September 2014
Welcome --
"Never follow the crowd."
(Bernard Baruch)
Let's talk about Kool Aid. For those of you who didn't grow up with it, it was a
powdered flavoring added to water -- decades before the boutique bottled water we have today. In the day, it was considered a treat for children.
Then years later, it became the means for several hundred people to follow their leader, Jim Jones, to a mass death at
their compound in Guyana. They unquestioningly obliged his order to drink poisoned Kool Aid.
With this in mind, my question to you is:
Where / How in your life are you
"drinking the Kool Aid"? --
How have you lost your sense of self and free will?
Whom are you blindly following -- taking their
approach to life as gospel?
Where are you going through the motions for
someone else's sake?
How are you "poisoning"
yourself?
Harsh questions, and yet the metaphor stands.
Every time we act blindly, without questioning our motives, we're "drinking the Kool Aid". It doesn't matter if it's our favorite flavor, if it doesn't serve our deeper healing and ongoing process of growth, we're slowly poisoning ourselves, aren't
we?
Start to track the moments when you automatically reach for your "poison" -- numbing yourself against a dead end job, an abusive relationship, addictive behavior, that prattling
critical voice, your long deferred dreams, and so on. Know your triggers for the Kool Aid and how they're activated:
Stop.
Breathe.
Check in with your Bodymind.
Determine the right action:
Dare to step away from /not reach for/
put down that Kool Aid before you take
the first sip.
I sense you may miss it at first, change does that to habits-- and yet -- in time, you'll lose your taste for the Kool Aid and opt for a cool glass of water to slake your thirst instead.
"Never count on the crowd
to take care of you."
(Eddie Rickenbacker)
