Transformation is having fun at a Mets game.

Ok, what's so unusual about having fun at a baseball game, you might ask? It is America's favorite pastime, after all. And how can having fun be Transformational? Well, consider that I have been living with a story that I didn't like baseball for um.. well longer than I care to reveal.

Now I was all set not to enjoy myself. I even packed a book and a sour expression along with my lunch. But the truth is, once I got to good old Shea stadium, I got caught up in the moment & forgot my story. Luckily for me :-) I'm sure it didn't hurt that it was a very tumultuous game complete w/ a no hitter for the NY Mets all the way to the eighth inning, plus a big fight on the field. But the key is that I was willing to give up a few things in order to enjoy myself. The two I noticed the most were giving up listening to my story & giving up my preference.

• Giving up my story

What's a story, anyway? It's a belief system you formed in the past that may or may not be relevant or accurate any longer. It could be a set of rules we put together for ourselves (musicians are cheaters) or a belief system we absorbed while growing up in a certain culture (I love you; I made you pasta). It could be a generalization we came up with after only one positive or negative experience (all dogs bite). Very often, they resulted as a way of sparing us from fear or embarrassment (avoid dogs & musicians). Our stories can be funny and innocuous. But when left unexamined, they can limit our lives by closing us off to limitless possibilities. How can we shed a story? Just by (1) looking at it without judging it & (2) asking ourselves is this really true or accurate for me in this moment of now? If it is, great! And if it's not, also great! And you will find that without "doing" anything, it will melt away. But what if it comes back? No problem, just repeat steps 1 & 2 above.

So a story I had growing up was that baseball was boring, a waste of time, and totally lacking in strategy. It's what I heard growing up around me at home & at school. I went to a French school, where soccer was the only sport that counted and baseball was considered slowww & pointless. Once I got to the stadium and surrendered to the excitement, I was willing to give up my tale that baseball was tedious, and my story disappeared.

• Giving up my preferences

What are our preferences, if we are willing to be honest? Our preferences are our bratty nature announcing to the world what we like & what we don't like. But guess what? the world, or the great creator, or whatever deity you believe in (God, Buddha, Allah, Julio Iglesias, or the curious deity worshipped by the pastafarians in The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster,) doesn't really and truly care about your preferences. Just because you would prefer it not rain on the day you wash your car or get your hair done, doesn't mean that you can actually affect barometric pressure. So you can either get caught up in your preferences, and waste your energy wishing things were different than they are, or you can get interested in the reality of what is actually going on around you. Listening to your preferences as though they really mattered, is a little bit like letting your inner 2 yr. old run your life.

I have recently made a game of watching my preferences, without judging them, and seeing how those little devils with agendas of their own try to manipulate situations. It's been amusing to see how I operate, and the neat thing is that by observing & not judging, I'm aware of the mechanism and can now choose to sidestep it. This has given me a higher degree of freedom & helped liberate me from the 2 yr. old in all of us.

Saying No to my Automatic No

Tonight, a few of us had drinks at a midtown spot, Pera. Very nice locale, good wine list, great company. What made this particular happy hour so extraordinary was a simple question posed by my awesome friend, Eric. We had been listening to our friend, Emmanuelle, tell us about her amazing honeymoon with her honey, Luis, in Tanzania. She stayed in romantic camps and saw luscious scenery and took a safari scattered with exotic animals. Listening to her I was thinking, "Ooooh, I would love to go to Africa. Africa's far. Africa is wild. I wonder how many vaccinations I would need to go to Africa. Oooh, but I really would like to go. But Africa must be really expensive. And I don't speak the various languages. Gee, it's too bad I can't go to Africa..." At that moment, Eric asked a simple, but brilliant question. He turned to the rest of us and said, are you ready for this? "Hey, why don't we go to Africa?"

Now we are a pretty well-traveled bunch. Between us we have been to Nepal, Italy, Austria, Costa Rica, Sweden, France, Australia, India, and Hungary, just to name a few destinations. We've seen fjords in Alaska, attended Nobel prize ceremonies, logged telescope time at space observatories all over the world, spent countless months at the Louvre if one were to add up all our visits, danced on tables on the isle of Capri, trekked through the Himalayas, and seen so many wonders, natural as well as man-made that have taken our collective breath away.

Yet, I found myself automatically listening to a conversation inside my head that was all ready to come up with dozens of reasons why I couldn't do something. It was my automatic "No!" that kicked in before I even knew what was happening. When I listen to my automatic No, what I really want and what I can truly accomplish usually doesn't stand a chance. I realized that if I let the automatic No run my life, I will rob myself of some amazing experiences. I might turn down a super job offer, or not give a potentially terrific relationship a chance or not even sign up for a breast cancer awareness marathon, or not even consider a trip to Africa with great people.

So thanks to Eric, we started asking questions. We found out when to go (June, because it's winter there); how to book (Emmanuelle is giving us the number of a travel agent based in Tanzania); what to see (we started a list on a cocktail napkin). Most of all, I saw that my thoughts & mental chatter don't have to run my life. As soon as I became aware of this mechanical response, the non judgmental seeing of it was enough to gain my independence from it. Pretty cool.

Transformation is like driving with clean spark plugs.

While inviting my friend in London to a seminar Ariel & Shya Kane are holding there in October, I was trying to describe to him what Transformation is and what its benefits have been for me. I came up with this analogy to share:

When I was little, my Mom drove a red 1973 Alfa Romeo GTW Sprint. A Beautiful car… but very high maintenance… There was a problem w/ the fuel injection system, and so every few weeks, one of the cylinders would shut down because the spark plugs would get so dirty. So we had to keep an extra set of plugs in the boot (trunk) & a steel brush. Eventually, we would have to pull over by the side of the road, wait for the engine to cool, yank out the dirty spark plugs, and replace them with the set we had brushed clean. Then we would continue on our way, and WOW, the difference was amaaaazing! It was like driving a totally different car. (Yes, my Mom let me drive at 12; I would sit on her lap & she would work the pedals & tell me when to shift gears. What larks! but I digress…)

As she got more adept at listening to the sound of the engine, she was able to tell when it was time to change the plugs before we left our garage, and thus we were spared having to make the switch on the shoulder of the Long Island Expressway.

Anyhoo, transformation is just like that. -like having all your cylinders working beautifully!

If you will be in London on October 8th or October 13th and want to check out the Kanes' "Living in the Moment" workshops, check out this info.