As some of you folks know, I now make my dubious living as a spiritual business “consultant,” one of the most incredibly vague terms of all time.  (A friend recently asked, “You don’t have to have any degrees or certification to be a consultant, do you?”  “No,” I said, “but it helps a lot if you believe your own bullshit.”)

I am a “visionary brand consultant,” which means I help entrepreneurs create and develop brands that inspire devotion, commitment, and action—at least in their own minds, if nowhere else in the entire marketplace of the human earth community.  

No, but seriously. In essence, it’s really a lot of business coaching, business development consulting, life coaching, transformational empowerment, and your usual Begging the Gods for Mercy all mixed up together.  But I thought “visionary brand” consulting sounded better.

The following is a sample of my work, a “prescription” I wrote for a client dealing with a business partner who may now, at this point, have officially crossed over from Rampant Narcissism to Beginning Psychotic.

 

“There is no doubt you are in what the Metaphysical Folk would call a "challenging" situation at work (known in other parts of the world as FUBAR), so that just makes it all the more important and essential that you give equal passionate attention to What You Want.

You don't want to fall into the incredible easy and common trap of being seduced by What Is Happening. You can acknowledge What Is Happening without being totally consumed by it, which is different.

Let's say there's a certain amount of time you spend each day or week thinking, feeling, acting and focusing about and around Work.  Let's say that 50% of that time is spent dealing with or be annoyed by the delightful cowpatties leaked copiously by your business partner "B”. 

 If you spend the other 50% of your non-"B" time focusing on things that you like (currently) or that you want (which will come), the energy balance is going to be in your favor, as positive thoughts and feeling have a greater attraction power than negative ones do.

This is the Law of Attraction balance I call "Delusional Realism," meaning, we acknowledge that all that stuff with "B” really consumes a great deal of energy and attention and that it's tough to deal with.  It would be tough for anyone to deal with.  That's the realism part. 

However, in order to deal with the potential grimness of that realism, you need to balance and address its existential despair with the "delusional" part, meaning, giving thanks for things that you want really badly but that haven't happened yet.  These things seem truly delusional when you are in a bad space, but as soon as you're feeling a little better and life is a bit smoother and faster, they don't seem quite so impossible.  At which point, they tend to pop into your actual experience.

In order to get that "Delusional" part flowing, I asked you to make some lists of exactly what you want to Be, Do, and Have.  I asked you to list at least 30 items for each, because the first things tend to be our immediate requests, and as we keep checking in with ourselves we find stuff that we didn't know we wanted at first. You can obviously have more than 30 things on any list, and it doesn't matter which category you put them in--whatever seems right to you.

You may also find yourself erupting into things you DONT want, so just write those down somewhere on the side, and then come back to how that "Don't Want" helps you find the "Want."  You can have things that are similar, like "I want to have a fun, conscientious partner who I love working with," and "I want to have (your biggest entrepreneurial hero) as my partner."  You can list things that seem totally impossible and fanciful, or that won't happen (you think) for years, or something that you think, with luck, you can probably get or enjoy next week.

It doesn't matter at this point--you're just stirring the pot of What I Want with a stick. 

Another game with this is to write lists of  "I Want This Because. . ."  This is to shift you OUT of the energy of  "I Want This, But. . . "

"I want a great partner because I want to be incredibly fulfilled and mostly peaceful at work" is a totally different order to the Universe than "I want a great partner but I'll never get one because I am stuck with this asshole until I finally lose my shit and quit and then have to go dig ditches to feed my family."

If you're particularly fed up with something or someone, it may be better to play the "I want this because" game in another area of life, for the minute, something that seems just a little more possible and flexible.  The point of all these games is to Relax you into Well-Being, to clean up your energy, so sometimes it's better to stay off a Hot Button subject until you can cool down with something else.

Finally, on the deepest and most essential energy level, it works like this.  You ask, and your Inner Being instantly becomes what you ask for. By the time you are aware that you are asking, your Essential Being (or God, if you like that idea) has already answered and provided what you want.  As my friends Abraham Hicks say, "Ask and It Is Given."

So another good energy shifter is to make yourself some piles of Gratitude Flash Cards (index cards work well).

"Thank you for making my life so much easier."

"Thank you for the millions of dollars, the billions of dollars in my account.  Thank you for helping me see more and more of these dollars each day in my ordinary life, until I know FOR SURE  that I am, in fact, a millionaire.  With option to upgrade to billionaire."

"Thank you for helping me shift my energy on this partner thing.  Even though I am now sometimes upset, thank you for helping me see all the ways this situation is improving.  I know you are making my perfect partner possible RIGHT NOW and I am so, so grateful."

This sort of thing.  Regular affirmation cards can work too, but I like to make my own Gratitude cards instead, and I like to make them (somewhat) believable to me, so I can really enjoy them.  I keep them in my back pocket and flip through them several times a day until I can feel the shift (it feels warm and relaxing and like relief). 

And then, creepily enough, things in the ‘outside world’ start to shift as well.”

Moon, You are Huge! My Favorite Inspirational Moments

I don’t know if y’all are noticing this, but it seems like life just keeps speeding up and getting stranger and stranger, more and more connected, more and more intensely entangled. Perhaps it’s simply the centrifugal force of the paradigm shift of 2012 picking up energy and sucking us in to the inevitable Something Else. To the end of the world, or to the beginning of what some visionaries call The Great Turning. Being a bit of an intuitive retard, I’m not sure what’s going on. But I can feel something happening.

Or perhaps it’s a personal experience that I, with the charming narcissism so prevalent in my generation, am assuming has global resonance. Whatevs, as my Generation Y roommate would say. I’m just really excited to tell you guys about one of my recent Top Favorite Spiritual Moments, cause it was so so awesome and I think, if I tell it right, you are gonna dig it.

It’s a beautiful evening in early fall. Just past midnight or so. Earlier, an unfairly huge juicy orange moon has risen up through the sky, threatening to take all of Colorado prisoner with its mysterious looming beauty. Now, although slightly less mysterious, it’s still hanging out, basking in its own perfection, like, “Hey. Yeah. I’m the Freakin’ MOON, fool. What you lookin’ at?”

The air is crisp, clean, cool but not cold. I’m sitting on the balcony of my townhouse, looking out onto the mellifluous night and the quiet street below, free of cars for the moment. The night is hushed, waiting, lurking with hidden potential, and I am one with this night. I am in an unusual state of mind, or rather, occupying an unusual state of being—one that comes to me every now and then.

This state has something to do with meditation, something to do with clearing my consciousness of the Business as Usual Ellen Nonsense that tends to go on. For a moment, sometimes many moments in a row, I am free of my story. True, I have done terrible things. I have also done good things. I have made horrendous mistakes and probably am making more as I speak. (Did I mention that earlier I blew off writing my class syllabus so I could watch VH-1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s? Yeah, I know. But look, does my class really need to know what we’re going to do in this workshop as much as I need to know the back story behind Kellis’s 2003 “My Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard”?)

But somehow, in this particular state of being, none of this matters.

Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum. Into the temporary vacuum of my non-judgment, all kinds of strong emotion pour in. I feel myself filling up with something huge, warm, and spacious, something that runs through the center of my chest like bourbon, only better. I look at the moon with awe, and remember another Giant Moon: Athens, Greece, 1987. I am on a European vacation with my art class and Bob, who is from Germany, looks up at the spectacular moon looming immediately over our heads and lifts his drink to it, “Moon! You are Yoooge! (translation: “Huge!”) For those of us present, this becomes a favorite toast for years.

As I sit on my balcony, here, in 2011, I am filled with love for that moon of 1987, for the people who were there with me, people who tonight are grownups scattered all over the world, grownups writing checks for mortgages and begging their children to do their homework. I am full of love for their houses and their children and for this moon, the moon that floats gently above us all.

Actually, to tell the truth, I am full of love in general. Wow. Where did all this come from? For just this moment I can look on everything around me with astonishment and wonder—all surrounding objects have dropped their ordinary pretense of “hey, yeah, so I’m a tree—big deal.” Instead, they shimmer with clarity and possibility and intention, with the power of something ELSE no longer hidden. I look and feel more love. Then more love. My love rises up to meet that love and becomes more than that. I am overwhelmed with love, and I must tell someone.

“I love you!” I whisper to the trees, to the moon. “Oh, I love you! I love you!” I whisper to the night, to the planet, to the Universe. I feel all of us—me, the trees, the moon, the night, my old friends, Bob, the children and their homework—all of us pulsing together as one fluid heartbeat: “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

At this exact moment, a lone car shoots past on the street below. A man is yelling at someone on a cell phone, his window open. “I hate you, you f*****g bitch!”

I love this. It is perfect. I love this man for providing the perfect point of contrast to all this love—and for allowing me to observe that this love is large enough to include the man and his anger and obscenities. I love that the Universe brought us together at this precise intersection of each of our emotional lives. “I love you too, you f*****g a**hole!” I say to the man, now long gone down the street. “I love you! I love you! Thank you! I hope you and your girl make up!”

I’m pretty sure they made up. After all, there’s a lot of love available, some of it from sources you would not expect.

Summertime, Spirituality, and Tanorexia

Greetings, Superfriends! How is this beautiful summertime treating you?

I want to apologize for my long absence from this blog. Terrible things have come into my life since last we were together. There’s nothing worse than when you make a bunch of plans to create things and have success and get people excited and then THOSE THINGS COME TRUE. I’m just saying, I had WAAAY more time to blog when the only other competition for my attention was my next spiritual webinar(love you Vishen Lakhiani!) or MTV’s Jersey Shore.

And speaking of Jersey Shore, it’s probably just as well that I don’t have too much time to watch it because it really exacerbates my condition. As those of you who have known me since high school or college are aware, summer is tough for me because I suffer from extreme Tanorexia.

For those of you not familiar with this condition, let me explain. We who suffer from this debilitating disease report being swept by frequent feelings of “not tan enough.” This condition affects its victims on spiritual as well as emotional and physical levels, and is especially dangerous for those of us who came of age during the heyday of Baywatch.

Oh, sure, for a while, you can distract yourself with new clothes or adorable fuzzy animals or addressing your friend’s latest obsessive outrage (I have a friend who has an infinite capacity for outrage and she really keeps me busy). You can even choose to meditate on the Divine Love whose purple velvety majesty keeps this Universe expanding into ever greater dimensions.

And it works. For a while. And then you see Pauly and Vinny and Snookie and you look down at your slightly graying white legs poking out of your slightly graying white shorts and the compulsion rears its ugly head: “GTL! GTL! GTL!” (that’s “Gym, Tan, Laundry” for those uninitiated in the pleasures of Jersey Shore).

I have another friend who pointed out that I am forty-one years old and maybe it’s time I moved on to more mature obsessive compulsions. And I do my best. The reason I haven’t been writing for this blog for such a long time is that I am now writing for three others which actually have something to do with my getting paid and thus being able to support myself. I am actually becoming somewhat obsessed with supporting myself, which, believe me, is not an obsession that’s troubled me too much in this lifetime.

Mostly I like to be supported by others. First it was my family. Then it was my universities and the Ridiculously Generous Souls of the student loan system (three college degrees can buy a LOT of Nordstrom, Anthropologie, and DSW!). Then it was my former husband. Then I turned to Law of Attraction and learned that God and the Universe wanted to support me. So I decided to let God do that by allowing me to win the lottery. God told me to get a job and He/She would let me know about the lottery real soon.

Sigh.

Oh Well, as my dad would say.

My dad Matthew Melko Jr. died last summer at about this time. He was the ultimate Jersey Shore boy, having grown up spending his summers in Seaside Heights, where the show is filmed. I asked him once whether the Jersey Shore had changed much since his heyday in the fifties. And he said that although cultural norms had changed (back then you didn’t, for example, have sex with people in dance clubs as a matter of course), he was glad to see that Seaside and Jersey were just as tacky and pointless and strangely beautiful as ever.

Whether you are tan or not tan, whether you are on speaking terms with God and the Universe or not, whether you love the beach or the mountains or the mall, I salute you and wish you an amazing summer. It’s good to be back.

Outsource My Worry

So, I’m reading this great book by a simmering wunderkind genius named Timothy Ferris. It’s called The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

I know. Right. Right? But doesn’t that title kinda make you salivate, just a little bit? Or, perhaps, depending on your current relationship with your work and your finances, it kinda makes you long to collapse in your recliner with annoyance and a bag of Skittles. Or maybe, if you’re feeling extra discouraged, it awakens a desire to go ahead and get your medical marijuana card. After all, you’ve put at least four hours of work into avoiding your work already this week. Must there be more? These damn kids today. . .

A provocative disclaimer shouts from the top of the back jacket cover: “WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK UNLESS YOU WANT TO QUIT YOUR JOB”

As my friend Olga would say, “Indeed.”

I won’t go into all the surprisingly wise and practical suggestions this book offers right now. Because that would require my doing the actual work of analyzing and condensing for you. And frankly, well, I think there’s a new episode of Family Guy available online. Also, I have to consider the best possible giant fuzzy boots for fall.

But I do want to touch on a brilliant concept from Ferris’s chapter on “Outsourcing Life: Off-Loading the Rest and a Taste of Geoarbitrage.” (I’m afraid I simply do not have the resources at the present time to explain this last term, else I get lost down a rabbit hole of my own giant fuzzy economic ignorance).

Ferris, a passionate advocate of personal outsourcing, cleverly outsources this chapter itself to another writer, AJ Jacobs, editor-at-large at Esquire magazine. Jacobs, in turn, explains how he was influenced by another Outsourcing Opus, the best-selling The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, to outsource low-end tasks of his own life. Paying bills, changing wireless services, finding his son a Tickle Me Elmo, apologizing to his wife, that sort of thing.

Delighted by his new Bangalore virtual personal assistant (pleasingly named Honey K. Balani), Jacobs decides to outsource his worry:

“For the last few weeks I’ve been tearing my hair out because a business deal is taking far too long to close. I asked Honey if she would be interested in tearing her hair out in my stead. Just for a few minutes a day. She thought it was a wonderful idea. ‘I will worry about this every day,’ she wrote. ‘Do not worry.’

“This outsourcing of my neuroses was one of the most successful experiments of the month. Every time I started to ruminate, I’d remind myself that Honey was already on the case, and I’d relax. No joke—this alone was worth it.” (Ferris, p.118)

AJ Jacobs you mad genius. I love this idea. More than anything else in life, I would vastly enjoy having Less Worry.

Seriously. I mean, sure, I want more money, more love, more freedom, more harmonious relationships, more shoes, more praise, more approval, more flowers flung by adoring fans as I walk, more of you admitting I am right and you are less right. . .

Yeah, pretty much more of everything.

And I’m a recovering junkie, so this is normal. We addicts definitely love our “More.” We love our More more than just about anything. But I don’t think we’re alone in this feeling. . . I think most of us desire. . .more. I think that’s just part of our design, part of how life evolves and unfolds, and “More,” while not necessarily “better,” isn’t necessarily bad.

But less?

Oh, in this case. Yes Oh Yes Oh Yes Oh Yes. Give me less worry. I am dying to outsource my worry! I am so excited to try this. But I don’t yet have a virtual assistant, in Bangalore or anywhere else?

Who should I ask?

Should I ask different people to worry about different aspects of my life? It doesn’t seem fair to load any one person down with all my shit. I am a skilled and gifted worrier—in fact, worrying is one of my most spectacular character assets.

I am also a very quiet worrier—don’t tend to share my worries out loud—so others, in general, don’t have to be disturbed by my worry until I begin to act out in totally unexpected and psychotic ways. Which is lots of fun for everyone involved.

Maybe I should offer to exchange worries with someone? If any of you would like to swap brooding obsessions, please let me know. One thing about my worries is that while the item in question may change, the general subject matter stays tediously consistent.

I have to worry about this a little more and then I’ll let you know. See you next week.

Much Love to All,

Ellen

Spiritual Paths, or My Friend Marcus Likes Porn

The occupational hazards of being me. So freaking stressful. Here’s a warning to anyone out there who’s considering becoming one of those super-positive people. Or a guru. Or a life coach. Or any of that crap. Let me tell you, from my own experience, that once you start telling people they can be, do, or have anything they want, those people will start to bug the shit out of you about how to do it.

Now, that’s not really how I get down. I know that you can, in fact, be, do, or have. Isn’t that enough for you? Now I’m supposed to explain how that’s going to happen? As my virtual friend Allie (author of the greatest blog in the world, hyperboleandahalf.com) would say, “What am I, some kind of wizard?”

So I’m talking to my friend Marcus about how we are completely unlimited in our choices. Life in this realm, I have discovered—well, it’s pretty much just one big expanding holodeck. And if you don’t know what a holodeck is, then shame on you for neglecting your responsibilities—why didn’t you spend your youth smoking pot and watching Star Trek Next Generation?

In essence, we live in a world that is continually shaped by our beliefs. You may not believe this, in which case, your experiences will confirm that belief too. The universe really doesn’t mind if you choose to believe that your thoughts have absolutely nothing to do with the world that takes shape around you.

That’s why you gotta love the universe. It’s always like, “No problem. We can do that. Here’s your completely random grab bag of mixed unrelated events. Have a nice day!”

One of my core beliefs is that I have to work hard in order to make money. Somehow, money doesn’t seem very acceptable to me unless I am, on some level, earning it (usually in pitiful quantities) through my patient suffering. As it happens, I am an excellent patient sufferer. No one can suffer quietly as loudly and elegantly as I can.

So I’m talking to my friend Marcus about how I’m done with this nonsense. “From now on,” I tell him, “I want to lie in a hammock and make money.”

“How are you going to make money in a hammock?” He asks.

“The people will come to me.” I say. “I will lie in my hammock and the people will come. They will ask questions. I will dispense wisdom. Then they will weep with heartfelt gratitude, shower me with golden coins, and leave to go make improvements in their lives. Meanwhile, I will remain in my hammock.”

“I want to make money in a hammock,” Marcus says.

“You will lie next to me. In your own hammock. You can help me dispense wisdom.”

“I really want a flat screen television,” Marcus says, “If I’m going to be lying around in a hammock. And probably a lot of porn. Is that going to interfere with your dispensing of wisdom?”

“Ummm, no. I guess that’s okay. Can it just be mostly mainstream porn? I feel that the people might be distracted by a lot of transvestites. Or anal.”

“How much money do you think I can earn each day lying in a hammock watching porn?”

I think about this for a moment. “Hmmmm. I honestly don’t know. Will you be masturbating?” He gives me a look. “Okay, so that’s a yes. Well, I will pay you one thousand dollars a day to lie in a hammock next to mine, watching porn on your flat screen t.v. and, doing, you know, what feels right to you. This will be good for the people. You’ll be helping them out spiritually, big time.”

“How’s that?”

“I will tell the people: ‘Behold, look upon this man and see how free you truly are. For he imagined a life in which he watched pornography from a hammock, and got paid to enjoy it, and lo, it has come to pass. Think of this man when next you complain of your limited options, your meager talents. For who among you dared to dream like this man—this man of no discernible skills or abilities whatsoever—and still, he is nurtured by Divine Source. Still, he gets to live his dream.’ And the people will look upon you and realize that it is true.”

I’ll let you guys know once me and Marcus get our set-up. In the meantime, feel free to imagine and claim your own freaky goodness—even if it in no way resembles what other people perceive as good. I used to have a roommate who collected porcelain baby angel naked cupid dolls. I believe she even belonged to a club that sent a new one every month. This did not make sense to me. But it made sense to her.

The Source of All Things delights in our differences. So really, it is your spiritual responsibility to get out there and get started watching porn. Or Star Trek. Or baby angel naked cupid dolls. I can’t tell you what to choose. But I can tell you that your perfect unique choice makes the universe expand. . .

Thanks for all the kind emails. I'm glad to be back. See y'all soon.