It’s up! I finally finished my audition tape for Oprah’s new OWN network — I’m proposing a talk show based on my book, Heal the Money. If you would be so kind as to vote for me, I would much appreciate it. I did my best to encapsulate the essence of the book into three minutes . I’d love to hear any comments or thoughts you have on it! Go here to view and vote!

You can vote as often as you like until July 3. Watch below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tmioTjobxU

This article has been published on Huffington Post here.

I wept last night for our unconsciousness and our fear. For my inability to stir the hearts of women and men to action, to change, to any effect at all. I wept for the souls of the dolphins and turtles and pelicans in this toxic sloop, breathing the oil- and dispersant-ridden toxic air and feeling sick — nowhere to go to truly escape it — no doctors to heal them — no news crews explaining to them what is happening to their world and why humans are allowed on planet anymore.

We should abandon it to them. We are not worthy of being here. We are not worthy of living here — so self-absorbed and blind people are to this world and its life in every corner, in every little corner. The weeds and the cockroaches are worthier than we are.

We cannot stand up to bullies, so scared are we of the authorities to whom we give all our power. We are afraid of BP, afraid of our government agencies, even as we know they are thoroughly corrupted by money interests.

This is the talk going on in the responsibility modules of our consciousness. It is in the piece of us imploring us to wake up — to tune instead into our power and fearlessness — to become conscious. It is the part of us that identifies with dolphins and knows humans have lost their way.

We need to mourn. We need to wail and grieve and pierce our hearts with mea culpas for not being brave enough to barge into the BP offices with citizens’ arrest warrants and a phalanx of local police we can trust and arresting all of them, and any government officials who stand with them.

Close behind that are the mea culpas for needing a damn car in the first place, or for finding plastic bags useful, or for unknowingly filling our homes with thousands of seemingly inescapable petro products that now are covered in my mind with the sludge on those poor pelicans. And for allowing a government riddled with regulators who side with money and legislators who pocket campaign contributions to look the other way.

Then come the mea culpas for needing money. If we didn’t need money, we wouldn’t need to work for or cater to the abusive, arrogant, conniving oil industry and we could kick every last one of them out of every state and out of every level of government and immediately implement the clean technologies continuously emerging.

We’re staring at the consequences of believing that if we want money — an “economy” — our only option is to tolerate major abuse. That if we want to survive, we need to shut up, suck it up and do what the abusers tell us to do. That we have no other option.

I don’t know about you but I’m done being abused.

Abusers always tell you that their way is the only option — that they don’t need to change, or, under pressure, they give lip service to change, but don’t. They deceive, they lie. They tell you that it’s your fault, that what you expect is absurd, unrealistic, impossible, and besides you don’t deserve any better — so learn to live with what you got, ’cause that’s all there is. They tell you all that to screw with your head — to keep control.

But wise ones know better. Wise ones know what they really deserve. They have a vision of what they would choose to create for themselves. They know how powerful and resourceful they really are. They kick abusers out and they create a better life.

Time to stop beating ourselves up for allowing things to get this bad. Time to kick the abusers out of our lives and out of our government.

We are done “surviving.” We want to thrive. We want to thrive with the same vibrancy that we want the Gulf to thrive. Abundantly, easily, because we love it. No other damn reason.

What we want for the Gulf, we want for ourselves: The abuse must end. No more being ordered around. No more being dumped on with toxic BS. No more lies. No more being put in danger to make other people rich. No more being stolen from without any regard for our well-being.

The Gulf’s cry is our cry: We demand to be respected and honored, not because we can earn you money, but because we are worthy of unconditional love. Now. We don’t have to earn you a damn thing.

This goes beyond oil. We need to forgive ourselves for not knowing how to eliminate the greed and corruption dominating our planet at the moment that makes life miserable for so many of us, kills our fellow creatures, deadens us to life on earth, and endangers the very planet that allows us to live.

We must decide, regardless, that we are going to rid this earth of the greed and corruption anyway. We are going to rid the earth of this broken operating system. We are going to go forward without knowing the answers, knowing only that we cannot stay in this abuse one day, one moment longer.

We damn well will create an “economy” that does not run on abuse or greed or corruption. We don’t know how that will happen, but we know damn well we can do it. We will find a way, and we won’t stop until we do.

This article has been published on Huffington Post here.

Obama has been frustrating me completely. On Inauguration Day, Obama won the Super-Lotto of political wealth. But, like a lotto winner who doesn’t move out of his 3-bedroom tract house, Obama has spent virtually none of it. Well, maybe he bought a plant for the porch.

Was there some fine print on the lottery ticket that said, “Winnings For Display Purposes Only, Not Intended for Actual Use”? Did I miss the e-mail for Audacity-Removal Day?

The corrupting influences invested in the status quo have paralyzed Congress. Lawmakers keep trying to stuff the same bland meals, all filled with pork, down the American throat. They’re catering to the behemoths lodged in the corner, threatening to close down the restaurant if they don’t get exactly what they ordered.

Maybe they don’t get it. We’re not buying this meal anymore.

Then it struck me. This paralysis is not about Obama, or even about Congress. This is about us.

Change — real, actual purifying change — was the mantra of the election. We rallied around it, we called for it, we fantasized about it. And then, it HAPPENED. We succeeded.

During the campaign, many supporters — from the basic petition forwarders to those trekking to Nevada on 110 degree weekends — held a secret thought deep inside: “We’ll never actually pull this off.”

Astonishment, as much as joy, raced through the nation’s nerve endings on election night.

Deep inside there was a voice: “Damn, did we just do that? We just elected a black man who says he’s committed to fundamentally changing Washington… whoa!” Somewhere inside, the magnitude of what we’d done freaked us right out.

Fundamental change is a big idea to wrap your emotions around, even when you’re certain the path you’ve been on is headed right off the cliff. We needed to absorb it: Did we really mean change?

Our collective brakes went on, cueing the haters, the reactionaries, those who ridicule the desire for change, those promising to take us back to a mythical time when things were “good.” All our worst fears rushed onto the road in front of us.

In previous times in history, this was the point at which we turned back. Met with stiff resistance and deep frustration, we got scared, went into despair and abandoned the goal. Here is the opportunity to choose again.

The end looks like the beginning.

We hesitate now because this is uncharted territory. The established interests have been running things for so long we have little concept of what it’s like to be free of their money-driven, corrupting influence. We feel inadequate to meet the challenge dislodging them poses.

Obama needs to show the sword, point to the mountain and charge ahead of everyone. But that may not happen. By all indications, he’s been cut off at the pass. We can’t count on it.

We can’t wait for it. The fire in us needs to take us up the hill. The blaze that caught hold during Obama’s candidacy makes the way for him, not the other way around. It can leap over any barricade.

At any rate, we cannot turn back. Change is upon us. The anger simmering in the country feels about as comfortable as an ominous dark alley. We cannot stay here.

In our decision, we will find the answers and breathe light back into hope. What we chose then, we still want now. Our year of pause is done. Fears evaporate. This time we go forward.

We meant change, and we still do.

As the financial tornadoes continue, thousands are feeling the wrenching shock of an unexpected income loss. No matter how confident you are in your abilities, a forced drop in financial flow can wreak emotional havoc. Doubts and worries you thought you’d long gotten rid of can suddenly take over the microphone in your head and blast fears and insecurities 24/7.

Who controls the internal megaphone?

Just when you most need your self-esteem, it evaporates.

I know as well as anyone that it’s a near Herculean effort at times to cobble together some self-esteem when you’re broke. Why this is so is a long and winding story, but in a nutshell it comes down to pegging our self-esteem to the wrong yardstick. Most of us have been relying heavily on the capricious voice of ego for our self esteem and ego has chosen money as a primary tool of torture. It’s going to take some dedicated inner work to get money out of ego’s grip and to peg our self esteem to the right source.

But the good news is you can wrestle back control of the microphone in your head and start broadcasting correct information. Follow these five steps to start disconnecting your self esteem from your ego, and tune into your real inner worth.

Step 1. Honor your own feelings
No one likes being ignored. To purposefully ignore someone communicates disdain and dismissal — not very pleasant feedback to receive. Being ignored challenges our very existence and sense of worth. In response, we often clamor to be heard.

When we ignore our emotions, they get the same message. They take it personally. Keep slamming the door in their face and they only get louder and louder. The result: stress, illnesses and drama. Tension around emotions comes in great measure from the effort it takes to ignore and suppress what we deem unacceptable.

How much are you judging, resisting or ignoring your own feelings around being broke?

Listening to your own feelings with compassion and acceptance is one of the biggest gifts you can give to yourself. Frustration, fear, feeling out of control, betrayal, anger, hurt, feeling trapped, insignificant and powerless, feeling unloved — these are all feelings common to the experience of being broke. It’s perfectly understandable, and perfectly acceptable, if you have any of these feelings.

Allow them up into your awareness. Let them exist. Bear witness to them. Acknowledge them. When you do, a deep aspect of you feels heard and accepted.

The trick to learn is that you can bear witness to these feelings without feeding them, without having them consume you, throw you into depression, or dictate your actions. Emotions by their nature are in flux. You do need to acknowledge they exist, but you do not need to identify with them. You do not need to construct a story from them that you tell all your friends and repeat over and over. You do not need to hold onto them — this is a key distinction.

Step 2. Let the feelings go
Once you’ve listened to your own feelings — heard yourself out, so to speak — you can let them go. You can do this from a place of being the observer of your feelings, rather than as an involved participant. Simply “hearing” the emotions in itself will begin to shift things. You might imagine yourself being an audience for the play of your emotions, for instance.

Tie your emotions with a bow and send them on their way

When I was first getting accustomed to letting go of my emotions, I imagined each emotion, each upset, being a small gift I gave to the universe — in a little box with a bow. It helped immensely in being able to let them go.

Let them go because you are not your emotions. They pass, they change — you still exist. As you practice letting them go — and it definitely takes practice — you can let them go more and more quickly. You can become a master of this.

Sometimes, the emotions we’re looping on are looping because they’re masking deeper feelings that we’ve decided are more scary or unacceptable, or that make us feel more vulnerable. Anger will commonly mask hurt, for example. Admitting you feel hurt feels more vulnerable than being angry. Letting one emotion go — the anger — can release the other — the hurt — so that it too can go and the whole issue can heal.

Once your anxiety-provoking emotions have exited, give yourself acceptance and approval. It may feel awkward at first — the voice of ego in your head will tell you it’s a stupid thing to do. Do it anyway — give yourself your own approval. With passionate enthusiasm.

Don't have a dog? Borrow your neighbor's

Step 3. Do something you love
Feed that approval you’ve just given yourself by setting regularly scheduled times to do something you love to do. People often scramble when they feel broke, putting a huge amount of pressure on themselves to find the next job, search for the next opening, submit their resume, go to the next networking opportunity. Doing something can feel empowering, but often the activities take on an anxiety-state panic. The panic is counter-productive.

Defuse the panic by doing something you love. You don’t need to spend money to do something wonderful. Walk your dog — just make sure to leave your cell phone and iPod at home. (If you don’t have a dog, borrow a neighbor’s .) Go for a walk in a beautiful part of your town. If you can get out in nature, even better. Surf, hike, bike. Just clear your schedule and do it.

Notice the beauty around you

When you’re out there, take time to stop and simply look at what is beautiful: a delicate bloom, a towering tree, a lone cloud, a breaking wave. Don’t pick the flower, simply appreciate it. Look as an artist might look — carefully, patiently, intently. This exercise shifts your focus away from the voice in your head, toward beauty and into the present moment, which is a most powerful combination. Magic can happen.

Step 4. Dedicate time to pursue your dreams
People in the panic mode of feeling broke often jettison their dreams. They talk themselves into doing only “practical” things and force out any wild notions of being successful doing what they really love to do. Consequently, they often find themselves becoming more and more depressed, complaining, and despairing.

The reason for the depression here is simple — your soul doesn’t like being ignored either. Money is our current favorite “excuse” for not pursuing our soul’s designs for our lifetime. Perhaps our souls are collectively stamping their feet to be heard, and the money is slipping away until we listen to them.

Giving dedicated energy to your dreams allows your soul to feel heard and energizes everything else you do.

Devote a block of several hours in the morning — before you do anything else — to pursuing your true preference. What do you really want to do? What brings a smile to your face when you think of being able to do it full time? What would you do if you didn’t need to worry about “making money”? Pursue or research that dream first, before doing any “practical” tasks.

Do this for two or three weeks, as a routine, and see how your energy and stress level improves and how many things have simply fallen into place with your “practical” life.

This is a contest between ego and soul. It’s soul’s time to win, but ego is going to put up a fight.

Step 5. Appreciate what you already have
Sometimes when we’re down, we can get lost in it. By spending all our energy focused on what we don’t have, soon there’s no room in our head to even notice what we do have. Perhaps it’s been a while since you’ve acknowledged the value of friends and family who truly support you? Giving love to others is a sure-fire way of finding the road out of the blues.

Send an email to your good friends telling them how they’ve helped you and how glad you are that they’re in your life.

I did this on the spur of the moment recently after a good friend passed away unexpectedly — it was suddenly urgent for me to tell all my friends, especially those I hadn’t been in touch with in a while, how much they meant to me. I was amazed by all the sincere good wishes and thanks that these friends sent back to me. I realized I helped many people that day and inspired several friends to reconnect with their own lost friends — and I felt wonderful for days.

By doing this simple thing, you are giving people what they really want — what everyone really wants — acknowledgment and love.

Create a flowing fountain of worth

If you take these steps, you will soon realize an important truth: “feeling like a million” has nothing at all to do with money.

People who are broke often assume that their problems can be solved with money or that it must feel great to be a millionaire. The truth is, because of its current ties to ego, money often simply masks existing ongoing problems and can even exacerbate them.

Listening to your emotions, letting go of them once they’re acknowledged, putting time into your dreams and what you love, and appreciating what you already have will connect you to what makes you most alive. Ultimately, feeling most alive and accepting and appreciating yourself is the source of true self-worth, and this kind of self-esteem does not go up and down with economic tides. It is an endless fountain that can sustain you through all challenges.

Feeling like a million is an inside job. That is true whether you’re a billionaire or broke, and you can choose to have that strength no matter how much money happens to be in your wallet at that moment. You can give yourself acknowledgement and love at any minute of the day — and ultimately, when it comes down to it, this is what we’ve been looking for all along.

A must watch, in my opinion. As I’ve pointed out in several posts now, the financial crisis is a result of systemic fraud throughout the financial system. In this interview, Bill Moyers talks with William K. Black, author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One,” and has him explain how the fraud began in the board rooms and CEO offices of the most elite institutions in the US and how our government is complicit in covering it up.

“WILLIAM K. BLACK: …we don’t want to change the bankers, because if we do, if we put honest people in, who didn’t cause the problem, their first job would be to find the scope of the problem. And that would destroy the cover up. [snip]

Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. [snip]

BILL MOYERS: How is this happening? I mean why is it happening?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: Until you get the facts, it’s harder to blow all this up. And, of course, the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts. [snip]

I don’t know whether we’ve lost our capability of outrage. Or whether the cover up has been so successful that people just don’t have the facts to react to it. [snip]

If you leave the failed CEOs in place, it isn’t just that they’re terrible business people, though they are. It isn’t just that they lack integrity, though they do. Because they were engaged in these frauds. But they’re not going to disclose the truth about the assets.

BILL MOYERS: And we have to know that, in order to know what?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: To know everything. To know who committed the frauds. Whose bonuses we should recover. How much the assets are worth. How much they should be sold for. Is the bank insolvent, such that we should resolve it in this way? It’s the predicate, right? You need to know the facts to make intelligent decisions.

They’re deliberately leaving in place the people that caused the problem, because they don’t want the facts. And this is not new. The Reagan Administration’s central priority, at all times, during the Savings and Loan crisis, was covering up the losses.

BILL MOYERS: So, you’re saying that people in power, political power, and financial power, act in concert when their own behinds are in the ringer, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: That’s right. And it’s particularly a crisis that brings this out, because then the class of the banker says, “You’ve got to keep the information away from the public or everything will collapse. If they understand how bad it is, they’ll run for the exits.”

(Full transcript here.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1b__MdtHY

These videos capture particular pulses of this economic crisis, from one real face of homelessness, to a Great Depression cooking class, to a hilarious bit from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show about why we should think twice, or a billion times, before listening to CNBC’s financial advice.

Arlyn Royce Was Here #10

One young woman’s quiet, personal, matter-of-fact — and therefore delicately touching — recounting and tour of the streets in Hollywood where she slept in her car — homeless for 5 months straight from April through September 2008.

Great Depression Cooking with Clara: Peppers & Eggs

This charming 93-year-old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4IjNV3lZkQ

And because laughter is good for you … The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: CNBC Gives Financial Advice

CNBC’s Rick Santelli is angry that those loser homeowners are going to get bailed out.
“Ah, if I’d only followed CNBC’s advice,” says Stewart, “I’d have a million dollars today — provided I started with a hundred million dollars.”

Thanks, but the battle has moved on.

For all the surrounding fanfare, the stimulus package and housing plan brought forward last week and stirringly trumpeted by President Obama last night, have arrived on the battlefield with a truckload of supplies long after the battle has spread to the surrounding hillsides. Thanks, but we needed these things a long while ago — we’re talking years ago. The number of casualties these bandages can help now is far less than the number of wounded to come.

Most importantly, the supplies in the truck do almost nothing at all to stop the real cause of all the bloodshed.

Congress has devised this plan from conventional party agendas — investment and tax-cuts — guided by conventional banking insiders being very careful not to point out who’s really been mowing down the bystanders. The reason it won’t work is because it doesn’t address the rot at the foundation of the financial system.

Many different fingers have been pointing to the lack of regulation, or the micro-managing of interest rates, or the sub-prime loan debacle, or the hedge fund orgy, or the lack of a real free-market. But the real cause is much more basic: fraud — wide-scale, systemic fraud.

Fraud exists far beyond the level of Bernie Madoff, everywhere. The system collapsing in front of us was revolving around lies all up and down the system: fraudulent loans, fraudulent rating systems, fraudulent balance sheets, corrupt regulatory bodies, fraudulent investing instruments, topped off by corrupted government guidelines and oversight.

Fraud exists even in the vision — generated for public consumption — of what money is, what debt is, what banks do, what a deposit is, what credit is, the integrity of where money goes, who gets it and who doesn’t and why.

Insolvency, fraud and off balance sheet mumbo-jumbo

Despite Obama’s insistence in his address to Congress, the issue at heart is not the need to jump-start lending. We are already drowning in unpayable levels of debt. The very concept of “credit” and “debt” and the fraudulent terms by which they now exist need to be completely redrawn.

The debt problem at the heart of the mess is an outgrowth of the far more fundamental issue of fraud.

Here’s just one tiny example: Citigroup sent out letters to customers in California last March warning clients that their adjustable rate mortgages were likely about to go up, so clients should lock down a better deal now and buy a new fixed rate mortgage. But Citigroup lied. These particular clients’ ARM rates were about to go down. The threat didn’t exist. This is fraud, people. Citigroup was taking advantage of people who didn’t have their mortgage numbers and an actuary at their fingertips.

That kind of misrepresentation is just one small instance of widespread financial industry disingenuousness.

The first “bailout” served essentially as a massive giveaway doled out in bonuses to top executives or horded in desperation. These banks never had any intention of lending out the taxpayer money to “save the economy.” I wouldn’t doubt Paulson knew it. Nor would I doubt that banks are refusing to tell anyone where the bailout money went because they’re not eager for the public to discover just how much of the billions went directly into pockets.

Even now, the nation’s largest banks are hiding their trillions in toxic “assets” off their balance sheets as they aim to shakedown the government for more taxpayer money.

Fraud at this level has been the way of financial business. As Mish Shedlock points out, it is never practical to tell the truth.

It’s NEVER “practical” for the Fed, the SEC, Banks, CEOs in general, the FDIC, Congress, the Treasury Department, or the President to tell the truth.

This is what it all boils down to: Somehow it’s never “practical” to stop a drunken credit-financed orgy, yet when the party ends, it’s never “practical” to discuss the consequences.

In this case, the credit orgy lasted so long, and there were so many players, that the most important truth right now that needs open, honest discussion is that the entire US Banking System Is Insolvent.

Congress's terra incognita: investigate financial fraud

Mish and others have been pointing out for months that many (probably most, possibly all but a handful) high-profile banks are dead banks walking — zombie banks being defibrillated into seeming aliveness solely by expected infusions of public money.

To deal with this fraud monster — and Congress soon will be forced to — they’ll need to travel into governing terra incognita, those uncharted waters where pirates and sea monsters lurk.

To have a hope of reaching the far-off land of recovery, Congress — or an appointed, verifiably independent body (or an unanticipated act of God) — will need to root out the fraud at the highest levels of the banking, finance and regulatory industries. That exercise no doubt will lead to uncovering the fraud within their own parties and their own supposed ideologies.

Here be dragons

Here be dragons indeed.

Congress will venture into these waters only when compelled by the reality of the conventional plan’s futility, combined with the utter insistence of the American people — along with, perhaps, the force majeure of international catastrophe.

This stimulus plan, however, was a necessary step — if only to demonstrate that the standard playbook needs to be thrown out the window. Mish and Minyanville continue:

The government’s strategy is to buy time. It always is. Time allows it to slowly drain wealth from the poor/middle class and re-distribute it to the rich who own the financial system.

The Fed, the SEC, and the Treasury department are all jumping through hoops attempting to disguise this fact, but their collective panic to bail out the wealthy at the expense of the poor tells the truth, even as they find it “impractical” to do so.

Real stimulus idea: Replace lies with truth

The people of the planet are done being abused. That we’ve put up with financial abuse for this long speaks volumes about the patience of our souls. But we insist: no more. We are about to throw out the system that looks solely to profit from us and to create one that truly serves us.

Truth needs to replace lies in every nook and cranny. Nothing less will work at this juncture. The consciousness of the planet, of humankind, insists. I suspect Obama gets this, even as he needs to navigate murky, treacherous waters. His energy is calling out the right direction, though the specifics needed aren’t yet in the plan.

Giant ray of hope

As the transition to integrity takes place, there is a great deal of anxiety and fear. The suffering is certainly real. I know as well as anyone that it is very difficult in today’s world to face a loss of money and not have it affect one’s sense of safety, identity and capability.

Experiencing the loss of a home — and all the judgment, powerlessness and self-blame that can come along with that event — can be devastating. The lifestyle we construct around us can come to represent everything we stand for, everything we are. To be forced to give it up threatens our very sense of self.

Unexpected treasure under the receding tide of money.

But there is a great ray of hope here amidst the crumbling pylons. For at the bottom of the ocean — as the tide of money recedes — is where we can find the real gold.

The real gold is a sense of ourselves that is truly independent of money.

For a very long time, most people have been strongly identified with money (or lack thereof) for their sense of safety and self worth (or lack thereof). This external yardstick is being revealed more and more to be not only a very poor measuring device but also an unreliable safety tool. Now we have the opportunity to choose a better one.

We have the opportunity to find the enduring gold within: an inner connection to the intrinsic value of our humanity, our lifeforce, our being.

We are seeing the truth that money, indeed anything external, is temporary. It is a poor and arbitrary measure of real worth.

When natural disaster strikes — the recent fires in Australia come to mind — those affected often say to interviewers that they are just happy to be alive. The disaster has made them realize the greater value of their lives, rather than their possessions. Everyone pitches in, everyone helps each other.

Many are losing their homes and livelihoods now due to an economic tsunami. While the disaster is man-made, its magnitude is sweeping a good many honorable people away in the surging undertow. The broader truth here is certainly the same: there is far greater value in the lives being lived than in the possessions lost.

It is wise to take definitive steps to honor your life in this moment of time. Can you let go of judgments and expectations for this moment and simply get in touch with your sense of being alive and honor it? Can you extend this honoring to others?

We are each struggling from one moment to the next to make this shift to an internal yardstick. Extend compassion — to yourself and to others. As we glimpse the gold within, we’ll see that each of us, in fact, is valuable beyond measure.

(for part 1, click here)

Many of us recognize America has been operating out of integrity. Hypocrisy, fraud and lies have been the order of the day at the highest levels of government as well as corporations. Our financial systems both reflect and drive this widespread disrepute.

But, by the vigor in our recent vote for change, we have put our foot down. No more. We are ready for integrity.

Our clarity of purpose in this choice will determine the extent and the depth of this financial crisis.

Fortunately, even as the darkening clouds loom, we have a palpable sense now of having taken back our government. As promising an energy as Obama radiates, he can only follow the trail we clear. We are the change we’ve been waiting for. Our own determination to make sure that real change actually takes place will be the measure of our generation.

Big time change

To a certain extent, however, the tipping point has already been reached. Change is upon us, big time. Exposing and disposing of all the corrupted financial rot will mean coming to grips with one heck of a lot of change. Pillars we’ve been leaning on, striving for, or expecting to support us, will give way. Big banks and corporations will fail. More fraud will continue to be unearthed — I doubt we’ll even be able to take in the true extent of it.

Saber-toothed tigers lurk around the bend... or do they?

The consequences of the upending are looming as large as a saber-toothed tiger, ready to devour us around the very next corner.

The key question becomes how we respond to these collapses and revelations?

Many will agree with Arianna Huffington, this is a mad-as-hell moment. Do we allow the rising fears, anger and outrage to run our lives and force our decisions? To lead us into violence or into despair?

What can a person do to avoid being sucked into the panic?

Three steps to gain perspective and avoid screaming

The effort of gaining perspective is a large one — one I’ll be addressing all this year. We are in the middle of a time of great change, no one seems to have the answers, and the future is shaping up to be a lot different than we expected. There’s a lot on our plates.

Below, I touch on three critical steps you can take personally to release some of the fear that can eat away at your energy and throw you into panic mode.

Step 1: Recognize it’s a transition to integrity

First of all, decide for yourself that this time is a transition to integrity. The rot simply has to go. To establish integrity, we need to hold our noses and dig up the rot. The fraud-based systems we’ve been used to will have to be completely transformed or jettisoned. Thieves have made off with the loot and set fire to the house as they left. Yes, someone’s going to have to go after the thieves, but that’s not going to save the house. Much of it will just have to come down.

What the new systems will look like, we don’t presently know. Most current “experts” won’t have the answers — they identify too strongly with the current system. And I wouldn’t count on those who got a chunk of loot from the old fraud to be too happy about the changes underfoot. Don’t count on them for solutions. As Albert Einstein noticed, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

On the bright side, nothing brings sides together better than a shared sense of not knowing what the answer is.

Indeed, we need to let go of what we think we know. It is only this energy of humility that will bring the inspiration for new answers.

Coupled with humility, we need to stand firm in demanding integrity throughout the new system. If we aim to deliver integrity, chances are good that what we create will be a vast improvement from what we have now.

Step 2: We are enough to face the unknown

It could be just a CGI tiger from a bad movie.

Second, unpack your fear of the unknown and examine it for a moment. The unknown is frightening because somewhere inside virtually every one of us, there’s a firmly held belief that we are not enough to handle what’s around the corner.

A well-programmed voice in the head tells us we’re not prepared, we won’t know what to do, we won’t have the resources … ultimately, that we’ll die a horrible death, bankrupt, alone and unloved if we go around the corner. AAAHHH! We quake imagining the kind of saber-toothed tiger that we’re absolutely certain is just over there!

But if we examine this fear, we realize we don’t know for sure whether what lies ahead is actually a saber-toothed tiger. It could be a rock in the shape of a tiger… we could easily go around a rock. It could be a shadow of something we encountered in the past, say in 10,000 BC… we could walk right through a shadow.

It looks like there's something in your paw.

Even if a dangerous predator does sit out there, maybe it will be fast asleep by the time we walk by. Maybe it will go after someone else. Maybe it’ll be a bad pouncer and miss us. Maybe we can calmly saunter past it while it’s looking at a bug.

Maybe we’ll hit it at exactly the right place with a marshal arts move we learned in high school and knock it out, if it does charge.

Or … maybe it’s roaring because it has a hurt paw.

Tigers aren't so scary after all.

Or maybe we can charm it with our charisma and he’ll become our buddy. Hey, we could have a saber-toothed tiger pet!

By imagining alternatives, we can coax ourselves into realizing, hey, we may in fact be enough to face whatever lies ahead, even if we’ve never experienced it before.

So instead of spending time and energy imagining the worst, cultivate a calm confidence that you are enough to manage whatever comes. Let go of any thoughts that tell you otherwise.

Step 3: Don’t leap to the future, stay in the present.

Third, bring yourself into this particular moment. What in this moment is the problem?

Danger can also be a matter of perspective. It only looks like she's high off the ground.

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”

Almost all fear is future oriented: the anticipation of future doom, future harm. The dread of getting to the corner and facing the imagined saber-toothed tiger freezes us and chills our bones.

The actual danger lies in the future, but by anticipating it, we experience the doom right now, long before the consequences have materialized.

We become so afraid, the tiger may as well sink its teeth into us now because, internally, we’ve already decided that’s what’s going to happen — we can feel our flesh ripping apart and the blood spurting! Internally we’re already going through the very doom we’re trying to avoid.

So what happens? We can’t act, we lose clarity, we panic, we don’t know what to do, we make rash decisions. We’re stuck.

Albert Einstein recommends, “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.”

Our expectations and judgments color what we see in the world. Some say they even create what we see in the world.

To reduce fear, take yourself out of the mode of judging what is, and instead put yourself into the mode of simply observing what is. As the wise master turtle Oogway says in the delightful film Kung Fu Panda:

Shifu: “Master master, I have… uh, it’s very bad news.”

Oogway: “Ah Shifu, there is just news. There is no good or bad.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pwgKPZ2NS8

Do your best to see what’s happening as simply news, not “bad” news. (For the advanced course, try and do this when you’re watching FoxNews.)

Begin to let go of anticipated doom. Perhaps there will be bridges that need to be crossed at some point. Keep your focus on the now.

Ask yourself, “Am I safe right now, in this moment?” Do you have food and a roof over your head right now? If you feel safe now, can you let that feeling of being safe expand?

If you feel unsafe now, can you coax yourself to let go of that feeling of being unsafe, just for a moment? You have the ability to hold onto feelings, or let go of them. See if you can let go of the feeling of being unsafe.

Also start to let go of judgments about the circumstances you find yourself facing. Can you allow things to be different from how you think they are? Can you allow things to be different from how you worry they will be?

Above all, let go of beating yourself up for being in whatever predicament you are in. Can you let go of blaming yourself? Can you let go of blaming others just for this moment?

Can you allow yourself to feel you are enough to handle your current circumstances, whatever you are facing, in this moment?

Use the three exercises to defeat your own saber-toothed financial tigers. As you may have realized, the most important saber-toothed tiger to defeat is within ourselves.