I believe in the power of making requests.

Vulnerable, specific, actionable requests.

So many good things can happen when you make powerful requests:

~You offer people an opportunity to contribute to your life.
~You deepen your sense of self-connection and being “fully with” yourself.
~You exponentially increase your chances of having your needs actually met.

On the surface, making powerful requests is fairly simple:
1) Identify the need you’re hoping to have met.
2) Envision your ideal strategy to meet that need.
3) Ask for exactly what you want, with a willingness to hear “no” (if you aren’t open to hearing “no,” you’re making a demand, not a request; remember that there are infinite strategies to meet every need, and becoming wedded to a particular strategy is at the heart of conflict and violence).
4) If you receive a “no,” envision your next-best strategy to meet that need, potentially incorporating the needs of the other person to create a win/win strategy, and make that request. Repeat until you find a strategy that meets everyone’s needs.

While this process is relatively simple, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Making powerful requests can tap into some of our deepest vulnerabilities.

If you’re reading those four steps and thinking, “I don’t think I can do that,” what’s getting in the way of asking for what you want most?

Are you afraid of hearing no?
Afraid of being judged?
Afraid of uncomfortable feelings?

If so, you may have some early-life survival rules, unconscious sacred vows, or intergenerational patterns that prevent you from knowing what you want and/or asking for it.

Using depth-healing processes, I can support you in bringing those longstanding patterns into compassionate, conscious memory, offering you more choice and agency in your life.

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, join us today, Saturday February 5, for the final installment of Gather Together, on the topic of Making Powerful/Vulnerable Requests.

Using mini-constellations and sacred vow work, we’ll be bringing warm resonance to the paralyzing fears around making requests, the aversion to hearing “no,” and the pain of being judged (by yourself or others) for asking for what you really want.

If you aren’t able to make it to Gather Together, you can also contact me to book your private session, in person or over Skype, to get support on making that powerful request you’re longing to make.

With love and empathy,
Angela

Hello, dearests! I’m headed completely off the grid tomorrow for two weeks of silent lovingkindness meditation and restorative communion with nature.

You’re welcome to call, email, or message me during this time. I’ll begin reviewing and responding to messages Monday, January 25.

Until then, wishing you love, empathy, and metta!

Almost two decades ago, I passed through a toll booth on the San Francisco Bay Bridge. I held out my money to a toll taker, and in return he beamed at me, his smile radiant and his eyes kind. With the buoyant warmth of a parent talking to their beloved child, he asked, “How are you today, sweetheart?”

 

I thought to myself, “This person is spreading love to every single person who passes through. Amazing. What a meaningful way to spend your day.” He taught me in that 30-second exchange that anything we do, when imbued with love, can be deeply meaningful.

 

Every single human on this planet needs meaning and purpose. A sense that our life has a positive impact, and that our existence matters. An experience of making a meaningful contribution to one being or a lot of beings or the entire world.

 

What is your life’s unique purpose? What feels genuinely meaningful to you? And what keeps you from fully living that purpose?

 

Is it fear of rejection or separation? Fear of financial insecurity? Fear of “failing” and not having a soft place to land during potential setbacks?

 

Is it lack of support and companionship? Unhealed trauma? Hopeless despair or debilitating anxiety? Crippling self-judgments?

 

Once you name your purpose and identify your blocks to that purpose, you can bring compassionate healing to whatever self-limiting beliefs, agreements, and familial/tribal/cultural influences you’ve internalized. You can begin to clear the path ahead of you, step by step, moving more deeply into your life’s unique and invaluable purpose.

 

There are many ways to clear the path to a meaningful life. One of them is to work privately with me, in my Oakland office or over Skype. I have two spaces open starting in January for new clients who want to work with me every other week.

 

If you’re in the Bay Area, I’m also offering a free daylong workshop this Saturday, January 2, to anyone who wants to start 2016 by clearing whatever is blocking their life’s unique purpose. We’ll be doing depth-healing processes, including family constellations, to compassionately dissolve whatever is keeping you from moving forward on your most meaningful path. I hope you’ll join us.

 

Click here for the address. No need to preregister. Just show up, and bring all your friends!

 

Much love and empathy,

Angela

I don’t know about you, but I’ve accomplished a lot in my life through force, “willpower,” punishments and rewards, and deadlines (emphasis on the “dead” part, which is how I often felt at the finish line of projects and degrees).

I’d been conditioned to think that coercion, from myself or others, was the only way anyone got anything done—that left to our own devices we’d squander our lives and do absolutely nothing to contribute to the world—so I dominated myself and allowed others to dominate me into doing the things I loved until I no longer remembered what it felt like to love them.

I stayed in jobs, in relationships, in places, in situations, as long as there was even a shred of enjoyment. I was praised for my “stick-to-it-tiveness”—my tenacity, loyalty, and dedication. And I was pretty chronically angry and depressed from sticking with strategies that didn’t actually touch my needs.

Nonviolent Communication offers a vision that we all share the same universal human needs, and that there are infinite strategies to meet each of those needs. Violence arises when we lock into one strategy (one approach, one person, one group of people) to meet our needs, even if that strategy overpowers other parts of ourselves, other needs we have, other people, or our environment.

What would life be like if, instead, we put all of our needs on the table and came up with a creative set of strategies that touched all those needs?

What if we took our needs more seriously than our strategies?

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–> Have you ever wanted to support someone, but what you said or didn’t say seemed to make things worse?

 

–> Do you rerun conversations afterward, cringing about what you said, and wishing you could have a “do-over”—even if you aren’t exactly sure what you’d do or say differently?

 

–> Do you fear conflict, because you’re not sure what turns tension into closeness?

 

–> Do you avoid reaching out to people because you’re afraid you won’t know what to say?

 

–> Do you long for your conversations to go deeper, to feel more intimate, to have more meaning, to leave everyone feeling warm and connected and cared for?

 

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may be stuck in a “Response Rut,” such as:

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