Two blondes were shopping at the mall. When they were done, they went out to their car, which happened to be an awesome leather-interior convertible, but they realized they had locked the keys in the car. So they both kind of stood there and thought for a while.

“Hurry! It’s going to rain and we left the windows and the top down!”

Why it’s so hysterically funny is because we SEE the truth and the alternatives – they don’t. They don’t see that the top is down and there are other ways to get in the car and grab the keys and control of the vehicle again. How stupid. How blonde, we say. But the fact is, you and I are just as trapped as they are.

We stand outside of our lives with the key in the ignition worrying that it’s going to rain and we’ve left the top down. We believe the lie, just as they did, that the only way to get something we want is through the traditional or usual way. In this joke the women don’t climb into the car through a window, or by climbing up on the trunk and into the back seat of a convertible. It just doesn’t occur to them.

I came out to a parking lot with two friends the summer we were all living in a VW van and camping across Canada and the Northwest. We’d stopped in a bar to get a sandwich and a couple of beers and take a break from the road.

When we left we found the van had been blocked in by two large pickup trucks on either side. There was like 4 inches of clearance on each side. The two men who I guessed owned the trucks were standing outside the bar on the patio with several other men. They said, “I guess you’ll have to come back inside and have another beer.”

The friend who owned the van just smiled and opened up the back of the van, climbed in over the seats and backed it straight out. We got in and pulled away laughing and waving. It never occurred to the two men that there was a third door and that we had other options.

It’s hard to see the truth when you believe the lie.

So many people get trapped in the lie and can’t see the truth – that they have options, that they control their lives. These are the people who say, “I HAVE to go to work if I want to keep my house.” or “I have to do what my boyfriend wants to do or he’ll leave me.” or “If I don’t stay late and take home work my boss will fire me.” Those are lies. We’ve convinced ourselves they’re truth, but they’re not. The truth is, you can do anything you’re willing to choose and accept the consequences for.

You don’t have to go to work. You CHOOSE to go to work because you CHOOSE the lifestyle you have. Say it. “I choose to go to work because I choose to have the lifestyle I have.” You can also choose to change jobs, pursue a passion, start a business, retire early, live less extravagantly and work fewer hours. Choice. It’s all about choice.

This is the point where people generally stop reading and shoot me angry emails, “That’s not true!! I CAN’T stop working. I HAVE to pay bills, I HAVE to support my children, I HAVE to …..” and they really believe that they are unique – that they don’t have the choices the rest of us do. But they do.

Martha Beck expands on this in her book Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life, No Matter What!. I LOVE this book! It’s not a new concept – Dr. Viktor Frankl said the same thing in his book about being a prisoner in a German death camp during WWII, Man’s Search For Meaning. Dozens of other authors and people have their own ways of expressing the same truth – “It is hard to see the truth when you believe the lie.” The blondes at the beginning of this post believed the lie that they were locked out of their car. We believe the lie that we are locked into our current lives, or locked out of the fun life so many people around us seem to be having. The “truth” is our thoughts are only that – thoughts. You control them. You can change them. And when you change them YOU change your life.

One of the most amazing things I realized about my ant farm was that as I watch the ants do the incredible things they’re doing, I start thinking about them – assigning them *stories* about what I believe to be the *truth* about them and what they are doing. When I change how I think about them it changes how I feel about them. It’s called “anthropomorphizing” – giving human characteristics to non-human creatures or objects. As I shifted my thoughts from “Only 20% of the ants are doing all the work while 80% sleep” to “I wonder how they allocate the work?” I began to pay attention and see that the ants worked in shifts. The ants who seemed to sleep the first 24 hours are now digging at the other end of the farm – not lazy at all as I THOUGHT.

We all *tell stories* about our lives. For more than two years mine was, “I’m homeless.” Now it’s, “I’m living the dream, traveling and loving life.” I’m in the same van, with the same dog, the same resources I had then, but oddly enough I’ve started attracting clients and more money and a better way of living. Why? Because I started believing the truth, not the lie. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not magic. It can be hard, but it happens. Trust it.

If you begin to face your fears, something bittersweet is going to happen to you: You’ll grow up. You’ll lose your dependency on the grown-ups of the world because you’ll realize that there is no time, no age, at which fear suddenly fades and you become one of these impervious beings…Fear is the raw material from which courage is manufactured. Without it, we wouldn’t even know what it means to be brave.—Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live

I love Martha Beck’s writing. I love the quotes from her writing even more. They sum up a feeling or thought that I can hold however briefly, in my mind when I’m challenged by panic or fear, which is frequently.

I often get emails from readers who tell me they love the idea of being on the road, living in a van or an RV and doing what I do. But they’re afraid. “What if?” they ask me….what if the van breaks down, or you run out of money, or someone hassles you or robs you? What if? Well, ALL those things could happen to you too, even though you live in a house or apartment. Life happens no matter where we are. And that can be scary. You have a couple of options. You can hunker down behind a locked door, or you can venture forth armed with what you need to experience the world. Either way there’s going to be some fear. It’s up to you if you experience the fear while driving along the ocean and visiting every museum you ever wanted to see since you were a kid, or if you want to stare at the 12 locks on the door of your fortress and watch cable.

You already know which option I picked. And while Martha’s right about facing our fears, unless we face them with the tools we need to deal with them, we’re not really any better off. To slay dragons you need a sword, or at least a really good fire extinguisher. So, in addition to reading Martha, I’m reading Dr. Henry Cloud’s books on boundaries. My most recent is The One-Life Solution: Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success
(Yes, that’s an affiliate link. Thanks for the support!)

It sounds simplistic and surreal, but I’m convinced it’s true. When you have good boundaries you have all the tools you’ll need to tackle anything in life – especially the scary stuff. All our problems come back to the strength of our boundaries, which includes our choices and our actions and what we’re willing to own, be it behavior or actions or consequences. When you know what you want, what you’ll accept and what you won’t, and how to say no, and how to go after what you want, life changes. You grow up.

Sorry. You’ll have to read the book for details, but it’s definitely worth it. He does such an excellent job of breaking it all down – and that’s why it’s a book. It can’t be summed up in a blog post!

What I love about Cloud is he makes boundaries so easy to understand. And, he does a great job of showing readers how much easier life is when we have them and use them. He uses the example of a house (us) with a yard (our boundaries). We own the yard and we’re responsible for what happens in that yard, or doesn’t happen. The better care we take of that yard – ie. not letting people drive their herd of cows through it, or let their dogs poop on it, or decide that we should plant cactus instead of sunflowers, the happier we’ll be in that yard.

That yard represents our relationships at work, in the world, at home. HOW are you going to let people treat your yard? Are they welcome to come in, sit down and talk, or admire it? Or do you give them free rein to hold beer bashes there?

By acknowledging and accepting that we own our lives, that we decide what to say yes and no to, we can control the level of satisfaction and success we crave in our lives. We have ownership, control, freedom, responsibility, limits and protection when we have boundaries. We can face our fears when we have that dragon slaying weapon – boundaries.

I’m in the process of sculpting my life and my journey right now. I was just in North Carolina this week, interviewing Emily Pilloton and Matthew Miller about their Design Revolution Road Show. Fantastic exhibit if you get a chance to see it before it ends. Their itinerary is on the website. Buy the shirt. It’s $10 plus shipping. It’s cool and it supports what they do – humanitarian design. Tell them you read about it here. I don’t get any kickbacks or anything, but they’re tracking how/where people hear about them.

Anyway, I was in North Carolina this week talking to Emily and Matt for an article I’m writing for Airstream Life
and realized how excited I get when I can do this – spread the idea, tell someone’s story or contribute to making lives and the world a better place. I can’t do that when I focus on the fear or let it rule.

So I reread Dr. Cloud’s book and decided today to really focus on what I want to do with my yard. I’ve allowed people, even well-meaning ones, to wander around in without permission, to set up shop without paying rent, to do all kinds of things without any objection from me. I realized that if I want to enjoy my yard, my life, to enjoy my time here, and to live without fear – I need to do this. My guess is, you do too, to some degree or other.

You CAN set boundaries in a healthy, happy way. And you can take back control of your yard (life). Will you? Cloud’s books are available in most libraries, or order a copy of your own. You won’t regret it. The One-Life Solution: Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success

Seth writes, “We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don’t read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we’re amazed. When an athlete just does the sport, or when a writer just writes the words, we can’t help but watch, astonished at the purity of their actions. Why is it so difficult to do what we say we’re going to do? The lizard brain.”

Martha Beck had the same questions. So did Stephen Pressfield. But Martha takes a different approach – one that says the Lizard is our friend (and I truly believe that). The Lizard, she explains, protects our essential self – keeping us from being successful cubicle monkeys and clinging to dead-end jobs. The Lizard, exists not simply to screw up our lives, but to point us away from mediocrity and towards Nirvana. If we are happy wearing Poodle skirts, eating funnel cakes and dating a guy with a mullet, our Lizard will indeed sabotage that polyester slack suit, fresh produce and five veggies a day and the Marine hunk with the buzz cut.

When we begin to see the Lizard as a brain with access to our true being, as the gate keeper to happiness, not the reptile with the party pooping agenda, we begin to understand why it’s really there. Men call it “resistance,” and women call it “possibility.”

Seth writes, “The resistance grows in strength as we get closer to shipping, as we get closer to an insight, as we get closer to the truth of what we really want. That’s because the lizard hates change and achievement and risk.”

Martha sees the “resistance” not as a force that hates change and achievement and risk, but as a compass that shows us what we really love. When Stephen Pressfield encountered resistance as a major force in his life he was living in a Chevy Van with his cat. (Sound familiar?) He was driving trucks and doing all sorts of menial jobs to avoid doing the thing his soul wanted to do – WRITE. (If I could find the essay he wrote about resistance I’d post it here….if you find it, please do. I’ll link to it.) I read that and it struck me that I was doing the same thing….so I began studying the lizard brain in depth.

Seth writes, “The lizard is a physical part of your brain, the pre-historic lump near the brain stem that is responsible for fear and rage and reproductive drive. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because her lizard brain told her to.” And that is SO lizard brain!! He’s right. The lizard brain is where fear and rage and reproductive drive originate because the lizard brain’s job is to see, record and document patterns that put our lives at risk. The lizard brain exists not to give us hell, but to ensure our survival. When we listen to what it is trying to say (it is, after all the seat of our intuition as well), we survive, but can also thrive!!

Where I will diverge from Seth’s reasoning is in believing that organizations are run by lizard brains. I contend that organizations are run by people who are DENYING THE WISDOM and direction and patterns their lizard brains are trying to share with them. Organizations fear change, risk and balloon popping because past patterns of more failures than successes through this behavior indicate that NOT changing, risking and balloon popping is a better alternative. That is ALL the lizard brain is doing – prodding us with statistics of our experience. Our lizard is a data base of every experience we’ve ever had – good or bad. If risk and balloon popping brought you success early on – guess what? That’s what your Lizard is going to push. Because it works for you. That’s all it does. If you don’t know how to read a spread sheet or interpret data, you probably won’t understand how valuable the lizard is. Ever since you were born that part of your brain has been cataloging information into “safe and fun” or “Painful and scary” and prodding you when you encountered similar situations. From the type of food you like, to whether you’re a breast, leg or ass man, the lizard has controlled it all. But let’s go back to the Lizard’s alarm when faced with a new situation.

IF, at this stage of the lizard’s input you simply decide NOT to change, NOT to risk, NOT to pop, you quiet the brain and shut down a stream of valuable information. Not a good thing. This is the stage where you can either say, “Ah ha! Risk is bad. Let’s not risk.” Or you can have a sit–down with the lizard. And if you do, and if you listen long enough you might realize your lizard isn’t saying “Don’t risk.” The lizard may actually be saying, “You know, we put Fickle Fred in charge of those last three failures. Let’s talk to Fred and see what really happened. Maybe we can put Agnes on this next venture if Fred can’t really account for what happened.” That’s not an option if you’re trying to shut the brain up. Apple doesn’t shut down its lizards. It buys them espressos and massage chairs and says, “So what do you think we ought to do to then?” You don’t ignore or discount the Lizard, you step back – put the fear on hold and listen and look at the data. It’s not the Lizard you want to quiet. It’s the fear you’re feeling. Remember the progression? Our thoughts create our emotions, our emotions create our actions….So, let the THOUGHTS the lizard is having come up. But press “pause” when the emotions are cued.

We are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” As a child I was gang-raped, drugged, tortured, beaten and abused mentally, emotionally, physically, sexually. Not just once – but over 15 years. My Lizard Brain and Amygdala are the size of apples, not walnuts. Seriously. Research shows that trauma increases the size and action of the amygdala. My lizard brain is fear on steroids. It’s like Godzilla, not the GEICO gecko. My lizard brain is why, when I was a cop, that I could walk into a building and tell you where the bad guy was hiding. I could smell fear and “knew” where the danger was – to the point of pinpointing the physical presence without even seeing it. Psychic abilities are so connected to trauma that psychiatrists and science consider psychic abilities as part of a diagnostic for trauma. I could have, should have by many accounts, be drooling in a strait jacket in a rubber room somewhere. But I learned to press the pause button most (not all) of the time. When the Lizard says, “Hmmm….teen-aged boys in gang colors standing on the corner, run away, run away!” I listen – and cross the street or go down another street. When the Lizard says, “Aaagh! Temporary Employment Agency!! Run away, run away.” I reassure it that it’s just for a month so I can make my bills. I understand, or try to, why the Lizard has its panties all in a wad. Then I deal with the data. Usually. Not always. But usually.

Seth writes, “The amygdala isn’t going away. Your lizard brain is here to stay, and your job is to figure out how to quiet it and ignore it.” Sorry Seth. But I read this today and thought, “Oh no. This is SO NOT the way to deal with the lizard brain at all.”

It’s NOT about quieting it, and certainly NOT about ignoring it. It’s about listening to it and acting on what you learn from it. The lizard brain simply identifies patterns and sends a signal to you telling you that what you’re encountering is not “safe” for SOME reason. If you’re not used to interpreting this signal all you feel/hear is FEAR. So you avoid or resist this THING your Lizard is all wired up about. If you QUIET IT and IGNORE IT you will never learn to understand it. You’ll continue the knee jerk reaction, stuffing it down in your attempt to keep it caged. Yeah. It’s hard work to learn to speak Lizard. But it’s so worth it.

Personally, I’m with Martha Beck on this one. I say give your lizard a name. Sit down and have a cup of tea and a conversation with it. You’d be amazed how articulate and astute it is, given an understanding ear. Why? Because your lizard brain can alert you to patterns, things you didn’t realize you didn’t like. And if you listen, and recognize those patterns, you can CHANGE the resistance, find a new direction, take action, cast off the chains and LIVE.

For instance, if your limbic lights go off when you walk into an office cubicle, or go with your best friend to look at bridesmaid dresses, there’s a message there – usually one that says, “Shit. I hate working in a cubicle. I loathe wearing puffy-arm party dresses in unnatural hues of magenta and lime.” So, instead of ignoring that message, or misinterpreting it, consider whether or not your lizard is saying, “You know, the last six times you’ve worked in an office in a cubicle you screwed things up. You screwed them up because you really don’t like working for the man. You’re going to botch this one too. Let’s start our own business selling t-shirts at rock concerts.” or “You really do look like a fool in those darn bridesmaid dresses. Next time, decline the invitation. We’ll put up with it this one last time, but seriously. Learn to say NO.”

Martha Beck encourages her clients to listen to their inner lizard. It is sabotaging us because it knows what we don’t like and won’t do well at. It is a compass. It is a tool. Embrace it. Listen to it. Heed its alarms and find your true path. You can fight it, or you can understand it. As someone who has spent most of my adult life alternately ignoring, fearing and running from or listening and learning to heed the advice of my lizard, and to understand what it knows, I can assure you….you’re better off making it a friend rather than an enemy.