I'm doing this blog, and it's called Being a Cooperative Component to Your Life. There are several elements here that have come to light. 

As I coach clients, I have to tell you this: It is not something you can learn from a book; it's neither motivational nor my way nor the highway. 

When I coach, I walk into every situation with a new client and open everything: my eyes, my mind, and my heart to personal inspiration and revelation. 

When you do that, you are a cooperative component with the client with what they need because everybody's different, right? 

We're not all the same. We haven't had the same lives. We haven't had the same trials, hardships, challenges, et cetera. 

We are human beings trying to figure out how to find the love and light we know we deserve but do not always give ourselves a chance to experience it. 

Being a cooperative component in your own life is huge if you want to experience the best life ever. When I say the best life ever, I'm not talking about all the money, perfection, success, and all that. 

I'm not talking about that because we're not here to only have those things. Those things are a byproduct of getting out of our own way. 

When we get out of our own way, we stop arguing for limitations and start contributing to the life we said we wanted. 

Let's talk about this in driving terms. 

If you say you want to get on the freeway and go north to a very wonderful destination, you're like, this is my favorite place ever. 

You can do so many things there, and I always feel relaxed and rejuvenated when I go there, but it's in the north. 

Then, every time you get on the turnpike, you head south. You keep exiting on the southbound lane, like, oh my gosh, this is so frustrating to me, and it's odd, but even though I expect to go north, I continue to go south, and I'm disappointed every time that I don't land in this very wonderful place that I really want to go.

When we argue for our limitations, we are literally on the southbound lane. It's like, I can't, I won't. It's making up all the rules of why something can't happen, hasn't happened, or won't happen. 

You're like, I can't have a relationship because I don't want people to know this deep, dark secret in me, or I can't have the job I want because I don't have enough experience, or I don't have resume or schooling or certificates or PhDs that everybody else has. You argue for your limitations on so many levels. That is going south.

If you're going to be a cooperative component to the life you said you wanted, to the things that you feel are missing in your life, because there are two things in life, right?

There's what's wanted and the absence of what's wanted. If you're always looking at the absence of what's wanted, you're arguing for your limitations and driving away from your destination. 

You're going in the polar opposite direction. We may go lateral to it, but you're still not getting there. 

When we recognize in our lives that we're super unhappy, it's usually because we're going in the polar opposite direction from where we said we wanted to go. 

We're like, Ooh, I would like to have a loving relationship, and it's healthy and well. I would love to have money in the bank, I have the freedom to take trips and go where I want to go and help people I want to help, and I can buy a new car cause leather, new leather smells amazing, and I want to build a house because the smell of a new house is amazing. 

We want all these things, which could be amazing, but we're finding reasons not to have the money. 

We don't talk about our money. We don't have enough, and it's not going far enough or coming fast enough. 

We talk about our relationship, and it's like, well, they need to change so I can feel better. 

They need to love me more. They're always angry, and they're not giving me the attention and validation that I need. 

We really go to these dark places. 

Now, I am talking from absolute experience. 

There's no finger-pointing in my coaching because I will pull up every instance where these things are true. 

We have to get out of our own way. We have to remove these negative thoughts. 

There were so many times when I thought love is for everybody, but did I think that? Well, it was because of the story that I grew up in.

I grew up with a mother who was physically abused and emotionally neglected enormously, like enormously. 

She grew up in the great depression, so there was a lot of deprivation in a lot of different ways. 

Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was an avoider. Her mother became ill just for the sake of avoiding an alcoholic husband and the damage that he was causing in the family. 

My mom grew up with this training. Her conditioning was that she was like, uh, I'm not loved, never. 

Nobody loves me, and I'm going to prove it. 

It's so interesting that we argue for our limitations, and we're like, well, I'm never going to be like my mother. 

I'm never going to neglect my children emotionally. I'm never going to be like my father. I'm never going to abuse my children physically. 

We spend our entire lives trying to prove them right. We try and make our conditioning or arguing for our limitations a true story. 

We're like, so she married an alcoholic, and she lived the life of her parents basically, and she put her children in harm's way. 

Even though she was still trying to overcome all the trauma from her past, she never really became a person who understood her own worth and understood how loved she was in spite of her parents' pain. 

Well, guess what?

She broke the patterns in some ways. She did better than her parents. She wasn't an alcoholic. 

Even though she was codependent, she tried to tell us often that she loved us. Even though sometimes her words and her actions did not match. 

My conditioning from a person like that who was completely lovable she was a songbird. 

She was a creative, crafty person. She was a horticulturist. I like it if she had found a profession in her life that really brought her deep joy and satisfaction, she would have just been a greenhouse grower, a horticulturist, or a flower shop owner. She would have done something with plants. 

I saw these things in her. I knew who she really was. She would just sing when she was happy, which was rare. 

Mostly, she would sing when she thought nobody was listening because she was ashamed. 

She told herself she didn't sing well, even though she had a beautiful natural voice and never took lessons, but you know she carried a lot of that shame with her. 

Well, I'm telling you the story, not getting lost in my own stuff, but I'm telling you a story because that was handed down that legacy. 

I'm not loved, and parents don't have to say anything about how they feel about themselves. Kids will pick it up. They just know.

Mom doesn't love her, and then I'm like, as a little child, was like, Oh my gosh, my mom's in so much pain. I want to make her feel better by picking flowers, drawing her pictures, and giving her random kisses. 

I wanted to show her how loved she was, but my love was always rejected. She's like, nobody loves me. Nope. Stop it. Nope. It's like, Oh, you did a good job, but no, it wasn't because you love me. It was because you drew a nice picture, right? 

She would just reject it. 

I grew up with the same mentality of not being lovable. 

I married somebody who was very disconnected. Nice guy, really nice guy. 

I'm not throwing him under the bus in any way. 

He grew up and had a hard life. 

There's this connection in his life, but that's not what this is about. It is about the story that we worked so freaking hard on keeping that we are no longer a cooperative component in our lives. 

We're just arguing for our limitations. We're just arguing for why love never comes to us. 

It's like, gosh, if you don't ever love yourself, if you never figure out how to love yourself if you'd never overcome the story, then you're massively inhibited and frustrated in your ability to be a cooperative opponent to attract love in your life. 

Because you gotta be the love to attract the love, and money is love. 

Not the love of money but what money can do for us; it elevates our lives. 

It allows us to give, to be free, to be mobile, to get unstuck, and to pursue other things. 

It has a lot of allowance to it. Oh, there it is. You pay yourself an allowance, and you have more money. Ta-da! 

When you get out of your own way and stop arguing about your limitations, you allow better things to take their place.

The effort it takes to hold yourself back and argue why you can't and won't do things or why you should or shouldn't do things. 

Notice N.O.T. A derivative of N.O.T. A contraction at the end of should, could, and would is how you're arguing for your limitation. 

I don't want to be in a relationship that is struggling. 

There it is. Don't. N.O.T. Arguing for your limitation, that there's no way you can be two things at once. 

You can't be a cooperative component, and I will. I will allow it. I will pursue it. I will overcome. I will learn. 

You can't be in the “I will” state of mind, where you allow all the good things to come to you and allow yourself to be a cooperative component of the good stuff in life. 

If you're still talking about what you, I won't, and I can't, and I wouldn't, and I shouldn't.

Can you see that? Can you see a definite contrast in your language about what you argue for because you just don't hear people arguing for their possibilities. 

You don't hear people like it. 

I love having contrasts in my life because they teach me so much about what I don't want so I can work towards what I do want.

I just love having a moment where I'm like, woo, I don't like that. 

If I don't like that, what do I want? Ooh, I am going to pursue good thoughts, inspiration, fearlessness, the things that matter.

I’m going to pursue love, light, intelligence, wisdom, intuition, impulses, and discernment. 

I love that stuff. It comes into my life, and I grab it and run with it. Arguing about your possibilities of growing and being in love would be naive. 

In the state of love. What does love do? Good things. 

Love does all possibilities. Love is a cooperative component of what you want.

I won't, couldn't, shouldn't, wouldn't, or can't. 

Those are limitations, and they don't come from love. They do not come from a loving, open, cooperative place. 

They come from limitations.

If you want to be a cooperative component, you must use the language that a cooperative component would use. 

It's like, oh, I started a new job, and it's team-oriented. We all bring something to the puzzle, and we all have a part to play. 

We all have different skill sets. A variety of skill sets as a whole makes one really well-oiled machine. 

I signed up for it. I'm all about it. But then you get into this. 

This job, and you don't like the way one of the team players is doing their job. 

You focus on their faults and how they're not communicating with you and talking about their position clearly because they're kind of all over the place, messy, and trying to do a little bit of everybody's job, and so that's what you focus on. 

You're not focusing on your ability to communicate with them so that the communication becomes clear. 

You're not focusing on the possibilities of how you could work with a person on the team because you're not being a teammate. You're not doing that. 

You're focused on their issues, not yours. Right? 

Being a cooperative component is an inside job. 

It's what you need to do for yourself. By showing up, you improve the environment. 

You don't wait for other people to improve it. You definitely don't focus on what's wrong with them. 

You see this in relationships.

Can you see this in money terms? Can you see this in your ability to connect with your higher power? Can you see this in your freedom? You’re doing the things you want to do with your free time? See? 

Whether you're focused on the problem or the solution that you're arguing for the limitation because of somebody else or some external source, that’s just never going to be okay with me. 

I hate the way that's turning out and how hard it is for me. Are you doing that, or are you like, Oh gosh, this is the best thing that's ever happened?

I definitely know more about what it's like to be on a team. I have to rise to the occasion. 

That's the point I was seeing at the beginning of this episode about being a cooperative component. 

If I were a coach that showed up with a client, it would be like, Hey, here's the method and the protocol. 

They'd be like, but that's not working for me because we're not talking about me specifically. It's like, right. 

The coaching has to be about what you are or are not willing to do to be a cooperative component in your life. 

As coaches, we have to do the exact same thing: show up open and cooperative to help the client move forward. 

We have to do that for ourselves. It's pretty much impossible to do that for other people without doing it for yourself first. 

You have to be a cooperative component. If you're looking for purpose, if you're looking to grow or make a contribution in your life, those are the things that will bring you the most satisfaction, but you have to be open to it. 

You have to do it for yourself first before you can help out there in the world. 

We have to do the work inside. 

Nobody will love you like you need to love yourself, and nobody will validate you the way you can and need to validate yourself. 

Nobody can make you feel worthy unless you are owning your self-worth. 

Nobody can do these things outside of you. 

You have to do them. You are the one you've been waiting for. You must be a cooperative component.

If I had not taken the opportunity to realize that I didn't want a relationship where he was disconnected, I would have been left to feel more like the story my mother told me about not being loved or that I wasn't lovable for some strange reason. 

Who's not lovable? Everybody's lovable. 

They may not act lovable because they don't really know within themselves, but everybody is deserving of love. 

Every single person that comes into this world has the possibility of being loved completely by themselves. 

Sometimes, we call it coming to Jesus. We're like, Jesus loves me, even if I don't. All right. However, we have to get there. 

When you just step back and stop working so hard to show yourself all the ways that you're not being successful, that people are withholding love from you, that you don't have the money that you want, and that everybody else does but you can't seem to get hold of, it's like when you stop arguing for that and just sit still for a second, take a breath. 

Get in the backseat, stop trying to drive the car and demanding and commanding from the driver's seat, and just go for a ride. Just relax in the backseat. 

Then maybe you'll stop getting on the southbound lane. Maybe you'll let your higher power drive, and you'll just put your hands in the air, put your seatbelt on, look out the window, and see where life can take you. 

Just ease up on this pedal-to-the-metal, you know, hardcore self-bound attitude, and let the universe take the wheel. Jesus, take the wheel.

 Maybe you'll find yourself northbound, and it'll feel like a relief. It's like, whoo, it's nice to be going north for a change. 

I really do want to get to this nice, easy, relaxing, beautiful, restorative place. 

If you're jerking on the wheel every time it comes to the southbound lane, yeah, we're just not going to get there.

You have to let go. You have to relax. You have to stop working so hard at making things happen because that's not cooperative; that's just a maverick running, bulldozing their way through life; that's controlzilla, burning down houses, spreading shame. 

Be easy. Talk about the possibilities. 

That's what true health looks like. 

Watch your language and know that what you hear yourself saying is for you; even when you're talking to somebody else, you're talking to yourself. 

Another example. This is not to throw my father under the bus, but he struggled. 

He didn't know how loved he was. He was given up for adoption by his birth mother, and he was adopted by parents who wanted a boy or a girl. 

He felt like he had been rejected on two levels, which is big.

That's pretty monumental if you don't ever find resolve for that; you walk around struggling, wondering why you're so unloved and that you didn't deserve to be loved in this life. 

Well, I had a brother, a half-brother who had schizophrenia, and he struggled his whole life, and his biological father was a real crumb bum. 

He was somebody who was on the struggle bus his whole life. He was an alcoholic to contribute to the world because he just didn't want to look at his own pain. 

That was too painful. 

Instead, he caused pain in other people's lives. 

Here's my brother's mother; my mom chose to remarry and pretty much through her children under her first two children under the bus, and it's like, well, she married a man who didn't want them in his life, in his household. 

He pushed him out of the nest quite early and had to go live with his alcoholic father and his new wife, and it was just turmoil. It's like nothing good was happening there. 

My brother was the sweetest, nicest, kindest, and gentlest person in the world. He was very talented, had a high IQ, and was an artist that was well beyond his years. 

Not even the college professor who took a look at his work said he could teach him anything because he already was well beyond what the professor could do. 

This is going for him, but he was a schizophrenic, right? He had just constant struggles in his life, but I remember this occasion; okay, this is personal on a big level, and this is really transparent of my background.

 That was my challenge to overcome. But, I was like, absolutely, we're not going to repeat these patterns. 

My brother was sitting in a chair in our living room, and my dad, who was just on his high horse, expounding upon his own pain, said something. 

This is a memory that I had yesterday, just so you know. 

This is raw and recent. I don't remember the incident because I've remembered it for a long time, but what I didn't know and didn't see clearly was what was truly happening in that situation. 

I've always harbored a lot of pain for my brother. It just felt like no one ever loved him, and I just felt so sorry for him. 

I tried to love him as much as I could, but that's when somebody doesn't love themselves because they've been taught that they're unlovable.

It's very hard for them to accept other people's love right, and my mother never accepted my love. 

I felt like there was something wrong with my ability to love other people. 

I learned to try really hard to love other people and to be loved. 

That try-hard thing, you can see how this is snowballing, and then it would be easy for me to argue for my limitations. 

Well, here's my brother sitting in a chair and my dad's on his high horse. 

He has a beef with this young, innocent person. He was 15 when I was born, and he was 21 in this incident. 

I remember as a young child just watching this happen, and my father said to him, you don't have a right to be on this earth. 

You don't even have a right to be alive. I remember that just hit me in the heart. 

I was like, Oh, what gives you the right to say that? I just couldn't believe that came out of his mouth.

What I didn't realize then was that I completely got clarity on last night; yesterday, he was saying that about himself, pointing a finger at an innocent bystander. 

You don't have a right to even be alive. 

That is the level to which my father felt unloved, unbelonged, unclaimed, disconnected, and argued for his limitations. 

He was adamant about not being a cooperative component of the love he sought. 

He disallowed himself to feel loved on probably the deepest levels. 

His fear that he was going to be alone in the eternities after this life, like death, was massively scary to him because he felt like he would not be loved, he would be disconnected, he would have nobody, he would just be oblivion by himself, lone man in the wilderness forever. Cause he did believe in an afterlife. 

He didn't believe he would just be dust. His greatest fear was that he would be unloved for eternity. 

Infinitely, the fear there is intense. 

He was pronouncing his greatest fears here, arguing for his limitations on an innocent bystander. Well, I'll tell you this: my brother was golden. 

He heard what my dad said. I don't know how much he internalized it because I think something, maybe he wasn't checked out, or maybe he was checked out, or maybe he wasn't listening because of the schizophrenia, I hope. But it didn't seem to affect him. 

At least not beyond what Schizophrenia had already done and would continue to do for the rest of his 50. Nine years, 56 years, can't remember. 

Sometimes, what we say in anger or fear to other people when we're arguing about why our relationships aren't going well, why our employer doesn't see our value and promote us, or why a coworker isn't being helpful can help us feel better about the job that we're doing. 

Listen to what you're saying because that is a huge clue as to whether or not you are being a cooperative component to the life you said you wanted. 

It's a totally different topic or discussion for us to talk about how to turn that around. 

The beginning is awareness. The beginning is, what am I seeing? What am I doing that is keeping me from the things that I want in life? 

You have to be a cooperative component to the things you want. 

If you're just talking about the things you don't want, then you focus on growing those things. That's going to be the predominant issue in your life. 

That is the antithesis of being a cooperative component for the things you do want. 

You can talk about the things you don't want as long as it turns your brain around so that you can focus on and stay there. 

Mind over matter. Is that where that comes from? 

You must be a cooperative component to live the life you said you wanted and get out of your own way.

If you're still looking at the problems and still living a life that is congruent with the problem of the story that was told to you, the conditioning you received, the reason why you can't, won't, shouldn't, wouldn't, haven't, right? 

Then, you can continue to have the things you don't want. Congratulations—they're yours. 

We got to do something different. 

We have to allow ourselves the good stuff. We have to stop pushing on the pull door and just release it.

 We got to stop driving South and go North. We have to stop forcing and manipulating the steering wheel and the car and just get in the back seat and drive. 

Trust that everything can work out for you. 

Trust that everything is working for your good if you let it. 

You are the one that is in 100% control of that. 

You get to decide how you want this to go. 

When you ease up, let go, back up, stop trying so hard, sit and breathe for a second, and just relax for a second. 

Things can get better. 

You'll find that things are getting better when you feel relief, and you realize that you don't have to have to try so freaking hard to make something happen or to focus on the problem or to point the finger at everybody else who needs to change so you can feel better. 

That's a lot of work because you're not in charge of those things. 

You don't have control over other people. You do have control, however, over you. 

It is an inside job to become a cooperative component of the things you want. Nothing changes until you do. 

If you don't want to change and you'd rather fill your life with other things and other people and other experiences that bring you more of what you don't want, that's on you. That's okay. You can have it. 

Nobody's saying you can't have it. You can have it. 

Something tells me that if you're listening to this particular podcast and this episode. That you're like, yeah, but I don't want to feel that way anymore. 

I am tired of working so hard and of feeling like my life is going nowhere. Even though I try hard, it still gets the same thing that it's always gotten. 

More struggle, more unhappiness, more dissatisfaction, all of it. 

What are you going to do now? What are you going to do now? 

I suggest that you use the power of discernment to discover the verbiage that you're using to listen and be aware of what you're saying to other people, especially when you're hot and bothered; I don't mean that in that way when you're hot and upset and you're dissatisfied, disgruntled, frustrated, unhappy, and disappointed. 

That's you going south. Wishing you were north, going south. 

That's always going to be frustrating. 

What are you going to do differently? 

You've got to know what to do differently. You've got to know how to shift it, change it, turn it around. 

Because everything that's ever happened in your life, good, bad, or otherwise, has been for your benefit. It has taught you what you don't want so you can work towards what you do want. 

All of it is there for your good. It is to help you understand how worthy you are of better things. 

How deserving you are of better things, how loved you are, and how much that love can attract all the good stuff. 

You have to do the work. 

Nothing changes until you do. 

That is, everything is once a cooperative component in your life. 

Here you go. You have another day; you are still here, breathing, and you got up this morning. 

This is your opportunity. 

Let's get going, and let's get living.

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and  YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧 

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