It's interesting that we hear so much talk about not being co-dependent... about being very independent.  We even pride ourselves on it and now you may be hearing about inter-dependence.   If you've been reading my newsletters for a while, you might even remember the newsletter from last year called "Independence Builds Barriers."

Let's look more at how the two actually play together, and first let me share a story...

There's a lesson I learned many years ago from another one of my great teachers, "If you can't do something..."  Actually there are words of two of my great teachers merging together here.  First, Tony Robbins, taught us a mantra that I still use today when I hear the words "I can't" come out of my mouth.  Tony said, "If you can't, you must."  (I'll talk more about why that impacted my life so much in another article, but for now I want to combine it will another teaching.)    I was in a course called the Illusion Conclusion, with a teacher named, Jerry Stocking, and he said to a man in the course something like this, "Sometime you should stand in a doorway and block it."  It seemed like a strange thing to say to a student, so we all listened attentively.  The man replied, "I would NEVER do that."  Jerry replied, "My point exactly," he continued, "Can you imagine a possible situation in life where standing and blocking a doorway might be appropriate and even good."  The man replied, "Well... yes."  Jerry replied, "Right now, you can't be that man.   You've put yourself in a box and you have to live according to it.  I suggest you find that part of yourself, and own it."  I wondered what parts I'd denied in myself...

What parts of you have you denied?

The lesson being...  anything that we make "not ok" in our world puts us in a box and limits our experience.  So many of us...  Read More