Meet the Flipsters
Conversations on the Bridge |
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A Conversation with Barbara
De Angelis
(The complete Flip interview, with only minor edits,
not found in the book)
Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D. (www.barbaradeangelis.com),
is one of the most influential teachers of our time
in the field of relationships and personal growth.
For the past twenty-five years, she has reached tens
of millions of people throughout the world with her
positive messages about love, happiness, and the search
for meaning in our lives. As a best-selling author,
popular television personality, and sought-after motivational
speaker, Barbara has been a pioneer in the field of
personal transformation, one of the first people to
popularize the idea of self-help in the 1980s, and
one of the first nationally-recognized female motivational
teachers on television.
Barbara is the author of fourteen best-selling books
which have sold more than eight million copies and
been published throughout the world in twenty languages.
Her latest book is How Did I Get Here? Finding Your
Way to Renewed Hope and Happiness When Life and Love
Take Unexpected Turns. We asked Barbara about how
taking stock of one’s place in life can contribute
to a flip of perspective. “Even asking the question
How did I get here? can be an amazing moment of awakening
because most people don’t have the courage to
ask such questions. As I wrote in the new book, ‘As
travelers on life’s paths, we are defined by
both the questions we ask ourselves and by the ones
we avoid asking.’ A lot of people spend their
life running from questions, and I have spent my life
running toward questions. I invite people to ask the
kinds of questions that help them awaken and live
more conscious, authentic lives. Times of deep questioning
are not times of weakness or falling apart, but periods
of tremendous transformation.
“The flip is learning to interpret our life
events in terms of lessons, turning points, transitions
and wake-up calls… and then moving through them
with grace and dignity and clarity, without getting
stuck. From that perspective, we can learn to embrace
the questions and be hungry for them. But we need
to be willing to roll up our sleeves a get a little
dirty. If looking good is high on our priority list,
we’re going to have a hard time growing at all
in life. We’re going to have a hard time in
our relationships. We’re going to have a hard
time dealing with the failures we all to go through
when we strive for excellence. Worrying about how
we appear to others is one of the easiest ways for
us to get completely stuck and stagnate in our lives.
Rather than asking ourselves ‘How do I look?’
the better questions would be ‘How do I feel,
and is my life working?’
“You do have to let go of the ego in a sense,
and be willing to allow the unraveling of yourself,
your beliefs, and your expectations in order to truly
flip and make a breakthrough. You can’t fly
when you’re still on the ground. You can’t
move while you stand still. A lot of people try to
do both, and it’s impossible. It can be frightening
when you’re flailing around and there’s
nothing to hold onto. That’s a very powerful
moment of breakthrough. But it requires a sense of
truly letting go and trusting that there will be something
on the other side of your leap.”
In figuring out “how we got here,” do
we run the risk of becoming absorbed in the past?
“Understanding where we came from, what decisions
we’ve made, how we’ve limited ourselves—is
essential for moving forward,” says Barbara.
“Otherwise we may tell ourselves that we’re
in the present, but we’ll have a trail of ghosts
following us. Every time I do a session with someone,
I see their ghosts hovering: the ghosts of their former
relationships, of their family, their parents, and
so on. Until we understand those influences and become
free of them, saying ‘I’m living in the
moment’ doesn’t mean anything. ‘In
the moment’ doesn’t mean anything unless
you’re in each moment without being in reaction
to the moment before, and the moment before. I call
that emotional freedom, which means being free of
the influences of the past. The more of that freedom
we have, the less fear of the future we will have.
“I should clarify that by being ‘in the
moment,’ I don’t mean an irresponsible
mindset of ‘past and future be damned!’
Complete consciousness encompasses the past, the future,
and now. It is not limited or myopic. ‘The now’
is this moment as it’s impacted and affected
by everything that has happened or could happen.
“We all would like to think that we are conscious
enough to see what’s coming. By becoming quiet
and paying attention, we can certainly avoid a number
of things that we – in 20/20 hindsight –
‘should have seen coming.’ However, we
can’t look for what we’re not expecting.
So the universe sometimes takes us by surprise.”
Time to change, whether we want to or not? “Sadly,
most people refuse to grow until they are forced to
grow. You can choose to grow or you can be forced
to grow. Most people on the planet tend to be forced
to grow and even then are often resistant because
of their fear. And fear makes us not authentic, not
our real selves. There’s nothing more exhausting
than living without authenticity. People do not realize
how much energy it takes to not be who we are. It’s
unbelievable how draining it is to talk, to act, to
love, to be a way that is not authentically you. ‘Authenticity’
means that who you are on the inside is reflected
on the outside, that every moment, who you are is
also how you appear to others. People are walking
around with chronic fatigue in this country, and in
my opinion, ninety-nine percent of it has to do with
the fact that they’re repressing things, denying
things, avoiding things, hiding things, and it takes
a lot of energy to do that.
“On the other hand, nothing is more exciting
than to start to live authentically. You feel an enormous
power surging through you; again, that’s emotional
freedom. We unleash tremendous energy when we wake
from our emotional sleep and return to our authentic
selves. It’s as if we’ve just had this
power turned back on after an outage. As hard as it
is to do this, the reward is fantastic. Everything
is flowing; you’re not blocking the flow of
shakti or whatever you want to call it. Most people
are walking around cut off from that flow because
they’re afraid of the consequences, yet in a
sense it’s no one’s fault because we live
in a society where authenticity is not rewarded. What’s
rewarded is conformity and fitting into an image.
As a culture we mistrust things that are too different.
So it takes a lot of courage to be authentic in a
world where people really value fitting in.”
We wondered if it takes a lot of “self-love”
to have the courage to flip and become more authentic
in everyday life. Barbara got right to the point:
“The truth is everything we do is out of self
love. And I’m always telling people that it’s
an illusion that we do not love ourselves. Everything
we do is ultimately out of self love and self preservation;
it’s impossible for it to be otherwise. Let’s
say a person has a pattern of choosing unloving partners.
We tend to think, ‘If she loved herself, she
would choose better partners.’ But what she’s
actually trying to do is heal a pattern, probably
rooted in childhood, of trying to get someone’s
love, feeling that she must work very hard to earn
people’s love. And there is love that is behind
her choice. She is telling herself, ‘Let me
do it right. Let me go back to when I was six and
this time I’m going to get Daddy’s love,
I just know I am.” So it’s not lack of
love that’s making her do that, it’s just
a misunderstanding of the best way to share and realize
love. It’s the same thing with people who think
they need to become more powerful. There’s no
such thing as ‘more powerful.’ We’re
all equally powerful. It’s just that some of
us use our power to hold ourselves back, and others
to propel ourselves forward. We all have the same
manifestation of shakti, chi, and divine energy. We
all are love. It’s just that some of us are
using our love in some very twisted, convoluted ways.
It’s a great revelation for people when they
understand that they hold themselves back not from
a lack of self-love, but because they are used to
protecting themselves instead of taking chances. Either
way, love is the motivation. You can use the same
love that keeps you in place, protected from taking
chances, to be courageous and become more authentic.”
That is a powerful personal flip.
“I always tell people, ‘True transformation
takes one second. Getting prepared for that second
is what can take a long time.’ And following
through can take a lot of courage.
“I find that understanding why we do things
truly can ‘set us free.’ Too often pop
culture offers very limited understandings of what’s
really going on. One thing that I’ve tried to
do in my field of social psychology is bring a broad
spiritual perspective to many of these topics. I’m
thrilled to be able to do that.
“Revelation is hard. Revolution is harder.
To begin living your revelations about yourself can
require an amazing amount of courage. Moving from
denial to consciousness will sometimes create a revolution
in your life on every level. There will be people
who will not be happy. You will have to let go of
things. It can be like dying and being reborn into
the same body. And some people just don’t want
to go through it. They don’t understand the
concept. But we are being invited to die and re-emerge
over and over again… each time as a slightly
higher, truer self. Choose to grow!”
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The Flip, by Jared Rosen and David Rippe, illuminates
a clear path to a vibrant enlightened world where
millions of people already live and thrive. It describes
in vivid detail and real examples evidence of an upside
down world in decay and a Right Side Up world of authentic
beings bright with possibility.
The Flip is an owner’s manual for the twenty-first
century full of insights, conversations with recognized
experts, thought leaders, and visionaries, and actionable
exercises and tips you can use to begin your own personal
flip.
To read more about The Flip
and additional interviews from other luminaries, experts
and bestselling authors, please visit www.theflip.net
The Flip is available at your
local bookstore or online at
Amazon.com, Barnes
& Noble, Joseph-Beth,
and Borders.
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