The LifeQuake Blog

For the longest time I resisted the whole idea of meeting someone “online.”

I was absolutely convinced that Internet dating attracted married men, guys who couldn’t get a date on their own, or creeps.  Unfortunately, if you’re over forty in Los Angeles, men just don’t notice you in public. Coffee houses, bars, and gyms are the domain of the perky blonde with a hard body and augmented breasts, so what is an attractive, smart, funny middle-aged woman to do in such a crisis?

So, I agreed to try one and only one of the dating sites that at least had a decent reputation. Anthropologically speaking, it has been a fascinating exploration into the courtship rituals of humanity in the time of cyberspace. Before the 90’s, if you met someone through friends or at a social function, if you liked one another, you would go out. If you really enjoyed the date it would lead to another date and then if you still liked each other, eventually you would become an item and perhaps live together or get married.

Now you can meet someone online, have a great conversation with them on the phone, maybe even go out, have a mutually great time and never hear from the guy again. Why? Because you are like a dish at a Swedish smorgasbord. He may have had a great time with you but there are 20 more great dishes to be had so why would he settle for the first course? And now there’s an additional operative. We’re in an economic crisis so men are looking for women as investments the way women used to look at men. If a woman is making great money or has abundant assets, a lot of men who wouldn’t have considered an older woman when they were flush are now making pragmatic choices, so the game is changing.

You might ask, well then why do it and risk finding out the guy you just went out with is married or interested in you monetarily? Because I believe in practical magic – the law of attraction.   Figure out what your five must-haves are and be brave, be purposeful, be intentional and be patient. I believe that if you visualize exactly what you want and you are patient and are willing to keep saying no to guys who don’t have at least five of your must haves, the universe will deliver your request.

And maybe the smorgasbord is like the journey to the Holy Grail. By experiencing lots of different men, you get clearer and clearer about what you do want. And on the journey to the heart, each, if you let them, will change you a little and certainly make a contribution to your understanding that men are just as fragile when it comes to intimacy as we are .

Dr Toni Galardi is the Change Expert and has a new book out to help you overcome the fear of change, The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How To Thrive (not just survive) in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval.

For a lot of years, Los Angeles and South Florida held the joint monopoly on summer clothes in the winter. And then Miami dropped. All those people who migrate south in the winter were mighty disappointed with the extreme temperatures of Florida’s bitter 60 degree weather. God forbid, you might have to wear a sweater and pants.

My father called me from “Boca” (that’s what they call it there). In Boca Raton, where every retired New Yorker goes to play golf, they were hibernating inside. I felt very smug because here In Los Angeles it was 80 degrees and everyone was wearing shorts! I wanted rain. I really wanted rain! And then the rain came… and came and came. And I started to think, maybe this is a good thing for us Angelinos and not just because we need the water conservation.

Winter is a great time for reflection and contemplation. If you turn inward and just sit with yourself for awhile, the imagination can begin to marinate. The best soups I’ve ever made were their tastiest after being frozen for weeks and then defrosted and heated. But just like a great soup, if there isn’t time for it to just let all the ingredients of your psyche come into some kind of relationship in your subconscious, what gets produced is not rich or deep in flavor.

Something else I think is great about all this rain and cold weather is that it is bringing up people’s real emotions. When the sun is shining, it is easy to displace your fears and anxieties on a good game of tennis or golf, for example. 

I created a seven-stage model for helping people overcome the fear of change and it came to me in the dead of winter. Yes, I’m excited about all this rain. I have a strong sense that late April is going to bring a Spring full of possibilities. In the mean time, jot all your inspirations onto paper or even a blog perhaps. And then in Spring, and not until Spring, see if there is a connection between the ideas. You may have a whole new career waiting for you. I teach people to get outside their boxes and risk. So here’s one – in the spirit of Gene Kelly, go outside and sing in the rain. It can do wonders for your creativity!

Dr. Toni Galardi’s new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon is now available to be ordered.

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.