Dear friends,

I want to share some exciting news with you.

After working over 13 years mostly as an actor, I got a new job in Europe’s biggest and most beautiful Spa and Treatment Center near Cologne. The name is Mediterana. For the opening of a new Indian section at the end of August they are building a new team called ‘The Buddha team’ that I am part of. I will be responsible for reception desk, looking after guests, special happenings in the saunas and meditation.

I am also still working on stage; I am playing a very nice part in Pippi Longstocking in a beautiful outside area in the countryside. I auditioned a lot this year for theater jobs and got the most brilliant feedback ever since.
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Hey, my dear friends all over the world,

I would like to share what happened last week for me in my new job.

As some of you might know, I had the opportunity to change jobs on July 1st within the Procter and Gamble Company to become the assistant of the Global Human Resources Director at Wella, the hair care company.  That itself is already thrilling, but also my first project was to organize the global leadership team Meeting (24 people) for 3 days in a very nice hotel near Frankfurt, Germany.

The intent was that the new global Wella director would meet all of his leadership team members (Wella country leaders, head of external communications, chief of supply chain management, etc.) so that they could define how to work together in the future to archive their goals.

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Hi Friends-

Ariel and Shya often call Transformation the “slack-jawed approach to enlightenment” (where you simply see a mechanical behavior, let your jaw hang and say “huh.”) I had such a great slack-jawed moment the other day and I just have to share it with you all. I had been in a fight with my brother off and on for the last two weeks. It was around the subject of money and not paying bills on time, which historically we have both been very tense and defensive about. We had had a phone call about a particular money situation where I thought I had been very direct and straight forward, but I realized afterwards (with the help of the Kanes and my boyfriend Andy) that I had been condescending and unkind, and was really holding onto being right about my point of view. I apologized to my brother, and things got better between us, but it was still a little shaky and I think there was really a part of me that was not ready to let go of being right.
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Hello Everyone!

I just returned from Costa Rica and … Wow! By the end of the week, I knew that I wanted to return next year, and knew I wanted to stay longer. So I signed up for 2 weeks in 2010!

How completely unreasonable of me! I truly just did what I wanted to do, without allowing the details to dominate me. In that moment, I abandoned my old comfortable habit of having everything in order before I acted on something. I didn’t ask permission from anyone, I didn’t ask permission from my bank account, and I didn’t ask permission from my reasonable mind. I simply gave myself permission, and trusted the universe to support me.

This unreasonable impulse has also allowed me to see so many other things that I want to do this year, including taking Committed Impulse acting classes, going to Germany, taking the Kanes’ workshops, and paying off my credit cards.

Have a brilliant and unreasonable week!

Love,
Swain

Ever since attending the Time and Project Management course, I find myself looking at my life as though it is a river of opportunities to be a role model, a healing presence and available for everybody around me.

Today, walking down a busy sidewalk, I began to notice something that happened as I passed different ‘types’ of people; men and women of different ages, level of attractiveness, etc…
I discovered that I automatically put on an ‘act’ for each person as they approached. With an attractive woman, I pretended not to be interested. With an older woman, I became exceptionally polite and smiley. As I stood near an older couple, I acted like a little boy. When a good looking man passed, I acted tough and mean, as though I was stronger, smarter, or even better.
I realized that I had been “staging” acts like this for years as a way to protect myself from people seeing who I genuinely am.

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As a Literacy Coach, I’m invited to schools to work with teachers and often asked by the principal to focus on specific projects. In every school, there is something very different to do. In a school I visit weekly, the principal asked me to sort through materials & books that were in the basement and find ways to use them with the teachers. It would require bringing things into the teacher room, which is about 8 feet by 8 feet. It has 6 full size desks around the perimeter of the room. The room is shared by 6 specialty teachers (science, social studies…) It was so cluttered with papers and “stuff” piled so high on the desks, that the windows were covered. The room felt very “stuck” and uncomfortable to be in. As someone who loves to organize, I realized that before we brought anything new in, the room was begging to be cleaned and cleared. I approached the principal and shared this with her and she gladly agreed.

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Two nights ago, at Monday Night Alive, I shared a story about my health, and how through Instantaneous Transformation I discovered that worrying about it was a choice, not a requirement.

I’ve had a few bouts of sinusitis since last October, so when it came back last month, I had some blood-work done to try to figure out why these infections kept coming back. When I called my doctor’s office to get the test results, they would not give them to me over the phone, and insisted that I had to come in to meet with the doctor. My initial reaction was “Oh no, what could be so serious that they won’t tell me except in person?”

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