Schooling Created this Consumer Culture

Schooling acts as the reproductive organ of society and reproduces its thought patterns. One of the strongest criticisms of western culture is its over-consumption and resulting environmental degradation of the planet. Schooling created this wacky consumer culture by training us to be consumers whose perceived value increases the more we consume.

Most of us secretly harbor the belief and fear that we are not okay. We were taught this in school.

Because most of school is so excruciatingly boring and irrelevant, teachers need to resort to fear and shame to coerce kids to jump through academic hoops. It is not the teacher’s fault. Teachers are trapped in this unnatural system too.

Schooling is an unnatural way of learning that forces kids to learn the same things and the same time irrespective of interest or ability. Kids know that most of what they are learning is irrelevant to their lives and it is incredibly boring. There is widespread agreement that we are schooling kids for jobs that don’t yet exist. 90% of the data in the world was created in the past 5 years.

Our culture is increasingly fear-based. Negative thought patterns about self and the world are reproduced and reinforced in school.

We have been conditioned to value ourselves by arbitrary grades created by outside authorities.

If we got bad grades, we think we’re stupid. If we got good grades, we will often stay on the performance and achievement treadmill for life. It doesn’t matter that only 5% of people learn in the auditory-sequential-symbolic way that school teaches information.

The institution of school has stoked our inner fires of insecurity and fear to control us, keep our butts in seats at school doing make-work that we usually don’t find interesting or relevant. Threats of bad grades, office referrals, in-school suspension, combined with public ridicule and shame, leave students fearful, stressed, and insecure.

People are suffering because their souls have been schooled and their minds have been institutionalized. You have been conditioned to view the world and your Self in a specific way. We have been told that the world is cold and competitive, good jobs are scarce, and you need to look out for #1. This is simply not true unless we think it is and make it so. Research shows that toddlers are naturally cooperative and compassionate (until it is schooled out of them).

You are insecure and fearful because you have been trained to be so in school.

Absorbing fear and insecurity, you try to consume and achieve your way to feeling okay about yourself and earn the permission to love yourself. Companies and their armies of psychologists, advertisers, and marketers feed and stoke our inner fears and insecurities to sell us everything from cars, closets, makeup, cheeseburgers, beer, therapy, and self-help techniques.

We all believe and fear that we are not enough. 

  • not smart enough
  • not beautiful enough
  • not skinny enough
  • not rich enough
  • not loved enough
  • not popular enough

You have been trained to compete, fight, cheat, look out for our self, claw your way to “the top”. 

We also believe that there is not enough. Not enough to go around:

  • not enough money
  • not enough love
  • not enough friends
  • not enough jobs
  • not enough appreciation

Institutions and companies feed on this energy to sell us stuff and “solutions” to cure our insecurity and self-doubt.

People are losing hope because they don’t understand the source of our problem: a schooled mindset

People are losing hope about the deplorable state of our world. If you are worried about environmental degradation, climate change, over-consumption, mental illness, inequality of income distribution, then you need to look at the source of the problem: schooling. 

Once you realize that schools are the foundations of an exploitative economic system, you can start to make sense of your individual insecurity and mental dis-ease. 

I invested over 15 years trying to create alternatives to factory schooling. In doing so, I saw directly the underbelly of the $1,350 billion U.S. education industry. That’s $1.3 trillion dollars. $1,350,000,000,000. There are a lot of companies making a lot of money – including textbook manufacturers, standardized testing companies, and edTech startups. 

The product of this massive schooling industry are Insecure Consumers who define themselves by how much they consume. 

You’ve been trained by school to see yourself as both the producer and consumer of your own information. Your value in the job market is based on your accumulation of knowledge – that is only demonstrated by proxy with a piece of paper that proves you did your time. 

13 years in school gets you a high school diploma. 6 more years might get you a college degree. 

The reason that economics professor Bryan Caplan, author of The Case Against Education, says that a college degree is mainly a signaling device of employability is because you don’t get any social creds for doing one or two years. He makes a good case.

“Education is a waste of time and money because so much of the payoff for education isn’t really coming from learning useful job skills. Nor is it coming from students savoring the educational experience. Rather, most of what’s going on is that people are showing off — or, as economists call it, they are “signaling.” They are trying to impress future employers by showing how dedicated they are.”

– Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education

Caplan shows in his book that cognitive gains are minimal in college and that most of the knowledge that comes from schooling is “inert”, meaning that it can be applied to test questions that mimic the way the information was taught, but people are unable to apply the knowledge to real world situations. 

So, if you aren’t gaining useful skills and aren’t enjoying the process, then why invest the first 24 years of your life to schooling?

We submit to schooling because there is a strong bias against people who don’t have a college degree. And schooling produces the consumers that our economy needs to survive. 

Let’s see how schooling props up the economy. 

Our economy and monetary system is based on never-ending growth. For the economy to continue growing, we need people to continuously buy and consume stuff. Money is created in our fiat system through debt. When someone takes out a loan, money is created. With no debt, there is no money.  

Why do you buy the latest car, smartphone, fashionable clothes, makeup, home decor, and other stuff? Because you believe that it will make you feel better. Why do you strive to climb the corporate ladder? Because you believe that with a higher position, the prestige and more money will make you feel better about yourself. 

Our psyches are manipulated and we are conditioned to be N.I.C.E.

Neurotic – believing your negative thoughts about yourself and the world

Insecure – believing that you are not enough and not okay

Controlling – trying to control the experiences you have in life so that you feel okay

Ego-Tripper – innocently thinking that you are just are just a body carrying a brain and need to achieve your goals before you have permission to love yourself

When you break the trance of schooling and let go of a schooled mindset, you will stop being N.I.C.E. You can embrace a creator mindset.

A creator mindset doesn’t need to compare or compete. A creator mindset sees work as play and delights in failing on the way to success. As a fearless creator, you can rest into your natural state of mental health, peace of mind, and joy. You were born to be a creator not a consumer.

Are you tired of being fearful and insecure? Do you think it’s a personal problem? Join me on November 4th to DeSchool Your Self – a 3 week online group coaching experience. We will break the trance of schooling and shift from a schooled mindset to a creator mindset. The world needs your gifts and talents.

When someone says something to you or an event happens and you immediately start to take offense and feel anxious or upset, do you know how to get rid of anxiety quickly? Below are 7 natural remedies for anxiety.

1. Pause

You just need to pause. Do not let your lizard brain take over.

Most of our thinking is habitual. As we go through life, we form habitual thought patterns. If you are not awake to them, they will rule us. It’s like you have an ipod in your brain streaming negative interpretations of yourself, your life, and the world.

Photo by Jessica Furtney on Unsplash

2. Notice that you are feeling anxious, upset, angry, scared, __________

Just notice. Notice what you are feeling. Is it anxious, upset, angry, sad, depressed, scared, worried?

Reframe your emotion from “I am upset.” to “I am feeling upset.” Whatever the emotion may be. This puts some distance between who you are (innate well being and peace) and emotions that pass like clouds through the sky if you let them.

3. Discover that your feelings come from your interpretations.

The upset you are feeling is not coming from the outside world – a person or an event – it is coming from your interpretation of the event.

No, way, Caprice, you think. My boss yelled at me. A woman cut me off in traffic. My friend didn’t invite me to her party. You would be upset too.

If you believe that the woman cut you off because she is a total jerk and in a hurry for no reason, you might get upset. If you notice she is very pregnant and might be rushing to the hospital to give birth, you might feel compassion.

Can you see how your feelings are tied to your thinking about a situation? They are not tied to the situation. The situation is really neutral until we use our mental filters to make meaning of it.

Society conditions us to take things personally. And nothing is ever personal. It is never about you. 

4. Learn How Your System Works

We are not our thoughts. We are the space within which thoughts arise. 

It’s how the system works, whether your understand it or not. So, if someone says something to you that seems offensive, they are speaking from their negative thoughts – it has nothing to do with you. Their insecure thinking is creating their behavior.

This seems a bit strange and it is quite different from how you’ve been trained to relate to your personal thinking. Years in school honing your intellect, competing for grades, and proving how smart you are has led you to believe that you are your brain.

You are not your brain. Your brain is like a computer – it can compute – but it can only work with what you put into it. Crap in. Crap out. If you have a sad thought, you will feel sad. An angry thought, you feel angry. An insecure thought, you feel insecure. An anxious thought, you feel anxious. 

We are all living in the experience our thoughts, and they aren’t personal. 

5. Own Your Own Thoughts

The key is to create a different relationship with your thinking than society has trained you to have.

Own your thoughts. And understand that you are not your thoughts.

Your thoughts are the only problems in your life. Something is a problem in your life if you think it is. You could also look at it as a growth opportunity.

Don’t look outside of yourself for an explanation for how you are feeling. Your interpretation of events is creating your feeling.

Download a free cheatsheet on this now.

Photo by Natasha Connell on Unsplash

6. Don’t analyze your thinking.

If you do get hooked, just notice it. If you feel a physical reaction to something, like you got punched in the gut, or a feeling of panic, or a weight falling on your shoulders, you’ve gotten hooked. Hooked by your own faulty interpretation of an event. 

You get stuck in the feeling when you analyze your thinking or try to figure out you we feel a certain way. Notice that you feel anxious, worried, scared, angry, sad, hopeless, ____________. And just let it be. It will pass.

And when you think “I should feel differently.” you then have two layers of negative thinking weighing you down. 

A coaching client of mine said, “Oh, it’s like giving credit to thoughts that don’t deserve it.” Exactly!

7. Wait for a fresh thought to come along. 

You don’t need anything to change. We mistakenly believe that something in the outside world needs to change for us to feel better. A situation needs to change. A person needs to apologize. I need a different job/boss/house/partner. 

Nothing needs to change in the outside world for you to feel better.

Just pause. A fresh, more positive thought will occur to you. It will. You are not your thoughts. You are the space within which thoughts arise. You don’t need to control, analyze, replace, or take seriously your thoughts. 

Appreciate the Magic!

Your feelings are not real, they are just your inner guidance system telling you that you started taking negative thinking seriously.

This is your best natural remedy for anxiety.

This approach may take some practice, or it might not. Either way, don’t judge yourself. 

Natural Remedies for Anxiety: Just Pause

How to Get RId of Anxiety Quickly
Photo by Jessica Furtney on Unsplash

My Personal Hooks

I have particular hooks that tend to get me stuck in a negative thought loop. 

When I hook myself on the words and moods of my two teenage daughters, I get anxious. Yes, I tend to take what they say and do personally. Even though I understand that I cannot control my thinking, much less my daughters’ thinking, I get hooked.

Here is a raw example. The other day, my 13-year old daughter was telling me about one of her friends whose parents are still married and quite wealthy. (I got divorced 4 years ago when I found out my ex was seeing other women. We’re doing fine financially, but I am the sole earner and got divorced in a state where there is no alimony.) My daughter was telling me about her friend’s HUGE house and gated neighborhood where they drive around in golf carts. She said to me, “Why did she hit the family jackpot and I didn’t?”

Ouch! Right? My immediate reaction was Wow! She’s complaining about me. She wishes she had a different family. And I got anxious and fearful.

If I had taken it personally, I would have gotten stuck.

And then I stopped. And told myself, “I’m not going to go there.” And I just let it pass. 

Because it really wasn’t about me at all. My daughter was comparing herself to her friend and having insecure thinking. I know that she loves me and thinks I’m an awesome Mom (most of the time). So, I decided not to make her insecure thinking about me. That’s how to get rid of anxiety quickly.

My older daughter does high school online. She called me in to help her with a chemistry problem. After my explanation, she answered the question correctly, but the system gliched and put her in recovery mode and forced her to watch a help video. She got super frustrated because she started thinking, “I don’t have time for this. I won’t get my other school work done. This is so unfair.” Her frustration turned to anger and she thought and said, “How can I homeschool if you don’t know what you’re doing? You’re supposed to know everything. Just go away.” 

And I got hooked. I wanted to say, “You can’t talk to me that way! How dare you!” and I wanted to defend myself, “You got the right answer. I do know what I’m doing.” 

But it wasn’t about me. It wasn’t personal. My daughter was having frustrated and angry thoughts and started feeling frustrated and angry. 

When those thoughts passed, she had fresh, more positive thoughts. And she came downstairs, thinking more positive thoughts and feeling better and gave me a hug. 

Play with this yourself.

Get your free cheatsheet now.

Give yourself permission to stop taking your thoughts so seriously. Discover the power in the pause. And when you get hooked, that’s okay too. You’re just one thought away from feeling better. 

If this sparked something in you and you want to start a conversation, send me an email. 

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Ever wonder why kids hate school? Kayli shares her experience of trying public school for the first time for 7th grade after self-directing her own education.

Some of the insider views that Kayli shares:

  • Most school work is boring and seems pointless.
  • Schools still focus on memorization and cramming information into kids.
  • Bullying is mainly ignored by the adults.
  • Sexual harrassment is rampant in middle schools but they aren’t doing anything about it.
  • The teachers don’t seem to care about the kids. They just want the best test scores.
Finding Your Inner Happiness

The key to finding your inner happiness is to discover how your mind really works. We tend to feel anxiety, fear, anger, upset, and depression when the world is not meeting our expectations. Then we blame ourselves or other people.

Finding inner happiness happens effortlessly when you create a new relationship with your thinking.

The most difficult chapters of my life were when I lost hope. I believed that my life sucked and it would always suck. I felt like there was nothing that I could do to change it or improve it. And I believed that I couldn’t feel better unless something did change. I believed that finding inner happiness was impossible

Even though I’ve been a certified coach since 2000, all of my coaching skills and practices failed me when I discovered that the man I had been married to for 17 years was seeing other women and drained all of my finances. Psychology and self-help failed techniques failed me. 

Here are some insights into the Health Realization Principles that were the key to my finding inner happiness. I was drowning in a sea of hopelessness and despair before I discovered them.

I share my story and these principles in my new course. Get a sneak preview here:  Face the Sun: 7 days to finding inner happiness. 

1. Want to change your life? Change your relationship to your thinking! 

How did I find inner happiness? By realizing that we all live in the experience of our thinking, not the experience of our situation. 

We are taught that what happens in the world creates our experiences, especially our thoughts and feelings. I see this when one of my daughters is upset, and I automatically ask, “What happened?”

“What happened” is the most disempowering of questions because it points to the outside world as the creator of our experience.

You are 100% the creator of your experience. Through your thinking.

2. You are seeing life through the filter of your thoughts.

We have been trained to live through the filter of our mental activity. It’s like our life is a baseball game and we have an announcer who is giving us the play by play of our life with continual judgments of good or bad. 

And we believe the life announcer or life narrator. We actually think that this narration is real and is an accurate account of life. 

It is not. It’s all made up.  

Our life announcer is not reliable or trustworthy, no matter what the content of those announcements. It doesn’t matter if it is positive or negative. 

Available now! Face the Sun: 7 days to finding inner happiness. 

3. Inner Happiness comes from realizing that NONE of your thoughts are true. 

We know that none of our thought are true when we realize that two different people can have the exact same experience and interpret it completely differently.

Our views of people and situations change all the time — if we get new or different information, if we get a crappy night’s sleep, if our hormones are out of whack.

4. It’s not about positive thinking or affirmations

If you were programmed with negative thinking about yourself by a critical parent or teacher, trying to say, “I’m awesome! I am a winner. I am a millionaire.” just won’t work.

Tapping, affirmations, vision boards, visualizations, none of that did anything for me. They just made me feel more broken. Like these techniques work for everyone else, why not me? 

By this, I don’t mean for you to overlay positive thoughts on top of negative thoughts.

5. You are not who you think you are – you’re far greater!

You regain hope and begin to find inner peace by realizing that you are not who you think you are.

Who am I?

  • Appearance: woman, light skin, brown hair, brown eyes, 5’3” tall, average build. 
  • Roles: mother, daughter, sister, friend, coach, consultant, board member.
  • Education: BA in anthropology and MBA in finance. 
  • Work: transformative coach, author, entrepreneur, founder of self-directed schools, strategy consultant. 
  • Personality: INFP, Merchant-Innovator, and an ambivert. 

But wait. None of this is who I am. These are just ideas or concepts about who I am and they change all the time. 

Some days, I’m fabulous and am winning the game of life. Great mother. Surrounded by awesome friends. Doing work that I love.

Other days, I’m a total loser and can’t seem to do anything right. I need to lose weight, completely redesign my wardrobe, and find a soulmate. 

And all of this is completely made up. I’ve hobbled together opinions that I got from people in my past, judgments about my appearance and accomplishments, assessments about my personality, ideas that I hold to be true about my strengths and weaknesses. I created this persona, Caprice, who I take very seriously. 

6. What if the “Me” I’ve created doesn’t really exist? 

Okay – my daughters will tell me that I’m not just a figment of their imagination. My dogs really appreciate it when I feed them. Yes, a person who goes by the name of Caprice does exist on this physical plane, but all my ideas of who this person is are all made up. 

I invest most of my waking hours trying to be a better Caprice. I want to be more. I want to be better. Because if I am more or better, I will be happy and content and then I can finally relax and love myself. 

But am I really my “thoughts of Caprice”? No. I cannot possibly be because my thoughts are continually changing. They ebb and flow as my mood and mindset fluctuate. 

  • If I believe that I am insecure, then I am. 
  • If I believe that I am lovable, then I am. 
  • If I believe that I am unworthy, then I am. 
  • If I believe that I am valuable, then I am. 

It’s just a big shell game of ideas. How I perceive myself depends on which belief I hold to be true. And none of it is true. It’s just all made up. 

7. Your natural state is inner happiness, you don’t need to meditate or do yoga.

If you search for “how to find inner peace” on the internet, millions of articles will pop up telling you what to eat, how much exercise and sleep to get, how to meditate. It’s all about the doing.

It’s our greatest cultural myth – that we need to do something to achieve inner peace.

The truth is that you need to un-do things to find inner peace. It’s the school or subtractive psychology.

For the next few days, I invite you to just watch your thoughts about yourself come and go.

Notice that they change. A lot. Do you see yourself differently when you wake up than when you are getting ready for bed? Do you see yourself differently after you work out? If you get a lousy night’s sleep? If you get in a fight with your boss, kids, or partner? 

Send me an email and tell me how this little experiment went. You can just reply to this email. 

And if, you want to explore this further with me,  join my new 7-day online course. Available now! Face the Sun: 7 days to finding inner happiness. 

with love, Caprice

p.s. never lose hope! Your birthright is inner happiness. If you feel hopeless, reach out to me. We’re in this together

school trains us to devalue present moment.

School trains us to ignore the present moment.

School opposes the teaching of Eckhart Tolle to be in the present moment and value the NOW. School teaches we will get rewards in the future if we can tolerate the boredom and drudgery of standardized, factory schooling. This breaks our connection to our inner wisdom and intuition.

When I look back on the 18 years that I spent in formal education, in K12, college, and graduate school, I realize that the most profound and harmful lesson I learned was that the present moment has no value. 

This lesson is in direct opposition to what our greatest spiritual teachers instruct us to be: fully present to the now. The present moment is all that there is. The past only exists in our thoughts and the future has yet to unfold. The only thing that is real is this exact moment. 

School, on the other hand, coerces kids to sit still, be quiet, ignore their bodies’ natural need for movement so that they can accumulate knowledge. Never mind that most of this knowledge can be acquired in seconds through an internet search.

This forces us to hope for a better present moment in the future. School conditions us to ignore our inner wisdom. 

Spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle caution us that there is too little wisdom in the world. 

“You need to become present. If you are not present, you have no access to wisdom. If you don’t have access to wisdom in your life, and wisdom is not IQ, it is not analytical intelligence. Nor is it accumulated knowledge. Wisdom is something that this world knows very little of in our civilization… Wisdom is an intuitive knowing that is much deeper than the intellect.

You need to have wisdom so that your intention does not produce unintended access. In any course of action that you undertake, it is very important, perhaps the most important ingredient is to have access to the dimension within yourself where wisdom arises.”

Eckhart Tolle from Conscious Manifestation

How is Eckhart Tolle teaching opposed by schooling? Let me give you a personal example.

I remember sitting at my desk in my 2nd grade classroom watching the second hand move slowly around the clock on the wall. I would spend afternoons willing it to move faster. My body wanted to get up and move. I was so incredibly bored. I forced myself to will my body to sit still. It was torture. I felt like I was in prison. 

My intuition was telling me to get up and leave the classroom because my body needed to move and I wasn’t learning anything. 

When I was in 1st grade, I was sent to the corner for the rest of the day for reading ahead in a See Spot Run book. I remember the moment clearly. I loved reading. At the age of 6, I was reading chapter books. Our 1st grade teacher’s method of teaching her students to read was that everyone would have a turn to read out loud from a picture book. Sentences went like, “See spot run.” and “See Dick run. Run Dick run.” Yeah, they used the Dick and Jane reading series.  

The shame and humiliation of having to sit in the corner of the room facing the corner all day long taught me to obey the teacher even when I wasn’t gaining anything from the instruction. 

What is the promise of school given to all parents and children? Do well in school so that you can get into a good college so that you will get a good job.

How is that working out for everyone? When 70% of American adults are disengaged at work, I would say that they system is poorly designed. Or that it is designed merely for obedience and accumulation of knowledge. Definitely not for wisdom. 

We are living in the dream of a promised better future that never seems to arrive. 

eckhart tolle teaching opposed by schooling

I heard on NPR this morning that 1 out of 10 children are being diagnosed with ADHD and that 4% of adults are dealing with ADHD. 

We are so busy cramming information into our children who intuitively know that these random facts are irrelevant to their lives. If they were building furniture using the Pythagorean theorem maybe it would look more useful. But they aren’t. They are sitting in desks chugging through math problems and waiting for it to be over. 

Most teens drop out of high school because they are bored and see what they are doing in school as irrelevant. A vague promise that a high GPA and good SAT scores will get them into college so that they can do more school is not enticing. 

All power is found in the present moment, as spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle instructs us. At a time when our planet needs wisdom and creativity, we are breaking the connection that children have with their inner wisdom. 

If you find that your connection to inner wisdom was broken by school, you can reconnect again through my Fearless coaching program.

Perhaps it is an innocent misunderstanding of how learning really works or from where wisdom arises. We can only hope that Eckhart Tolle teaching can be incorporated into school design.

I invested 15 years trying to create alternatives to the factory system of schooling and had to turn away $500,000 in federal charter school start-up grants because I couldn’t get two innovative charter schools authorized. I saw first hand how much money there is in content (textbooks and edtech startups trying to replace textbooks) and in standardized testing. School is a big, thriving industry even if it is failing another generation of wise, creative souls. 

On my spiritual journey through this lifetime, I’ve come to understand that every human is unique and no human is special.

Unique: being the only one; able to be distinguished from all others of its class or type

Special: being in some way superior

Being unique and not special has set me free in so many ways! I’m excited to share this insight with you in the hopes you will find freedom and joy in it as well.

If I don’t have to prove to myself or others that I am special, I am free to be fearlessly myself. And I am free from thinking that I need anyone’s approval. Hey, I can’t control what anyone thinks anyway, so why bother?

Sydney Banks, a Scottish welder, who had a spiritual awakening at the age of 43, has elucidated the Three Principles that describe how we experience life: Mind, Consciousness, and Thought.

“Mind, Consciousness and Thought are spiritual gifts that enable us to see creation and guide us through life.”

Sydney Banks, The Missing Link

Mind is the energy and intelligence behind all life. It is Divine Mind that animates our being. Our ideas and inspirations come from Divine Mind.

Consciousness enables us to be aware of existence. It is our awareness.

Thought is the power of creation.

“Thought is the creative agent we use to direct us through life.”

Sydney Banks, The Missing Link,

All of us are alive because of Divine Mind. Mr. Banks used the analogy of waves in an ocean. We are all waves in the ocean of Divine Mind. We are all one.

Syd Banks said, “We are all unique, and none of us are special.” Even though he had a profound spiritual awakening, he was clear that this was available to every human and that he wasn’t special.

Anita Moorjani has some powerful insights and lessons that she learned from her near death experience and one of my favorites is that we are all one. She uses the analogy of a hand. God, Divine Mind, Universal Intelligence (the energy and intelligence behind all life)  is like a hand and we are all fingers on that hand. I don’t need to compete with any of the other fingers because we are all part of the whole.

This is the opposite of how we are raised and schooled.

We are conditioned to believe that we must be special to be worthy. School is an incredibly effective sorting machine. It sorts kids into levels and then sorts them by grades and GPA. As if a high GPA is superior to a low GPA.

There is intense pressure to excel in school and sports. The myth that success in school equals success in life has millions of teens stressed out. Rates of anxiety and depression are at an all time high. The reality is that success is high school IS a good predictor of success in college, but not success in life.

“I find no substantial statistical correlation between the economic-productivity factors (net worth and income) and SATs, class rank in college, and grade performance in college.”

Thomas Stanley, The Millionaire Mind

Apparently this was based on a semi-random national survey of 773 millionaires. The average high school GPA of this group was 2.9.

Society feeds your fragile, insecure ego, the illusory part of you that drives you to constantly prove you are special.

“Ego creates self-importance and is strictly related to the personal self and the personal intellect.”

Sydney Banks, The Missing Link

Media feeds us a constant stream of highlights of the lives of “special” people. They are thin, beautiful, fashionable, and photoshopped. Our heroes today are celebrities who perform and excel at branding themselves as special.

We believe that we need to do better than our peers. Life becomes an endless competition to be the best. Social media feeds this competitive frenzy and we all become a bit more insecure.

Syd Banks helps us to understand that we live in the experience of our thoughts and our thoughts are continuous, random, and untrue. Our free will is our ability to choose which thoughts to give life to.

I am a unique expression of God. I have been given the gifts of Divine Mind, Divine Consciousness, and Divine Thought. I have been given the gift of free will which allows me to use my personal thought as I choose.

My beauty, athleticism, intellect, achievements, title, wealth, etc., do not make me special. They are all fleeting and illusory. And I know this because the satisfaction that I get from them is fleeting and I always want more. As my mentor, Dr.Bill Pettit says, we can never get enough of that which we don’t need.

When I understand that I am more than this physical body, or this self image that I have created in my thinking, then I am free to connect with my divine Self. Anita Moorjani says that only 20% of us is crammed into this physical body. Our true selves are so vast that 80% of us lives beyond the physical. Wow! That is so exciting!

I see other people as souls who are part of the greater whole, as is my soul. I don’t need to compete with them or prove that I am better than them. We are all the same.

“As we start to regain the true relationship between our personal intelligence and the spiritual wisdom that lies within, we develop a higher degree of intelligence and common sense. This, in turn, clears up our misguided lives.”

Sydney Banks, The Missing Link
Soul Map

Do a Soul Map instead. It’s more fun and creative. And you can tap into your inner wisdom to create a map that aligns with your souls calling. It’s also a great way to get rid of anxiety because you have a map of your values, work themes that get you excited, and projects you passionately want to work on.

I hate planning and goal setting. The intellect-driven process drains my energy. I end up with a whole lot of shoulds that I don’t feel inspired about.

And if I don’t have intentions and a map, I get way too unfocused and work on too many ideas and projects without completing anything. I’m highly innovative and creative, and can get lost in my overflowing stream of ideas.

So, I’ve created a soul map to guide me through 2019. Below I’ll show you how to create one for yourself.

Get out a sheet of paper of any size and colorful markers or pencils. I like Sharpies.

SELF

I put myself in the center of the page in a gold heart to remind myself that I have a heart of gold and need to love and value my Self. (yep, big S. the divine part of my being that is everlasting.)

VALUES

The inner circle has my top 5 values: Self Love, Wisdom, Truth, Excellence, and Joy. These values are my guiding stars and also litmus test when I need to make a decision. Am I demonstrating Self Love in this decision? Am I exercising my highest wisdom? Does this path feel true to me? Will I be demonstrating personal excellence? Will doing this bring me joy?

I searched for an overarching theme that pulls all of my values together and it is: Self-Agency. I believe that when I am operating from a place of Self Agency, I am living all of these values.

WORK THEMES

When I look back at my career since I took charge of it and became a solopreneur in 1999, I can pull out three major themes of my work that are emerging: Self Directed Education, Expanding Consciousness, and Soul Nurturing Relationships.

I only want to work on projects that are in alignment with these three broad themes.

2019 PROJECTS

Finally, the outer circle shows the projects that I am working on in 2019: I’m launching a podcast, writing a book (I’ll post chapter by chapter on my blog), refining and marketing several online courses I’ve developed, expanding my coaching practice, doing more speaking, and getting Joyful Action Media funded to produce mobile games that help young women avoid abusers and predators as they learn how to find good men.

I invite you to do a Soul Map for yourself, take a picture, and share it with me on Instagram.

Healing Your Self-Doubt Virus: Confidence Boosting for Women of All Ages and Stages

Self-Doubt is a psychological virus that affects most women. Our society conditions women to doubt their own power and brilliance. It’s too widespread to be an individual issue. It’s a cultural virus.

The first thing I want you to hear is: IT IS NOT YOU! You are not broken! You have been conditioned to doubt yourself.

If we had more women with extreme, authentic confidence who are the agents of their own existence, the world would be a much different place. Female energy is naturally cooperative, nurturing, and giving. That is why I am passionate about helping women develop self agency. This is the path to financial freedom and time freedom. Men also need to be empowered to express their female energy and get off of the testosterone-fueled competitive rat race.

So, what does a woman need to have extreme confidence? Confidence is an inner game.  However, confidence is like a muscle – you can exercise it and make it stronger.

Here is how to strengthen your confidence muscle:

Love Your Self Unconditionally.

When we are born, we are perfect. We love ourselves and don’t judge ourselves. Society and it’s institutions conditions us to compare ourselves to others and compete for grades, jobs, and accolades. Our fear-based society teaches us that, if we are our authentic selves and follow our hearts, we will most likely “fail’. In what ways are you judging yourself and coming up short? Complete the following sentence: “I will be OK when I ____________________”. Most of us can easily create a long list of conditions for why we aren’t OK and what we need to do in order for use to completely and unconditionally love and accepts ourselves. When making choices and decisions, ask yourself, “If I loved myself in this moment, what would I choose?”

Be a learner not a knower.

Schooling destroys our confidence by telling us that, if we don’t know something, we are stupid or unworthy. However, CEOs say they want employees who are self-starters, resourceful, innovative, entrepreneurial. Essentially self-directed lifelong learners. To be confident, women need to have confidence in their inherent skills and abilities. They need to know that they can figure out how to do something, especially when they don’t know how to do it already. It’s OK not to have the answers.

Give yourself permission to fail. Let go of perfectionism.

The learning process is naturally messy. Schooling is an unnatural learning process that penalizes failure. The true learning path is littered with wrong answers and mistakes. The path to mastery is paved with multiple failures. Girls and women are constantly judged by their appearance and outer behavior which leads to an obsession with perfection. The media comments on what a female leader is wearing and ignores the substance of her speech or work. They rarely, if ever, do this with men. So women are held to a false standard of perfection. Let go of perfectionism. Embrace yourself as perfectly imperfect. Fail fast and cheap.

Practice optimal self-care.

You deserve health and wellness. When you feel energized and strong, you are more confident. Create a self-care routine for yourself. Build it into your daily habits. Don’t be too strict or dogmatic. Focus on what gives you energy. What foods give your energy? Which people do you enjoy being with? What activities do you love? Spend time in nature. Make sure you play every day. Get 8 hours of sleep. Drink pure water. Have quiet time each day. Give yourself a hug, a bubble bath, a smile. Laugh a lot.

Surround yourself with YES! people. (Create or join a positive community.)

There are plenty of negative people in the world. It is easy to focus on what doesn’t work. TV and news outlets know that negative news sells advertising. Turn off the television, limit your time on social media. Surround yourself with people who uplift you and support you. Create a teflon coating around you for other people’s criticism. Let it bounce off of you unless they are really in your corner. They are just projecting onto you what they don’t like about themselves. Join or create a community of YES! People who will affirm your awesomeness.

Set firm boundaries.

Boundaries are the rules that you set for behavior that is and isn’t OK for you. Boundaries are not negotiable. Don’t fall into a trap of being “too nice” which really means that you don’t have firm boundaries. Let people know how they need to act to be in your life. Let them know what is OK for you. If you let people erode or manipulate your boundaries, you will be filled with self-doubt and a crisis of confidence. Boundaries protect you and honor your relationships with good people.

Declare your purpose. Use your gifts.

To move confidently forward in the direction of your dreams you also need Will (the strong desire to take action). Will comes from being aligned with your personal purpose. Your WHY. Purpose isn’t something hidden deep inside of you that you need to discover. Your purpose is something that you declare for yourself, for this chapter of your life. Ideally, it is connected to your unique gifts. If you don’t know what your unique gifts are, ask friends and family and work with a skilled coach.

Find mentors to support and coach you.

Level up with the coaching and support of mentors. In every chapter of your life, you will need mentors to help you get to your next level. Choose a mentor who is aligned with your personal values and who has done something that you want to do. Be bold in asking for someone to mentor you and allow them to refer you to someone else. Look for people with generosity of spirit, a loving kind nature, and solid skills. You will become the people you surround yourself with.

Seeking a boost to your confidence? Join my powerful 30 day program: Elevate Your Confidence. Every day, you will receive an email with an audio, video, or writing from me with links to other helpful resources. You also get access to Weekly Webinars with Caprice and a private Facebook group.