At one time there were two classes of citizens. The haves and have nots.

Now, this always referred to economics. Those who had money and resources and those that did not.  In 2008, America entered an economic LifeQuake and some of those who had, now no longer have and many people are filled with anxiety as to who will be next in the have not category but what is certain is that in the cyber age, economics has been replaced in those two categories with two new groups: those who have technological skills and those who do not.

If you were lucky enough to have either grown up with computers and techno gadgets or are left brained dominant, your adaptability to the ever increasing complexity of the latest model of cell phones, dvd players, printers, and of course computers has most probably been with ease. However, if you were born before 1960 you may be finding the information age a bit daunting. In other words, if you’re a baby boomer and you majored in a liberal art in college, chances are you’re struggling to keep up.

Perhaps I should speak for myself. I am a highly educated woman in a profession that is well respected, about to launch my first book on helping people cope with change and I definitely would count myself in the have not category. I have had a Blackberry for a year and just recently learned how to take a picture with it. I could get email on it but the thought of reading anything but a few text messages (something I only learned how to do a few months ago) on that tiny phone fills me with horror.

So what to do? How does one keep up with all the new and improved when it doesn’t feel very improved? If you don’t have a child in the house to teach you, how do you cope? Becoming friendly with one of “the haves,” usually someone in their 20’s, who has these skills and trading your years of wisdom with their acumen may be the only answer. The challenge of course is in finding a “have” who thinks what you know is also a have that they would like to have.

Hmmm…I need someone like that!

By definition, a LifeQuake involves cracking open outdated beliefs and programs so that the organism can be authentically real. This relates to individuals, organizations, a society, and yes, even a holiday.

I propose we crack open Valentine’s day and expand out of this notion that it belongs to lovers. What if we were to make it a day for giving love, period? All kinds of love. Well, in order to truly experience this day with love, it begins with ourselves.

1)    instead of buying a box of chocolates that the cashier thinks is for your mate and then starting your day by sedating yourself with it,  stop at a juice bar and give yourself a smoothie chocked full of anti-oxidants. The energy it will give you will make you feel vibrant. As they say, each action begets the next action. With plenty of energy, you will feel empowered to go to the gym or do an exercise routine that will get your endorphins going.

2)    With this physical support, you will be brimming with self love. Buy yourself the flowers you would have wanted from a mate. I have found that most Valentines days that I spent in a romantic partnership, I was less than impressed by the posies brought to me by my beloved. I like yellow roses, white roses, and lavender roses, but I do not like red roses so buy them yourself.

3)     Call all your single friends and wish them Happy Cupid day. A phone call as novel as it may seem, far exceeds a text message or an email in extending a sincere holiday greeting.

4)    Call your mother or an elderly woman you know who doesn’t have a husband and make her day.

 5)    Make eye contact with strangers and extend the non-verbal universal sign of love – a smile. And then, do it again on Feb 15th, Feb 16th, Feb 17th, you get my drift…

A LifeQuakian Take on “True Love” on Valentine’s Day

Dear Dr. Toni:

Well, I survived the Christmas holidays as the only person at my family’s gathering who is single. If I can get through Valentine’s Day without the impulse to slit my wrists (that was a joke, I’m not suicidal), I can accept the fact that I am considered a second-class citizen as a single woman over forty. Do you have any suggestions for how to turn this around so I don’t feel so inferior to women who are married?

Single and Hating It

Dear Single:

What Valentine’s Day has become is a real travesty. February is the month traditionally assigned to celebrating love. The Greeks were a smart bunch. They had words to communicate the different types of love: eros for romantic love, agape for spiritual love, and philia for friendship love. When I researched the word for self-love, I discovered the word narzissismus, or narcissism, a term rampant with negative connotations. So the positive love of self has been a hard thing for many of us to grasp.

I would like to share with you and my readers the story of St. Valentine because it contains the essence of what we should be celebrating on Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine was not some legendary derivation of Cupid in human form; rather, he was a priest in the third century who, against the mandate of Emperor Claudius, was secretly performing marriage ceremonies. Claudius wanted to build an army and most men at that time did not want to leave their families to go off to war. St. Valentine disobeyed Claudius’ law and was arrested, clearly finding himself in a LifeQuake!  Andhe passed his crisis of faith with flying colors. Young people took up his cause, coming to the jail and throwing flowers and notes up to his window. The daughter of the prison guard kept his spirits upwith daily visits. On the day he was beheaded, February 14, he sent her a note thanking her for her friendship and loyalty, signing it,  “love from your Valentine.”

As you can see from this story, there were two kinds of love that St. Valentine was honoring: the love between a husband and wife in performing marriages and the love of friendship. This offers an interesting challenge to those of us who are single. In the LifeQuake model, we are called to dissolve old programs for living and reinvent ourselves to fit with who we are authentically, outside of the countless cultural and media messages. So let’s take up the cause of celebrating love at every opportunity throughout the day on February 14 this year. Give your love generously to everyone, strangers in the grocery store or dry cleaners included. Call your family. And most importantly, take a moment at the beginning and end of the day and send love out to the whole planetary family, setting an intention for example, that everyone have clean water and food in plentiful supply. Perhaps in taking this on for one day, you will feel so good by the end of the day, that you will want to do it again and again. If enough of us spend our days sharing our hearts, a global tipping point willbe reached and then all members of our planetary family can enjoy a time of great prosperity.

Dear Dr. Toni:

I have a stepchild whom I really struggle to like, much less love. He is very self-centered and never thinks of anyone else besides himself. Nonetheless, I love his father. What do I do?

Katherine

Dear Katherine:

Would you agree that we need to learn to love our enemies in order to end war on this planet? Okay, so everyone can probably think of someone in their family, workplace, or community that they just don’t like. These individuals are in our lives to help us learn how to heal—if we allow ourselves to see it, of course. If you unhook from your need to have your stepson be a certain way and just love him rather than judging him, it will liberate you.

Miracles can happen when we don’t give up on love.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

To submit questions for Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through DrToni@LifeQuake.net (no period after the Dr). For more tips on overcoming the fear of change and discovering your life’s purpose, Dr. Toni has a new book, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (Not Just Survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval, coming out February 27. For those seeking private consultation, she can be reached at 310.712.2600 or www.LifeQuake.net.

Freud once defined neurosis as an unconscious conflict between two opposing forces. Our new president won on the message that change is coming to America. The American people want change and, yet, the biggest fear in the majority of individuals is the fear of change in their own lives. So what’s up with that?

Well, people want change to be out there. They want the government to fix our economy, end the war, and rebuild the education system. However, what we also know is that to exact a tipping point of real change in America and across the world is for every human being to choose to live within the means of their income, to choose peaceful resolution instead of strife within their families and communities, and to get more involved in the education of all  of our children.

When we demand of ourselves that which we expect of the “powers at be” who run our country, we have a chance to change the world exponentially. But giving up old habits, addictions, and just plain fear of the unknown is not an easy task for most people. The talk coming off the inauguration is great and it can be done, but we have to work with our fears not just one day at a time, but one moment at a time.

As 2009 progresses and the media touts the statistics on how many people are unemployed, how many points Wall Street fell, or you hear people talking about their fear for the future, it does not inspire pro-active service.

So, the real change comes in having the courage to speak out for a different reality in the face of the collective neurosis and speak it daily. If you work with your own emotions and clear out the anxiety, then and only then can you meet the call to action everyone is talking about. When you take on your own fears and make changes in your own life, you not only liberate yourself;  the whole world is freed.

I have developed a revolutionary body, mind and spirit technology for helping people transform the fear of change and create the life they have always wanted. My new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval will be out in late February.

Until then, I invite you to contact me personally for a free consultation on how to bring positive change to your own life. DrToni@LifeQuake.net.

Saving money will surely be high on the scale of 2009 New Year’s resolutions, as will the typical plans to quit smoking, eat healthier and start exercising. When we barge into the New Year, with all of its fresh to-do lists and desires to make changes cold turkey, it’s vital to have a plan of action. If you’re having a hard time complying with your own resolutions, I have some advice for you.

It is vital to clearly define your goals in order to see them come to fruition in 2009. I have compiled five tips for sticking to your New Year’s resolutions, which include: 

1. education
2. self-awareness
3. setting goals
4. taking action
5. celebrating success

I will be explaining these steps on KUSI’s “Good Morning San Diego” this morning. Check back later today for video from the segment, which will explain these tips in greater detail.

Dear Dr. Toni:

I have been an international educational consultant for nine years. As you can imagine, in the last few months, many industries have been adversely affected by the economy. The university that funds us has dropped our program. At first, I wasn’t worried. I am 65 years old and I have a very impressive and diversified portfolio. I figured this was a sign that I should begin looking at retirement. That was until last week. I lost a couple hundred thousand dollars when “Wall Street quaked,” as they said. I am now dazed and confused as to what to do. Who is going to hire someone at my age now that I have to keep working?

Georgina

Dear Georgina:

First of all, my heart goes out to you. This last month has been devastating for many people. Before you can receive any intuitive guidance on your next step, I would encourage you to do some bodywork. Treat yourself to a massage. While he/she is working on you, think about the recent events and allow yourself to breathe into the place or places where there is pain and trauma around your financial losses. As you keep breathing and focusing on the body parts where there is pain, now envision a pink or green light entering into those places. Keep opening and receiving until you experience peace. Now ask to be shown a new way of looking at your circumstances so that you are no longer resisting what already is. The new perception may come right away or as a revelation when you are going about your day. Allow yourself to experience a miracle out of this seeming crisis. Perhaps your soul did not want you to retire. Perhaps there is a new vocation waiting for you. You just may need to slow down enough to see what synchronicities are trying to guide you to Act Three of your “life play.”

One of my clients who was also a consultant had a similar situation occur. She was laid off from her corporate job and had to go to traffic school on a speeding ticket. Throughout the day at traffic school, her comments clearly displayed her excellent communication skills and great sense of humor. Having mentioned her forced retirement, the owner of the school approached her to consider becoming a traffic school instructor. Through our work together, she promised herself she would look at all “divine coincidences” as a sign and not reject anything because it didn’t fit her picture.

This client had been a theater producer at one time and remembered a phrase from show business that says, “you have to play New Haven before you’re ready for Broadway.” For years she had been told she should become a public speaker. She realized that although working as a traffic school instructor was not going to adequately cover her bills, it was still giving her the practice she needed to hone her public speaking skills to become, as she calls herself, “a spiritual lounge act.”

So Georgina, when crisis hits and your ego wants to scream, This is terrible! You’re going to end up a bag lady! hold the intention that inside this experience lies something amazing for you. Train your mind to look for the gifts that this experience holds.

Dear Dr. Toni:

I was laid off from my job last month and I am a single parent with two children. Christmas is coming and I feel like a failure because not only have I not been able to find another job but there is very little money I can spare for Christmas. What do I tell my kids? Christmas is a time for giving and I have very little to give them.

Distraught in Santa Monica

Dear Distraught:

I’m sure it is cold comfort to know that many people are in the same boat you’re in this Christmas but consider this: If Christmas is about giving, why not teach your children what the true spirit of giving is all about? I would recommend that you do some research and see where you and your kids could be allowed to come in and volunteer your time. Miracles get created when we become expansive. You don’t mention what your skills are or what you were doing professionally in your work but sometimes a door becomes closed like your last job, so that another can open. We cant’ see opportunity though if we collapse into fear. Stepping into an altruistic spirit and extending yourself to those less fortunate will expand your awareness and your gratitude for what you do have. In that expanded state, what I call divine coincidences can occur. Through volunteering your time, you may meet someone who provides a career opportunity or simply by feeling so good from giving your time, you attract a professional opening from another direction.

Studies have shown that humanitarianism not only lifts depression but it increases T cells. This of course strengthens the immune system. Well, can you think of any time of year when we could more use help to our immune system? Between the sugar consumption, the stress of traffic and trying to shop economically, it is no wonder that flues and colds proliferate. So, checkout the Los Angeles Mission, the Sunlight Mission that is in Santa Monica, volunteer services at hospitals that have pediatric wings and The Salvation Army. This is a great time of year to clean out closets and donate toys, clothes, and anything else that is accumulating dust and not being used. St. Vincent De Paul, Salvation Army, The Red Cross all take donations. You can make this a fun project if you take your kids with you to make the donations. One of my clients was complaining about the accumulation of toys they had in the garage. I suggested he go through them with their four – year old son and let him be a part of the process. Initially, he rejected the idea, saying that his son wouldn’t part with even the things he wasn’t playing with anymore. I suggested that maybe he had underestimated him. As it turned out, not only did the boy give his dad a bunch of his toys, he wanted to go with him and meet the kids they were giving the stuff to!

Another way to create a few extra dollars for Christmas is a garage sale. One man’s trash is another man treasure! And you might find amazing buys by going to thrift stores and consignment shops for Christmas gifts yourself. While we are on the subject of gift giving, another creative idea might be for you to suggest to your children that they think of something they want that you can’t buy that is more like a service you could each do for one another. Then create a coupon book. For example, Mom will make your favorite meal, you can have 5 extra hours of television or computer game time. If you can’t afford to take the whole family to the movies anymore, rent a couple DVD’s and make gourmet popcorn with different seasonings tailored to each kids palate. I would definitely suggest renting “It’s A Wonderful Life” this year. Get out the board games and play together instead of sitting in front of your respective computers in separate rooms.

Teach your kids how to cook or bake holiday treats as gifts for friends. There is an opportunity for you to spend more time together during this time. A dear friend of mine lost her home in a divorce and she and her two kids had to share a two – bedroom apartment and she swears they grew much closer over the three years they were there.

I would offer to all of you my readers to challenge yourself to make this holiday season the one you remember having felt the greatest spirit running through your heart and out into the world! We have so much to be thankful for.

To submit questions for Ask the LifeQuake™ Doctor, contact Dr. Toni Galardi through DrToni@LifeQuake.net (no period after the Dr). For those seeking private consultation, Dr. Toni can be reached at 310-712-2600, 619-819-6400 or through her website, www.LifeQuake.net.

It is 73 days until the inauguration.

What I find interesting about this election is that the key concept that both candidates campaigned on was who was going to bring change to America and yet we are a country that, for the most part, fears change.

Take a poll. Ask a dozen people on the street what feeling gets evoked when they think about making personal changes? Two will most probably say they get excited. Five will probably say they feel a low level of anxiety and then another five will admit to all out panic.

So what is at the bottom of this fear and how will it play out in the coming months?

For most of us, the fear of change involves the fear of loss. And, more specifically at this time, economic loss. In conversations with certain wealthy friends, most of whom voted for McCain, the fear is that their taxes will go up and the country will go red.

It is funny how the party that is associated with the color red is accusing the opposing party who they say are communist of ‘going red’. The color red has sure changed its interpretation in American politics. Red used to mean commie or socialist. Now it’s the blue people who are being accused of wanting a socialist state by the very people who refer to themselves as part of the red states.

We’re a very confused bunch here in America. But I digress.

Getting back to this fear of loss, I think what we most fear right now is the fear of the unknown. Anyone who has a brain in his head knows that one man cannot fix the economic crisis we are in. One man cannot stop climatic catastrophes. And one man cannot appropriate funds to fix the decaying and in some places dangerously decaying physical infrastructure of our country’s roads, dams, and bridges.

So we will resort to what we have always used to exact change: CRISIS. What we need to prepare for in America in the next 73 days is an ability to adapt to crisis-driven change. As the LifeQuakes unfold in the coming years, those who will thrive will have strong ‘emotional retrofitting’ to see opportunity where others see loss. Like a house that has appropriate retrofitting, in spite of the earth beneath it erupting, it can bend and adapt to the movement without being destroyed. It is my sincere hope that when my book comes out in early ’09, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: Your Definitive Roadmap Through Seismic Change, it can provide a useful tool box for building a mobile yet grounded inner foundation while we move toward the future on a road that is fraught with fault lines.

So how do the red and blue states come together to support effective change? Well, if you merge the two colors they become the color purple. Perhaps the first step in preparing for this next administration is to bring the color purple back in vogue. Milton Erickson, the psychologist who pioneered modern day hypnosis was color blind except for the color purple. Maybe, we all need to see the world through the prism of the color purple and develop some color blindness so that we do see each other as part of a whole, the Wholy Self called humanity.

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Tomorrow I will be traveling 125 miles to vote.

I have been on a kind of self-imposed sabbatical the past six months so that I could finish editing my book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: Your Definitive Roadmap Through Seismic Change, which is on its way to my publisher as I write this.

Now, you might say that’s a lot of effort for nothing given the fact that I am voting for Barack Obama and the electoral votes in California already go to him. Besides the fact that I have voted in every presidential election since I was nineteen, there is something else.

Today, the day before the election, while I was meditating I felt a tremendous energy shift coming onto the planet. Change is definitely in the air! Big, humungous changes are coming. And I don’t mean just that we may be electing our first black president. Our country I predict, is going to go through such massive changes over the next five to seven years that we will not be recognizable on the other side.

It will be tempting for people to perceive what is coming as doom and gloom: a recession or depression, climactic catastrophes, government fraud exposures, and more disasters in the decaying infrastructure of our highways, dams, and bridges.

However, believe it or not, we will rise like the phoenix bird out of the ashes. This rebirth will take us to a higher vision of who we can be. As we collectively restructure our lives and spend our energy on what really matters – each other – a great ascension will take place in America and we will lead the world from a humbler place that brings inclusiveness of all nations.

There is a long road ahead and Barack Obama, if he is elected, has a perilous if not downright dangerous role to play as our leader. I reach out to any and all who are reading this to surround our next president in light tomorrow night. Supporting whoever becomes president with good intentions has the power to support change that will evolve us all as a people.

The world is watching, America!

Dear Dr. Toni:

I am currently a financial analyst and very successful at it but have been having physical symptoms of extreme fatigue. I have been to two doctors about this. One was an endocrinologist who found that although my thyroid tested slightly overactive, he thinks the problem is that I am not coping well with stress. I don’t really enjoy my work anymore but I find when I’m not at work, I am still very tired so I am confused as to how this can be purely psychological. What do you think, doc?

Tired wired

Dear Tired,

First of all, if there is a thyroid issue—even if it is has been induced by stress—it will still affect you even when you are not in the stressful situation because your entire constitution starts to wear down. Also, traditional endocrinologists do not look at blood work the same way that holistic MDs or naturopathic physicians do. Andrew Weil, the famous holistic doctor, asserts that he treats the thyroid on the basis of symptoms rather than test results because the thyroid often shows irregularities long before they actually show up in the blood.

The American College for Advancement in Medicine (www.acam.org) is one resource for finding a holistic doctor in your area. I would also suggest that you begin to notice when you experience joy or interest through the course of your day. This is both at work and in your personal time. Pay attention to when your energy is better. Who are you with? What are you doing? I would spend three weeks jotting down data of when you find yourself feeling most alive. Your dreams are also clues to a possible transition you may be entering. If your thyroid is off, from a body psychology point of view, we would look at what is it you are not expressing. The thyroid is in the throat so when we are not expressing our authentic voice or saying what we really think in life, it can have physical effects. I would urge you to work with a coach or therapist on the psychological aspects of your fatigue as well.