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Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor Dr. Toni Galardi

Spring is coming! March 20 marks the Spring Equinox, bringing blossoms and new life. For those of you who have already reneged on promises made to yourself, this is a great time for getting back on the horse and initiating change. Take one habit that is holding you back from becoming the “best you” possible. Expect your destiny to change—in fact, declare it! Then write to me about your progress or any questions concerning what may be holding you back.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I have been an artist for almost 20 years. I am told my work is good but I have trouble with the PR part of the business. I hate having to show at gallery openings and talk about my work. I would rather just do what I do and have an agent market for me, but I am told that you have to be part of the selling end of things.
I am writing because I think part of it has to do with the fact that my father does not approve of me being an artist. He maintains that because I didn’t go to a professional art school, I lack credibility, so I always feel like a fraud when I have to promote my work publicly. Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do to get out of my own way?
Hiding Out in Encinitas

Dear Hiding:
Ah, yes. This is a common dilemma for many artists. The personality of the individual who can spend long days creating in isolation is often quite introverted. Public openings in galleries can feel downright painful. In your case though, I think that more is at play.
I would like to suggest that you use writing as a healing tool for releasing the beliefs you inherited from your father. One way for you to do this is to speak to your “inner father/judge” using your dominant hand and respond to this critic using your non-dominant hand. What this does is open the channel to your intuition and your “wholy” self.
For example, ask this question from your critic using your right hand if you’re right handed: “Who are you to think that you have what it takes to be taken seriously as a painter?” Answer the question with your left hand. Keep asking questions from the critic until you feel enough support from the answers given by your “wholy” self that you feel more at peace and you can surrender your resistance to promoting your work. Get in touch with the part of you that has experienced joy from your art and let that be your intention for what you want people to feel when they have one of your pieces in their home or office.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I’ve started a relationship with a man who lives in a part of the country I will never move to. I work from home and could live anywhere, but I don’t want to live in a hot, humid climate. He claims that he wants to move back to California, but not for 18 months—until his son graduates. It is really hard having long separations and I am questioning if I am wasting my time on someone who may never move back.
How does one decide whether to invest in something that could end in a year?
Lonely and in Love

Dear In Love:
My dear, love is a risk no matter where it shows up. If he were here, it would come with other risks. You don’t mention how often you see each other. You also don’t mention whether this is an exclusive relationship or what has been decided regarding a future with each other. Let’s presume you see each other once a month. If you don’t, by the way, I would insist on those terms if you need more contact. Secondly, I would not make it an exclusive relationship until there is a commitment in place. What will allow you to be more patient with the process of discovery is if you continue to date others and have a social life where you let it continue to evolve. If he wants exclusivity, define what the relationship is and what each of you expects over the next 18 months.
I have one last suggestion, should things progress. If there is a way for you to work anywhere, negotiate with him what you need in order for you to move to where he is. What kind of compromises do you need from him for you to relocate: Do you need a plan? Do you need a ring on your finger? Do you need him to accommodate your heat sensitivity by providing you with constant air conditioning at all times? Perhaps extracting a promise that he will never wear flip-flops and Bermuda shorts when he takes you to dinner will be comforting. The point is, be clear but do it with humor. You will get further in your negotiations, irrespective of whether you move there or not.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (Not Just Survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. She can be reached through LifeQuake.net or for consultation at 310.712.2600.

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I have often been asked to summarize my own personal journey that led to writing The LifeQuake Phenomenon. Although most of it is revealed in the pages of this book, I decided to share just my story here in my blog. I warn you: it is the length of reading three blogs or about 5 pages of a self help book.

The LifeQuake Model was birthed after my third near fatal experience. I say near fatal rather than near death because NDE’s have a particular phenomenology highlighted by traveling through a tunnel and seeing a whitelight and family menbers or spiritual beings.

My near fatal experiences did not take me out of this life and in fact were characterized by long periods IN the tunnel, stuck between cycles of my life.

In the LifeQuake Model there are seven stages. Prior to my first near fatal experience when I was 21 years old, I was working on skid row fresh out of undergraduate school. I had moved to California six months before and finding a job had been difficult. However, having grown up in a white, middle class suburb the exposure to the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles proved to be quite the education I hadn’t received before. At first, I was fascinated by this subculture of people and their actual preference for living on the streets. There were doctors who had become alcoholics along with your usual addicts. But soon, this novelty wore off and I became bored with my job, feeling unchallenged by the work. Boredom is the first stage of a LifeQuake. Around this time I met my soon to be husband and he suggested I leave the job but I was fiercely independent and didn’t want him supporting me so I stayed. And when you don’t change your life at this stage, you enter stage two – the dying of the old life that is often characterized by depression. I started dreading going to work. I had to go to bed at 9 in order to be up at 5 and at work at 6 AM.

And then stage Three hit – the crisis and radical severance from the old cycle. One day, an addict got through reception high on PCP. I didn’t know he was on drugs. I just observed that he was causing a commotion with other patients in the facility and I went over to talk to him. Suddenly, he flipped out and started choking my throat. Everyone was stunned and paralyzed by fear except for one woman. She had been a doctor in Russia and had emigrated but had been forced to work as a phlebotomist in this facility. She was a big woman and began pulling on his arm. PCP infuses one with super human strength, unfortunately, so he threw her in one direction and me up against the wall and then ran out.

I was rushed to the hospital with hand print bruises all over my neck and began a three month course in rehabilitation. During this time, I began having nightmares in which the assault was taking place all over again. I had entered stage four. I was in a void. No job, no clue as to what to do next. My fiancé suggested I get therapy. During the course of my therapy, I started asking the therapist questions about her work and where she went to school. I had mentioned that as a kid my father nicknamed me Dear Abby because my friends would often ask for my advice. She suggested that perhaps I take a course and see if it was for me. I enrolled in graduate school and took one course. I loved it and started full time in the fall. This began Stage Five of my LQ. In stage five, you apprentice at what you discovered as your calling in stage four. Although I went on to be very successful as a psychotherapist and owning a beautiful home with two offices, stage six and seven as I came to know them did not crystallize for me until my next LifeQuake. In the LifeQuake model, stage six is the stage in which you experience life as abundant no matter how it shows up and it is this perception that creates wealth as you would have it. Stage seven is characterized by quantum altruism where the individual experiences that out of helping those they serve they themselves are served. This has a quantum effect and leads eventually to the entire planet having this consciousness of oneness.

My second LifeQuake began four years later when once again the cycle of my life was completing and I was afraid of making the change. I started feeling bored and unchallenged once again and I tried to quell the boredom with weekly shopping trips to South Coast Plaza and multiple glasses of wine every night after working all day with my patients. When this didn’t work, I started to feel like a zombie, dead man walking through my life. What ended stage two this time was a series of three car accidents in six days. In the second of the two accidents, my car spun like a tea cup at Disney land across four lanes of an eight lane interchange and stopped facing Friday night traffic. It was in the middle of this one that I surrendered my life for the first time and asked that my death not be painful.
But it didn’t fully wake me up until the third accident two days later when it now involved other people and I wasn’t even driving the car. Once again, during my recuperation, I realized my life in Orange County: my marriage, my career, and my home were all structures I needed to leave.

When I entered stage four this time, I had moved back to Los Angeles and had begun a serious search to discover who I really was. In this void, I meditated and waited to be shown my next calling. I was given these seven stages for helping me to overcome the fear of change by providing a context for holding my experience. However, this time around Stage Four was more complex. It was as though a Pandora’s box of diseases began to manifest: Epstein Barr, Hashimotos thyroiditis, candida, and a host of allergies.

I ran through all the money from my property settlement trying to find medical help for the physical challenge du jour. As I struggled to support myself, my body began to go through yet another kind of challenge. My electrical system had become extremely sensitive. Energy would shoot through my body like lightning bolts sometimes for hours at a time. I could feel earthquakes before they hit, I felt a body blow the day before 9/11 that put me in a fetal position on my sofa on Sept 10, 2001.

What I learned through the years though was to begin to notice when change was coming. So in 2001 I had my own internal tower of inferno through out the year leading up to my third near fatal experience. I had become very fatigued and was developing respiratory challenges and then unexplained rashes. I mentioned to my acupuncturist who was treating me that I noticed grey stains forming on the linoleum in my kitchen. She suggested that perhaps my symptoms had a geopathic origin. In other words, my house was making me sick. I called in an environmental consultant and was told that everything in my house was contaminated by the most virulent, toxic fungus there is. Everything would have to be torched that could not survive a 50% bleach solution.

I had to walk away from everything I owned once again. But this time there was no resistance. I walked out the door and lived in a motel for two months and it would be another year of healing and recovery and dim prognoses from doctors who did not know how to treat neurotoxins. I applied some of the visualizations I gave to my patients and began to cooperate with my own healing abilities, choosing to hold a different prediction for my health than what the medical community could provide. I realized that I had chosen at a soul level to walk the path of a wounded healer: that every illness I encountered I had to heal myself without medical intervention. Having this context to hold my journey in allowed me to surrender. I chose to hold my time in transition without my health, a partner, family to depend on, or monetary resources as a time of great prosperity and eventually it did turn.

Although I would never say I have mastered change, I have become very observant and agile, aware that it can all change in a New York minute. I notice when anything in my life is no longer viable, and that includes beliefs along with lifestyle.

Each major change has taught me to listen, observe, and adapt, listen, observe, and adapt. By listening and observing where change is happening subtly, I have learned to prepare for bigger changes coming. When you are prepared, nothing has to be experienced as a crisis. As I write this, I am aware that a big change is coming again. I am being shown through my sleeping dreams, people I am meeting, and environmental disruptions ( my house was hit by a run away car) that change is afoot and that I must detach from my life as I know it.

This road, however steep, has also taught me the true nature of impermanence– things, people, my body all will eventually disintegrate and what really matters is how I spend this moment. Am I risking telling the truth in this moment, even if it requires facing the fear of loss? Telling the truth in my career and relationships has liberated me to reveal a new life blueprint that is constantly evolving and not encased by the faulty layers of cultural programs I inherited.

Mastering the building elements of the seven stages of my book The LifeQuake Phenomenon reconstructs the foundation of your body, mind, and spirit so that it is adaptable to change and what emerges is an authentic connection to this moment.

Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor
Dr. Toni Galardi

As we embark upon the completion of the opening decade of the second millennium, I urge you to take the first two weeks of 2010 to reflect back on the last nine years and write about what you have learned. Where were you in your consciousness at the turn of the century and where are you now? What have you mastered and what still scares you? The subject of addiction since the death of Michael Jackson and the revelation of Tiger Woods’ behavior has provided an opportunity for us all to look at what substances, thoughts, and beliefs we ourselves are addicted to.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I am a 47-year-old executive and I’ve been married to a woman I love for 10 years. Ever since the Tiger Woods story broke, I have been questioning myself as to whether I am a sex addict. I don’t have a bunch of mistresses, but I do spend at least three cumulative hours a day at work looking at porn on the Internet. I am not having an affair with any real live women but something tells me that this isn’t kosher. I was eating lunch in my favorite restaurant near my office when I picked up this magazine and started reading your column. You seem to know something about addiction so I decided to write you.

Should I be worried? Is the mere watching of porn without my wife’s knowledge a problem? And do you qualify to be a sex addict if you are having sex with yourself?
John L.

Dear John:
The greatest thing about celebrities being busted for addiction issues is that it really opens up a dialogue about forbidden subjects. Inherent in what makes addiction so destructive is the secrecy it often entails. This brings me to you and your wife. The first step in healing any addiction is admitting you have a problem. As long as your wife is in the dark, there is most likely some shame you have about this behavior.

What makes this sex addiction is not the presence of a real woman, but the absence of honesty. Having sex with yourself is not the issue. Spending three leisurely hours on the Internet during a workday indicates that you are not passionate about your work and are displacing that need for professional passion through a sexual release.

I encourage you to work with a career coach and/or an addiction therapist who can assist you in getting to the root of this compulsion and explore the feelings you are avoiding through sheer pleasure seeking. It might also lead to marital counseling to rebuild the intimacy in your relationship that may have been lost through this addiction.

I also would like to recommend a book that has become the seminal work in the addiction field called Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction by Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., It can be obtained at http://www.amazon.com/Out-Shadows-Understanding-Sexual-Addiction/dp/1568386214

Dear Dr. Toni:
As the year closes, I have been thinking about my life. I know they say that in order to change your life you need to have a new vision of it. I am not a visual person and am having trouble seeing myself inside new circumstances. I contracted an illness as a child that rendered me visually impaired. It has been a hard road but I want to change my belief that my life is doomed to never have a relationship. I would like next year to be different for me. Your thoughts?
James H.

Dear James:
Rest assured, James. There are many people who do not process life visually. There are three dominant modes of taking in the world: visually, auditorially, and kinesthetically. People who are predominantly auditory tune into the world through their ears. We see this in musicians or people who have visual impairments. If you process through your hearing, you will listen for messages in how people speak or how your own intuition comes to you. If this is your dominant mode, perhaps the way to experience a new possibility for 2010 is to listen to CDs from people like Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Deepak Chopra or my own that is called The LifeQuake Method. If you are a music lover, listen to your favorite songs and let them inspire you to hear yourself six months from now telling a friend about all the changes you’ve made in your life since the beginning of the year. This begins to override the old program.

If you are kinesthetic, you process your world through your body. You feel your perceptions on a sensory level. If this is your dominant mode, you might try noticing what experiences in your day-to-day life feel uplifting or energizing. Keep a running list for three weeks and then begin to replicate those experiences more often every day. When you think about changing your life in 2010, think about all of the experiences you have had in your life that brought the feelings you want to have in this new year. Spend five minute a day remembering them and allowing for those feelings to be felt as intensely as possible.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a psychotherapist, career coach, public speaker, and author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive Not Just Survive in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. If you have a question you’d like answered, please write to DrToni@LifeQuake.net. For personal consultation, call 310.712.2600.

I have often been asked in interviews on the book tour for The LifeQuake Phenomenon how I came to write this book. The story behind it is quite dramatic but more than an actual book, the twenty year journey behind it not only radically changed me but called me to my mission. If you are floundering right now as to what your life purpose is, begin to notice what drives you. What over the course of your life have you been most inspired or passionate about? You may find your life’s most passionate moments form a theme.

Long before my LifeQuake journey began, in my second job out of college, I was hired to teach students, women’s groups, nurses, etc. tips on how to negotiate the world that would assist in preventing sexual assault. This idea of crisis prevention would follow me all my adult years even when I seemed to be unable to prevent massive crises in my own life.

If you are in career transition or confusion right now, take some time to notice what do you care about? Is it rescuing animals from lab testing, providing resources for the homeless, or simply getting behind advocacy on issues you care about.

The holidays can be a great time to not just volunteer but discover what is your driving desire that has nothing to do with a sale at Bloomingdale’s or having the perfect Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving or Christmas.

For me, when I lose touch with what I am truly passionate about, food becomes a great lure. You may find that you too have addictions you turn to when you’re bored, frustrated, or depressed.

If you are experiencing economic contraction or loneliness once again this holiday season, the best way to stay out of the “lack conversation” is to sit quietly and ride the wave of your feelings. Where are they stuck in your body? If you stay with it and not go to outer distractions, it will dissolve more quickly.

Once you release the anxiety or depression, take 15 minutes a day to sit quietly and ask the question, ” What is the opportunity that this time alone or career challenge is presenting, what am I being called to do now that I wouldn’t have considered if I were still in that job or relationship?” You may find that as you go about your day, the answer will show up in what you care about or an opportunity may come in that is a step in the reinvention process. I am including here a link to my latest blog that was an interview done with me on my journey to finding my mission and ultimately writing a book. http://www.lifequake.net/2009/11/20/the-lifequake-phenomenon-interviewed-on-fascinating-authors

The holidays can be more than great food and an exchange of gifts. Mindfulness can offer the greatest gift of all: your next life purpose. Happy Thanksgiving!

Sincerely,
Dr. Toni Galardi
“The LifeQuake Doctor”

Second acts
Some find upside in downsizing, as layoffs open new doors
New York Post
By VICKI SALEMI

Last Updated: 9:17 PM, November 2, 2009

Posted: 1:41 AM, November 2, 2009
When life handed lemons to Courtney Adams and Chris Merritt, they didn’t make lemonade. They made lasagna instead. Downsized within one week of each other last December and three weeks after signing their lease, the Harlem couple — she a former brand director in the music industry and he a former employee of a company that produced conferences — concocted an idea: Why not develop a business around Adams’ love for cooking?

“If there’s a passion you’ve always wanted to pursue, I can’t imagine a better opportunity to do it,” says Adams.

“You can’t spend 24 hours a day looking for a job, so you might as well make the best of your time trying to make some money on your own.”

So they created a business plan, developed a Web site and launched Uptown Comfort (“Good Food for Bad Times”), a comfort-food catering business with favorites like barbecued chicken sliders, lasagna and cornbread.

“Being unemployed has been a truly defining experience,” says Merritt. “After so many years working with many parameters and expectations, you suddenly are free to define those parameters for yourself.”

For Dan Nainan of Chelsea, a former strategic relations manager at Intel, getting the ax meant being free to hang up the corporate suit and pick up a mike. He’d started flexing his comedic muscles by performing on weekends, as his job took him around the world doing technical demos in front of large crowds. After he was given the pink slip, the action plan became a no-brainer: Nainan pursued stand-up comedy full-throttle.

Since then, he’s been booked solid. He’s performed at the Democratic National Convention, did three Obama inaugural events in January and just shot a commercial for Apple, to name a few. And he owes it to an event that at the time seemed anything but a boon.

“I loved my job and wouldn’t have had the guts to leave on my own,” he says.

Not every layoff victim ends up finding a blessing in disguise in a pink slip, but such experiences are a lot more common than one might think, says Rachelle J. Canter, president of the executive coaching firm RJC Associates and author of “Make the Right Career Move.”

“How many of us have been miserable in jobs but afraid to make a change because we don’t know how to land a new job and are often too scared to try?” she says.

When she did a survey several years ago of employees who’d lost jobs, “the vast majority said losing the job was the best thing that ever happened to them because they needed a kick in the pants to find jobs they liked much more.”

On a roll

For Michael Dolan of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the kick in the pants came the day he was downsized from his job as a publicist for a technology software company in SoHo.

“I was totally blindsided,” he said. “Things seemed like business as usual and then, boom! No job.”

Disillusioned and worried about paying the bills, he nonetheless realized he’d been given an opportunity to focus on his love for bicycle racing, something his intensive work schedule hadn’t allowed.

“For the past six months I’ve been training two hours a day and racing competitively on weekends. I’m in the best shape of my life, completely destressing and having a blast,” he says.

And biking has done more than tone his thigh muscles — it’s opened up a possible new career.

Having discovered a love for taking photos of bike races, Dolan recently landed his first paid photography gig, and is considering pursuing that line of work full-time.

“I’ve been shooting as many events as I can, sending out my photos to magazines and Web sites, and improving my post-production skills by learning Photoshop and Lightroom,” he says.

“Getting laid off feels like you’re being pushed off a cliff. I figured I would just make the best of it. Put yourself out there and you may discover a hidden skill.”

Whether he knew it or not, Dolan was following the advice given to pink-slippers by psychotherapist Dr. Toni Galardi, the author of “The LifeQuake Phenomenon,” which addresses taking advantage of times of crisis to make life changes. If you’ve got a hobby or an outlet that you enjoy, pursue it; if you don’t, find one.

“The key during career transition is to stay passionate,” she says. “The vibe you give off will attract opportunities if you’re doing something you love every day besides job searching.”

For Suzette Banzo, being able to follow her bliss was exactly what was missing from her life during the 16 years she spent working for Verizon, first in quality assurance and then doing budget analysis.

“It was impossible to get time off from my job to pursue anything of interest to me,” she says.

Getting downsized took care of that issue, and it led her in an unexpected direction — modeling. It started when she was approached at a fund-raising event by the owner of a training program for plus-size models, who suggested she could do well in the business.

“I thought she was crazy,” says Banzo — but soon she was on the catwalk. Since then she’s shot a commercial for Kodak and walked the runway for Full Figure Fashion Week, which landed her a gig as a signature model for Hearts Desire Jewelry, and a role as the company’s East Coast sales representative.

“The designer tapped into my marketing degree, and we now collaborate on promotions and marketing strategies,” she says. Once frustrated as a “creative person in a finance job,” she says, “I’ve spent the last year being everything I had put on hold for far too long.”

Even for those who are content in their careers and aim to return to their industry, a layoff can provide an opportunity to do something meaningful.

Rob Morrison, a former NBC news anchor, learned this when he was bought out of his contract last year, and found “an unexpected gift” in staying home with his 3-year-old son Jack.

Something else unexpected came out of it, when the 20-year veteran of broadcast news launched a popular blog on Huffington Post called “Daddy Diaries: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Anchorman.”

“To have an outlet like that was key, and gave me a break from Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse,” says the Upper West Sider. Plus, he notes, it was a great way to keep his name out there.

Back on his feet, now with CBS2, Morrison looks back at his 16-month sabbatical as a mitzvah.

“I logged a lot of playground hours and got to watch my toddler turn into a little boy,” he says. “It was fascinating.”

His blog came to an end when his unemployed days did, but he’s since been contacted by a filmmaker who’s doing a documentary on the recession, and is interested in featuring Morrison, and possibly using him as a writer or narrator.

Shifting gears

As the job market opens up, what happens to blossoming side gigs? In some cases, like Morrison’s, they may fade into the background. Merritt of Uptown Comfort landed a new job at Macy’s as special-events manager, but is still helping out with strategizing for the catering business.

Adams is still on the hunt. And she hopes her experience starting and running the business is an extra selling point on her resume, where it’s listed in the skills and achievements section. In an interview, she says, “I’d present it as a learning experience that culminated from not being employed and needing to direct my talents to do something productive.”

Such ambition and drive is likely to impress a prospective employer, notes Canter.

“Is there an employer who dislikes initiative or who prefers candidates that lounged around the house or perfected their golf game while laid-off?” she asks.

While Adams hopes to keep the business going even should she land full-time work, she says she’d be quick to tell a potential employer that she’d hand over management to one of her consultants or fold the business if there were a conflict.

For her part, Banzo hopes to continue finding ways to use her marketing skills within the plus-size modeling business, and is trying other things as well, including writing for a trade magazine that covers the industry. She’s not entirely sure where this new road is headed, but has no doubt it’s a detour she’s glad to have taken, even if it wasn’t initially by choice.

“I feel like I’m finally living my life,” she says.

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When life handed lemons to Courtney Adams and Chris Merritt, they didn’t make lemonade. They made lasagna instead.

Downsized within one week of each other last December and three weeks after signing their lease, the Harlem couple — she a former brand director in the music industry and he a former employee of a company that produced conferences — concocted an idea: Why not develop a business around Adams’ love for cooking?

“If there’s a passion you’ve always wanted to pursue, I can’t imagine a better opportunity to do it,” says Adams. “You can’t spend 24 hours a day looking for a job, so you might as well make the best of your time trying to make some money on your own.”
SALAD DAYS: Laid off from the music industry and looking for a job, Courtney Adams decided to parlay her love of cooking into a catering business.
Lorenzo Ciniglio/Freelance
SALAD DAYS: Laid off from the music industry and looking for a job, Courtney Adams decided to parlay her love of cooking into a catering business.

So they created a business plan, developed a Web site and launched Uptown Comfort (“Good Food for Bad Times”), a comfort-food catering business with favorites like barbecued chicken sliders, lasagna and cornbread.

“Being unemployed has been a truly defining experience,” says Merritt. “After so many years working with many parameters and expectations, you suddenly are free to define those parameters for yourself.”

For Dan Nainan of Chelsea, a former strategic relations manager at Intel, getting the ax meant being free to hang up the corporate suit and pick up a mike. He’d started flexing his comedic muscles by performing on weekends, as his job took him around the world doing technical demos in front of large crowds. After he was given the pink slip, the action plan became a no-brainer: Nainan pursued stand-up comedy full-throttle.

Since then, he’s been booked solid. He’s performed at the Democratic National Convention, did three Obama inaugural events in January and just shot a commercial for Apple, to name a few. And he owes it to an event that at the time seemed anything but a boon.

“I loved my job and wouldn’t have had the guts to leave on my own,” he says.

Not every layoff victim ends up finding a blessing in disguise in a pink slip, but such experiences are a lot more common than one might think, says Rachelle J. Canter, president of the executive coaching firm RJC Associates and author of “Make the Right Career Move.”

“How many of us have been miserable in jobs but afraid to make a change because we don’t know how to land a new job and are often too scared to try?” she says.

When she did a survey several years ago of employees who’d lost jobs, “the vast majority said losing the job was the best thing that ever happened to them because they needed a kick in the pants to find jobs they liked much more.”

*

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/jobs/second_acts_NgA55jRydcHTeGjNqgeFGO/0#ixzz0WBWhBuIn

Ask the LifeQuake Doctor
November 2009 Column
“Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow. Whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die.” from the Tao Te Ching

Dear Dr. Toni:
I don’t know if you work with interpreting dreams but I have been having a dream that keeps repeating itself. I am in an old house and some of the rooms are closed off and some of the rooms are scary. They have dead bodies in them. There is however, one room that is like an attic that is also closed off but there is light peering from under the door. I seem to be afraid to open it, though.
In my waking life, I work in the helping professions but am in burnout. I don’t want to do it anymore and yet am clueless as to what to do next. Is there a connection with this dream? Can you help?
Deborah

Dear Deborah:
Actually, in my private practice I do work with dreams. I was trained as a Jungian therapist and Carl Jung believed many of our fears and aspirations are played out in the dreamtime. So, let’s look at this dream. When you analyze a dream, before you get into figuring out who the people represent, an important character, you might say is the landscape. In your dream, it plays a very predominant role but even when it is mere back drop, it is important.
The landscape here is an old house. The house represents the self. The cellar is often the unconscious, the main floor the conscious, and the attic or upper level is the super conscious mind. Then there are individual rooms that can represent places we store memories particularly if those rooms contain dead bodies as this does.
I would suggest that you do this exercise: sit quietly, spend five minutes breathing slowly in and out to get centered. Now go back into the dream’s first scene. What feeling did it evoke? As you proceed to recall the dream, notice if the feeling tone changes. When you open the door that has the dead bodies, go intot he room if you can and ask the body what it represents. What is dead that you have kept stored away and haven’t properly buried? Venture into the kitchen and see what is there. The kitchen represents how we nourish ourselves. Is the refrigerator full or empty. Does the stove work? This can represent how much fire we have inside to make any changes.
Now walk up the stairs to the room that has a light under the door. Ask to be given a spiritual guide and a key to open the door. The guide will be with you throughout the process and keep you safe. Whatever you see and feel when you open the door is a key to your future. This dream has come to inspire you to take action – confront the skeletons in the closet and connect to your soul’s purpose. Be courageous and allow a passionate life to emerge through risking opening the door to lighten your consciousness.

Dear Dr. Toni:
I don’t know if you can help me. My problem is not like most of the people who write you. I know what my calling is, I just seem to be dried up creatively.
I am a writer in recovery. While I was drinking, it was easy for me to access the muse. Now that I am sober, I find that I have a chronic writer’s block. My career is in jeopardy if I don’t get past this. I am not meeting my deadlines. What should I do?
Dry and Dried Up in L.A.

Dear Reader:
There is an expression in A.A. – “terminal uniqueness”. When an addict thinks their problem is special, not like other people’s or if they don’t feel they can relate to coming to AA meetings because their addiction is unique.
You don’t say whether you go to A.A. meetings but if you did, you would find you would be in good company, especially around those who are new to recovery and think their imagination, like a genie, emerges from a bottle. When you speak to writers who have been in recovery for a long time and who work the twelve steps, you will find that they often discover that not only can the muse come clean and sober but that they find they have become more productive not less.

I am not saying that Alcoholics Anonymous is for everyone but I would suggest that if you got sober by yourself, that you attend a yoga or meditation class that can show you how to use your breath to expand the mind and open to universal consciousness. When we go beyond our limited minds and surrender to this vast intelligence, so much more is possible. A daily ritual before you go to your computer is to open to possibility and call in the muse with reverence. Asking to be shown what to write creates a humility and a surrender to the “gods of imagination”. I also recommend a book – The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It is a great book for any artist suffering from creative blocks.

Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and the author of her new book: The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. Dr. Galardi works by phone internationally with people in transition. For those seeking private consultation, she can be reached at 310.712.2600. To submit questions for “Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor”, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through her email address: DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

professional photo of The LQ Phenomenon

For those interested in the back story of writing this book and my writing process, I have included in my blog this interview with me by FascinatingAuthors.com

Fascinating Authors
Author Profile – Toni Galardi: The LifeQuake Phenomenon

Q: Why did you decide to write this book?

A: I wrote this book because I had gone through three near fatal experiences over the course of twenty years as a result of my fear of making big changes. I had conducted workshops and public speaking appearances and had observed that there was a viable roadmap for helping others negotiate change when cycles are over before they are forced to move due to crisis. This book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon is that seven stage body, mind, and spirit roadmap.

Q: Do you have any secret writing tips you’d like to share?

A: Find the time of day when you are most creative, stick to a schedule of writing every day, and then find an excellent editor to gvie you an objective perspective once you have finshed a first draft.

Q: Tell us a quirky or funny story about you!

A: In my public speaking appearances I give as an example how far we can go to avoid change in our irrational thinking and still, destiny will find us:

I had had a car accident, rear ended from behind pulling out of South Coast Plaza. Two days later, in a rental car, the brakes gave out on the 5-405 interchange in Orange County, my car went spinning like a top across 6 lanes of traffic and came to a standstill facing traffic. Miraculously, I was not hurt and did not cause any collisions despite being in the middle of Friday night traffic facing the wrong way.

Now, you would think this would give me pause to examine what might be going on in my life. Instead, I had family coming in from out of town two days later and when we ventured out in the rental car, I put my brother in charge of driving, I planted myself in the safest place in the car, between my mother and godmother in the middle of the back seat. As we ventured up the 405 together, five miles down the road, we were hit by a drunk driver and I re-injured my neck from the whiplash in the first accident. Upon arriving home, I called a colleague of mine whom I believed was very wise and asked him what he thought was going on. His response, although meant to be funny was right on – “God is pissed off.”

The truth in this was that when we ignore the signs it is time to change, our soul does whatever it needs to in order to get our attention, including magnetizing every car on the road to your back bumper to get you moving forward!

Q: Have you ever battled writer’s block? How do you deal with it?

A: Writer’s block comes to me mostly when I’m in burnout. I took the whole month of August off from writing because I was experiencing writer’s block. By taking time to fill the well back up again, I am able to return with the muse speaking to me quite easily now.

Q: What’s your favorite quote?

A: The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones that will give him no pain or trouble. ~Henry Miller

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions. ~Ellen Glasgow

Q: Who inspires you the most?

A: Oprah Winfrey is my greatest living hero. A black woman who came from poverty, incest, and trauma and became not just the queen of the media but a wounded healer who shows us her struggle and her human-ness and continues to work with it while still giving her life to humanitarianism.

Ask the LifeQuake Doctor
October Column

Dear LifeQuake Doctor:
I am an addict but there is no anonymous program for me. I’m not addicted to the typical things like drugs, alcohol, or food. My addiction however, is far more crippling. Mine is affecting every area of my life: my career, my health, and my family. I’m addicted to procrastination. I procrastinate over deadlines at work, when and where to take vacations with my kids, committing to an exercise routine, you name it.
How do I get over this? It feels like a disease as incapacitating as alcoholism.
Desperate for a Breakthrough

Dear Reader:
First of all, let me just say that desperation is not necessarily a bad thing. As much as that feeling can make us do destructive things, it can also motivate us to take risks because we are fed up with the same old, same old fear. Yes, fear. Procrastination at its core is motivated by the fear of change. Psychologists and motivational speakers have all debated as to whether it is the fear of success or fear of failure at the root of this complex. I submit that it is both but that the deeper issue is the fear of loss. If I make this choice, it might be “the wrong one”.

Choosing also means dying to other choices: committing 100% to this decision. What if this decision takes me on a path into an unknown future that I’m not prepared for? Stagnation sucks but it is something you are familiar with, something you think you can control. The problem is that this is pure illusion because we are evolutionary beings. Survival of the fittest means those who can adapt to change. If we try to maintain the status quo when what our soul needs is to get healthy through exercise, advance yourself professionally, or take a vacation and rest, and we make no decisions, we invite a crisis and the decision is made for you. Of course, when we move forward through the trauma and drama of a crisis we don’t have to own responsibility for the after effects. We can think of ourselves as a victim and simply cope with the aftermath. We are a nation of procrastinators. If you look to all the warnings that we received about terrorist threats before 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, we can see that this exists both personally and governmentally. I myself incurred three near death experiences over the course of twenty years every time I needed to make a change and did not listen to my intuition, so I understand this addiction. I would agree with you that it is an addiction because my definition is that addiction is whatever is between you and what you are really afraid of.

So, now that we are in the season of change where the leaves begin to change color as they die, it is a great time to celebrate and ritualize the death of this old habit.
Here are some tips:
1) Go back to your earliest memory of a decision you made that didn’t turn out as you wanted. Was it trying out for sports, turning in a school assignment you had really worked hard on, or telling someone you had a crush on, that you liked them? As you recall this event, where do you feel the emotion in your body? Now, focus your breath on this spot. As you keep breathing into it, allow your body to surrender and receive your breath just as you would if you were stretching a muscle that was tight. As the feeling begins to change, notice what feeling is replacing it. Now think of a time that you committed to something 100% and it produced your desired effect. For example, you ate healthy and exercised and your body got stronger. Place that feeling of mastery in your non-dominant hand, the one you don’t’ write with. Take your hand and place it over the spot in your body that once held the fear of commitment. This will anchor that feeling.

2) Take one area of your life that you need to make a decision about that has the lowest level of anxiety connected to it. If you need to make a career change and have been dragging your feet because you don’t want to do the same thing you’ve been doing and you don’t know what you are passionate about, do one little thing like pay attention to everything you encounter in a day that produces great enthusiasm or even mild interest. Keep a journal of all of it. Risking change through deciding begins with experiencing a good feeling around low level change like just committing to observation.

3) Commit to 15 minutes a day of quiet contemplation. No tv, computer, or even reading. Sitting still and centering yourself through the breath work of step one from above and then asking the question of your intuition: what step would you have me take next? All you need to know is the next step. The answer may come right away or it may come spontaneously when you are doing something else like a house – hold chore or as you wake up from a dream. The key is to know that you don’t have to know the five year plan, just the next step. Healing the addiction to procrastination requires tolerance for the unknown future. If you focus just on the truth of the next step, you become more oriented toward the journey of life rather than an end goal. Remember, when you take your last breath on earth, your thoughts will be on did I give it my all, not, did I make all the right choices?
Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker, and the author of her new book: The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval. Dr. Galardi works by phone internationally with people in transition. For those seeking private consultation, she can be reached at 310.712.2600. To submit questions to Vision Magazine for “Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor”, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through her email address: DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

Last night I watched the Emmy's and when Alec Baldwin won for Best Actor in a comedy series, he said first jokingly and then dead serious, he'd trade his Emmy if he could look like Rob Lowe. Here is a man who has more talent in his left pinky than Rob Lowe ( sorry, Rob but it's true) and he wanted to be the dashing, lean leading man. Now, he has been that in his younger days. Perhaps, his love affair with food ( yes, I've seen him from afar eat with great passion) and weight gain has had an upside to it. I think his acting has far more gravitas now than when he was making films like Prelude to a Kiss and Married to the Mob.

As I was watching the first interview that Oprah did with Whitney Houston today, I found myself wondering about how women in our society deal with power. She portrays herself as the loyal wife but was it loyalty or fear of stepping into her real power, power that comes not from the media and the fans but from the feminine – her own soul. Did it just become too much to live up to as a symbol for young black women? Was bad boy Bobby Brown a self self sabotaging way out of the limelight? Although Oprah seems very comfortable with her iconic status, she continues to struggle with her food addiction. The limelight has become more like a vast flashlight projected by a harsh inquisitor.

If anything has come from the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ted Kennedy is the toll that drugs and alcohol can take. People thought
Dave Chappelle was crazy because he walked away from 50 million dollars and went to Africa. We are a fame driven society and when someone famous thumbs their nose at that much success, we call them crazy. That is real power. To know when you are losing yourself and to be willing to walk away from it without self destruction and re-invent your life on your own terms is real power.

Chappelle may not name it feminine power but it is feminine power. No matter what sex you are, when you listen to your body, your gut instinct no matter what the cost, you are accessing your authentic self. In Jungian psychology, the body is feminine and the mind is the masculine part of all human beings. I actually hope Andy Warhol’s famous prophesy that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes comes true. Perhaps if enough people experience the dark side of fame, we’ll stop worshipping them as icons and more air time will be given to the people who are genuinely committed to an authentic expression of themselves and who are too busy making a difference in other people’s lives to sit around smoking cocaine and weed.Whitney Houston’s passion for Bobby Brown is a great cautionary tale.

We need icons like Martin Luther King in the limelight now more than ever. Oprah can’t carry the humanitarian banner for celebrities of iconic status alone. The weight of IT is probably what contributes to her own weight issues. But the truth is for us ordinary folks, the best way into recovery from addiction is to become passionate about yourself with yourself in moments of daily silence. That is real intimacy, the real power.

Dr. Toni Galardi is the author of The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive not Just Survive in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.