don’t know what that thing is.
• have been living your truth in certain areas of your life, but are totally not living your truth in other areas of your life (the “living two lives” problem).

What we’re going to do is find out what’s blocking you, so you can uncover your truth and how to go about living it.

We’re also going to figure out what is the most important area for you to focus on right now, so you can make the most upward progress on your spiral of living your truth.

And the best part, is that we’re going to do all this super-cool-yet-very-scary-stuff together. You’re not alone. Yay!

Dates: June 6-25, 2011 (sundays off)

Time: Pre-recorded videos/audio and downloadable pdf’s – so whatever time works for your life and schedule is cool.

Where: Everything will be on a password-protected site, so you can watch/download/listen whenever & connect w/ everyone else going through the program.

How: We’ll cover six units of material – for each unit I’ll share a video w/ the content (15-20 minutes), give you some exercises to think & write about, and give you some experiments to go & play with in the world.

Details: I’ll share all of that next week on the sales page!

(right now I’d like to make a bunch of disclosures like, this is not perfect yet! all the benefits aren’t here! this isn’t the story yet! it sounds much cooler than this looks! don’t hate it yet! etc. Okay. Now that I’ve done that, the bitch in the corner who likes to point out all the flaws feels much better.)

If you have any ideas, questions, suggestions, or ways you’d like to help, or if you’d just like to send some positive energy my way, please leave a comment below or contact me directly!

P.S. Did you download the How to Live Your Truth manifesto yet? (it’s free, no-opt in) You haven’t yet? Omg, get on that!

This past weekend I spent offline, off social media, off work … in the world of the face to face. The world of the flesh. The world of the now.

And for the first time, in more than a forever, I felt normal.

Everything was easy. In the present. Overflowing with abundant energy.

No analyzing, no drama, no whorlybrain, no stress about what I should do or what’s going to happen in the future or what does this person think.

I felt completely myself.

And there was nothing wrong about me.

This post is not about disengaging from social media, this post is not about extreme self care, this post is not about rebelling against society norms or stop listening to what people tell us to do or ignoring the shoulds.

This is a post about feeling your normal.

A few years ago, something happened when I recognized what my truth was not … that put me in the particularly painful state of feeling my weirdness.

Feeling how I was out of sync with most of everyone around me. How the shoulds of the big law job and the house in the suburbs and the marriage to the right person aren’t just the wrong choice — they were undeniably uncomfortable. Painful. Like a joint that’s been forced out of socket.

For so long, I spent my days going through the motions, until those moments when my soul leaked onto my face and I got that shocking look, when someone realized that I’ve been faking it just to keep things afloat.

Then, about a year ago, I decided to live my truth. Take those first (second, third, five hundredth) uncomfortable steps.

And every day I wore my weirdness on my skin.

Thought about the shoulds and what do they think and all the choices I felt guilty about not making. Every moment required bravery.

Until another profoundity snuck up on me.

The moment when I stopped thinking.

The moment when I chose to pull off the shroud of weirdness, and just be myself.

The unthinking truth that I really am, underneath.

So this post is for you who are still feeling your weirdness.

For those of you who are painfully aware of your shoulds, of how you are out of sync, how you are required to be brave every second or you will fall back into the comfortable grayscale of mediocrity.

Have faith. You are on the steepest part of the climb.

There will come a day (all of a sudden! it will sneak up on you!) when you will forget that you are weird. When you stop comparing yourself to everyone else. To what you should be.

There will come a day when you will be doing something or spending time with someone who resonates directly with that unthinking truth of you.

The day when the weirdness will fall away, and your true being will take over.

And you will feel your peace. Your rightness. Your place in the universe.

In that quiet moment, you will feel your normal.

In that quiet moment, you will be ruined forever.

The shoulds, the mediocre, the vanilla of the artifice in which you used to live will be forever unreachable, intolerable, bizarre to you.

In that delicious moment, you know that you can never go back.

Fuck yeah.

—

Are you living your truth? If you want to get caught up on first year of the Live Your Truth journey, be sure to get your copy of Year One of Living Your Truth ebook (400+ pages!). You’re not still waiting for the damn magical fairies, are you? Start your adventure right now.

—

Do you feel weird? Normal? What do the words “weird” and “normal” mean to you? I’d love to hear from you below!

The new Live Your Truth store was going to launch a couple weeks ago.

But on July 3rd my 5 year old daughter had surgery to remove a brain tumor.

Obviously my business launch plans were abandoned as I focused on what was most important – concentrating on the recovery of my daughter and maintaining enough of my self care to keep from falling apart.

Now it’s early AM of Tuesday, July 13th – hopefully we just spent our last night in the hospital. And while her continued recovery (and my continued sanity) is still the number one priority, I need to keep my business moving forward (even if not yet up to 100% capacity).

This week I will be launching the new Live Your Truth store, a place to find not only the programs I currently offer (4 Weeks to Video), future re-releases (Build Your Tribe), and other people’s recommended programs (Question the Rules), but also the pre-sale of new programs that you’ve specifically asked for … all to address the issues we face as we are on our Live Your Truth adventures.

Here’s the sneak peek on the new stuff:

1. Find Your Truth

Find Your Truth is a home study program that’s the companion on your continuing journey to find your truth — to discover what is the natural expression of who you really are — so you can go out to bring that truth to the world, and live your greatest success, whatever that means to you.

But here’s the thing – this program is not a magic test. There’s no quiz you answer & you’re done, here’s your perfect career/life/relationship and you move on with your life. No, that’s not how it works.

Finding your truth is a lifelong adventure. And this program is simply your guide.

Find Your Truth is a series of tools, ideas, things to think about. Exercises, challenges, games to play with. We’ll be thinking, doing research … into your past (what has made you brilliant, where have you found passion, what is your personality type) and the future (what’s your vision of your ideal life, what are your goals, what do you want). We’ll be doing … taking action & risks, speaking, finding your voice, finding your tribe, seeing your truth reflected in them.

2. Live Your Truth eBook – Year One

If you’ve been reading/watching my live your truth adventure in bits & pieces over June 2009 to June 2010 … you are missing the real story. The most important take aways. The best Live Your Truth secrets you can apply to your own business, your own life.

But it’s hard to find the complete story by searching through the blog archives, a few hundred words at a time.

This eBook contains the entire blog posts and transcripts of the blog videos, organized by topic (with live links back to the posts and other resources). I’m also including action steps where appropriate, so you can implement what you’ve learned to your own business/life (bonus you can’t get just by reading the blog!).

3. Creating Space to Live Your Truth

People have been asking me to teach them about productivity, time management, and self care – all the things you need to do to create the space & support for you to find & live your truth.

I’ve been fighting it for a while (in typical EPW fashion, saying “I’m not a productivity expert!”), but as I sit here in a hospital room, able to stay grounded & handle what’s happening, still writing blog posts and marketing copy, keeping life going even with this current challenge … I realize that I do have a few things to offer about these topics.

—

The LYT Store will contain these new programs as they roll out in pre-sale, and will be the one place to go whenever you want to find any other resources for Living Your Truth.

I’ll be including some special one-time offers with whoever buys these programs on the pre-sale – so signup for the EPW First Dibs list to make sure you don’t miss out!

When looking for the Truth we’d like to speak/live, I think that sometimes we can get lost ‘deciding’ what our Truth is from a disconnected part of us, a part that’s tied up with the shoulds and oughts of our discursive mind.

Maybe that part feels like it needs to decide on a destination and pursue it in a straight line. Or perhaps the should is that things must be organic and fluid and yin. Or or or…

I have a hunch that there is something more fundamental to discover from nostalgia.

A nostalgia for contented childhood memories.

The rejection of childhood is an automatic, and, to some extent, natural, part of the process of ‘becoming’ ‘adults’ (hyuh, ok!). I certainly know that in my teens and early twenties I was busy mocking and dismissing the child that I was trying desperately not to be.

And yet, I have an intuition that somewhere in that child is part of my essence.

Finding your Truth is by its nature an extremely individual, personal journey.

My hope is that if you give what I’m about to do a go for yourself, that it will bring some warmth and perhaps some gentle surprises, a bit of remembering that is useful in informing your search for the Truth you want to live.

As for me…

…well, I’m going to try this out in front of you… I have really no idea where it will lead.

But, you know, what have I got to lose? (Don’t answer that…)

So…

Childhood… Happy… Contented…

****

Sitting at my desk in my room making the sets for my model theatre, loving how the layers made an amazing 3-D world.

Sticking together complex paper masks from a book and displaying them in the corners of my room.

Sitting in the caravan that was airing in the front garden, doing an exercise from Drawing From The Right Side of the Brain.

Making up ‘tunes’ on the piano, seeing which notes went with which.

Quiet, imaginative pottering at something that has a mild level of challenge…

**

Building a Lego town with my Dad, piece by piece, following the diagrams.

The wooden desk/chest of drawers kit that I got the Christmas my Nanny and Grandad came from England to stay with us in Houston. I learned what ‘flush’ meant and how you put all the screws in half-way first. I had my own hammer!

Going through the instructions for my cassette-player-shaped Transformer with my Dad, the chartered engineer, trying to work out the transition from one step to the next.

The week when we studied London at school and normal lessons were suspended and I sewed the crown that went where the Tower of London was. With sequins, of course.

Figuring something out with other people as company…

**

Sitting on the floor with some kind of family party going on around me, reading the overblown mythology of my new Sea Monkeys. Really, they’ve been preserved over thousands of years? Really, they’ll dance?!

Fighting with my brother every Sunday morning about who watches the colour TV in the living room and who the black-and-white in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. (He wanted to watch the football, I the acrylic painting show. We both needed the colour set, of course.) I loved that show, seeing how things were made, step-by-step.

In a similar mode, I always loved reading manuals… The cookbook that came with our first microwave that explained how it worked! The hoover, my Vic 20, 101 Things to do with 1K…

I lived in a bit of a New Age-y house, so I also got to read books on affirmations, and Silva Mind Control and rebirthing… Wow? Is that how it works?

Reading and learning about how things worked. Finding out…

**

Sitting behind the sofa late at night, listening to the adults talk.

Sitting with my head on the leg of the teacher’s chair at story time.

Watching Mr Impastado review the week’s overhead projection transparency. He would roll it backwards and clean it off whilst it was being projected. Splat! with the spray. Wipe. The “didn’t” which he had written once by accident with permanent pen, which was there every week. DIDN’T!

Hanging out near people, but with nothing expected of me.

****

My whole childhood wasn’t sweet quietness, of course. There are other memories which follow different emotional threads.

However, what I get following the contented memories back is this: a very distinct feeling for this cute, shy, nerdy, gentle, sensitive kid who loved learning about stuff, liked getting lost in his own world, loved being left alone to do things his way, but being near people when he wanted.

What do I notice?

Three things.

The first unexpected one: Wow. A lot of my happy memories are doing things with my hands. That is not how I see myself.

The second unexpected one: I was also a big performer – loved putting on plays and puppet shows, was in all the school plays. But when I surf contentment, the loud stuff just doesn’t show up.

And thirdly, one that makes me smile: the feeling I get from these memories is also a feeling I get when I’m writing on my blog and eavesdropping on Twitter – hanging out near people, doing my own thing, with company if I want it but free to do things my way.

Feels like very quiet, delicious playing.

No wonder I love it so much.

And, sure, there are times in my life when I have to do things I don’t get on with, when I have to do admin, or have meetings with clients when I’m tired or make ‘scary’ ‘grown-up’ phone calls to the bank or the Inland Revenue.

And, yes, I’ve created a fully-functioning persona that is outgoing, and funny, and business-like and social and all that. And I really do love talking to groups and teaching. I mean, really really.

And yet it seems that allowing space for the preferences of my younger self means I don’t burn out my energy so fast, that one unit of energy lasts six hours, rather than 20 minutes.

And perhaps that quiet, slightly disconcerting child might hold a bit of truth which more honestly reflects who I really am, a bit of happiness that maybe I’ve been missing by trying to be who I think I should be.

I certainly feel a lot of affection for him when I remember him this way…

****

So. Your turn!

Living your Truth has surely got to be as much as possible the Truth of your whole self.

What happens when you surf back through your happy memories?

What do you remember that maybe you’d forgotten?

What would happen if you gently let that kid have a tiny bit more of a say in how you live your life now?

I’m very, very interested in your answers…

****

Andrew Lightheart blogs about being gentle and useful in conflict and crisis at APeacefulResolution.com. His (current) Truth hunch is that being less certain can be a key to peace. He’s @alightheart on Twitter and would love it if you would say hi, especially if you’re nice.

Back in my days as an actress (yes – I was an actress in a previous life), I had a coach who was a task master about being completely transparent and anchored in truth when we were on stage.

“Without that,” he said, “you are just a robot spewing words.”

One of the ways he talked through the process of becoming transparent – because it is indeed a process – was to compared it to peeling an onion. With apologies to him for butchering his eloquence, I will share that lesson with you.

We’ve all peeled an onion, right?

The layers are tight and close together. And you can only peel way one layer at a time.

Of course there are short cuts. You can use a knife, though I don’t recommend using sharp objects to discover your truth. You can crack it it open but run the risk of damaged layers, and who needs more damage?

No, the best way to peel an onion is one layer at a time.

And so it is with revealing your truth.

Begin with the first layer. Peel it away, gently, and see what you discover. You may have to sit with it awhile until it doesn’t feel so tender and raw. Then gently pull away the next layer and see what’s there.

For me, there were times when I thought I was done peeling. “This is it!” I thought. And it was, for a time.

And then I would get an inkling or a nudge that there was more and so off I would go to peel away another layer.

Come to think of it, in some area of my life, I am always peeling away a layer. And I know that, in truth, I will never be done.

So if you choose to begin peeling your own onion, please know that I am right beside you, feeling raw and tender in some place, too.

Somehow, knowing that I am not alone in the process makes it just a tiny bit easier and a tiny bit less terrifying.

About Sarah Robinson: Sarah Robinson is Chief Of the Hooligan Tribe, escaping mediocrity in life & business one adventure at a time. Her blog, escaping-mediocrity.com not only journals her personal adventures in breaking free from the stranglehold of mediocrity, but also offers insights, tools and a “tribe” for those who feel pulled toward the same adventurous life. Find her on twitter at @SarahRobinson or on her blog Escaping-Mediocrity.com