Ariana Newcomer

Healing the soul's voice

Devastated. Exhausted. You?

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So much has been going on in our country and the world that is devastating. I’m emotionally exhausted. Are you?

Much of what’s going on has to do with not having honest, respectful conversations about the difficult stuff – race, gender bias, religious extremism, cultural change, politics, and …

We don’t want to talk about these difficult issues because we don’t want people to get angry with us, we’re afraid we’ll choke up and won’t be able to get the words out, we don’t want a negative reaction…

Or, we don’t want to know about things that are scary and threaten our comfort. We don’t want to hear information that challenges our dearly held beliefs or unconscious biases.

Let’s face it, we all have unconscious biases. (One of mine is my tendency to discount the privilege I’ve had all my life because my skin is white.) If you’ve read my newsletters for a while, you’ve read about unconscious gender bias, so hopefully, you’re aware about how that operates for you…

So, how DO we talk about the difficult stuff?Continue Reading

This makes me mad!

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I’m doing a lot of spiritual work these days, and this nonsense has to stop:

There’s a strong element in spirituality that calls for us to always be “in the light,” or “seek for the light.” We’re also constantly seeking for higher consciousness, which makes us think of going up. Up is light, and down is dark – or is it?

I think that misses the point of life here on Earth as human beings. Yes, we are of the light, and we are also of the Earth, and she sustains us. My own experience is teaching me that part of “higher” consciousness is honoring the dark and getting more connected to Mother Earth.

As I see it, the constant seeking the light and talking about the light tends to make us do a number of things that don’t serve us. Such as:Continue Reading

Don’t Yell At Me!

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I remember last Thanksgiving at our family gathering. I got passionate about something, and a male family member kept interrupting me. I told him very firmly to stop, and he said, “Don’t yell at me.”

Now, if you’d ever heard me yell (remember, I used to be an opera singer), you’d know I wasn’t even close to yelling. I told him so, and he left the table.

He wanted to control the conversation, and when I wouldn’t let him, he accused me of yelling, and that was supposed to make me shut up. When that didn’t work, he took his football and left.

Most of you women have heard this MANY, MANY times in your lives when you weren’t even close to yelling. Some of you men may have been the ones saying, “Don’t yell at me,” when the woman wasn’t even close to yelling.Continue Reading

Lose the maybes and mights…

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While working with a client today on her Clear Story (an essential part of your talk about what you do), she bumped up against an issue many women have. Her Clear Story draft was wimpy and unclear, because she used a lot of “maybes” and “mights” in it.

The Clear Story is a format I teach my clients that is designed to take their listener from a place they are stuck, to the possibility that they can have what they want by working with you, by changing a belief they hold that’s in the way.

When I got my Clear Story, it profoundly improved my marketing, and my ability to talk with people about what I do – and it does that for my clients, too.

MY GIFT – You can get the Clear Story Format here

Continue Reading

Great advice from the Water Board???

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I just read some of the best advice I’ve seen recently about how to communicate – from a place I would NEVER have expected.. the chair of the CA State Water Resources Control Board!

Felicia Marcus happens to be a Harvard classmate of mine, though I never met her there. She and the Board have the incredibly difficult job of creating new water plans for our drought-stricken state with stake holders whose interests often seem to be diametrically opposed.

Herding cats. On steroids. Lions and tigers and…

Yet, they’ve managed to get some great stuff done. Her attitude towards communication has A LOT to do with it.Continue Reading