A psychic practitioner stopped me at the end of a party yesterday, and told me I was about to have a detour.

Today.

I don’t quite remember the exact words she used, but it was something along the lines of “Right now you’re going down the 405, and you’re about to take a detour, and then you’ll have to decide what you want to do with your life.”

And then she disappeared.

Okay.

So one part of me sees only possibilities in that scenario – Wow, choices, new things, new roads, new…. And then another part – Gremlin Voice soaked for sure – screams Other shoe dropping!

Any minute now!

Watch out for falling shoes!

And I look around me, furtively, searching each car that passes by, each person who passes by, each word that passes by, for a clue.

For a sign.

For impending disaster.

I have three choices.

One, I can call up this practitioner and ask for clarification. But, I realize, nothing she says will change the fact that I must make one of the other two choices.

Two, I can wallow in fear and try to be very careful and watchful and vigilant, analyze everything that shows up in my life at every minute, and forget I’m actually alive and living.

Three, I can choose the choice of possibilities.

I can – regardless of what the psychic has seen or knows, regardless of what she says or what she thinks, or even more profoundly, regardless of what I think – see every car that passes by, every person who passes by, each word that passes by as a “detour” into a new possibility.

And, if I make choice Number Three, I’d better know what I’m getting myself into – this new possibility might lead to another detour, to another possibility, to another, and another, where the choices are endless.

Am I more afraid of being stuck or of getting lost?

Is it that I’m really so certain I can’t choose right every time, or does it really matter if I choose right every time?

Lots of questions, and sometimes the answer is “I don’t know,” or “None of the Above.”

So how do I know what to do and where to go and what to think?

And how do I stop; my mind from racing to fear instead of flowing to possibilities?

Well, first off, just because I investigate another road doesn’t mean I’ve left the Highway of Love. In fact, what if I’m not even on it at all!

What if, even though I think I’ve been on the Highway of Love all this time, I’m really only on a side road?

What if I’m not even on a road?

What if I’ve been going in circles?

So, what if I want to continue down this so-called detour of a new possibility?

What then?

What if the detour leads to a bigger Highway?

What if I’ve been on the Highway of Where I’ve Always Been and What I’ve Always Done, and the detour will lead me smack to the Highway of Love?

Well, how’s this for a job description: Adventurer!

Lots of men and women are making thrilling, actual lives out there being Indiana Jones – finding lost civilizations, solving ancient riddles, leading teams through the jungles of the world.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk and a different idea of what’s in the pot of gold at the end of the Quest, and some of us quake at even the thought of stepping a foot into the unknown.

So many of us are traveling up and down a dead end wash we call “love” in the middle of something we only know of as “familiarity.”

Sometimes we ride it in souped-up all-terrain vehicles, and sometimes we crawl along it, but we hardly ever fly over it, and actually see, with our own eyes, that it’s been a dead-end all along.

So, what if the Highway of Love is truly a super-highway leading to… who knows where?

And, what if it’s really not all that hard to navigate?

What if the only problem with it is it’s just not a dead-end wash?

What if the only hard thing about it is it’s not “familiar”?

So I bless the psychic.

Not for giving me a clue to what’s next, but for giving me a clue to my fear.

Perhaps the 405 isn’t all there is.

Now I have to deal with myself.

If I’m so afraid of detours, how will I handle the Highway of Love when I’m on it?

Will I run back to my dead-end?

Will I swear off detours?

Will I swear off possibilities?

Will I choose “Familiar” over “Better”?

Will I choose “Safely Stuck” over “Scary What I Really Want”?

Will I stay in worry and doubt and fear and not leave my house, or will I move out and about with abandon?

Will I keep my eyes open for danger, or will I allow in possibilities?

The choice is mine.

The choice is yours.

Try this way of choosing:

When you find yourself stuck, or afraid, ask yourself what road you’re on.

You may answer – I’m in love!

I couldn’t be happier!

Or I’m safe and fine, I don’t need a relationship, I don’t need someone else to love me, I love myself just plenty.

Or I don’t have time for all this.

I’m busy, I’m tooling down my road just fine, and, Rori, what do you know about it anyway?

Okay, so you know what’s up.

You’ve made your choice, and it feels good, and here you are, and you’re right – you don’t need me.

And if you answer I’m tired of the same-old-same-old.

I’m tired of the souped-up cars and the dry runs and the circles, then, maybe, you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by choosing “Better” and “Scary What I Really Want,” than “Safe” and “Familiar.”

So, put on your new hat.

The one marked “Adventurer!”

Imagine that your emotions, your instincts, your heart rhythms, are a beautiful, powerful Horse you can ride across the landscape of your life.

Your Horse knows the way, clean and clear, to where you want to go. And if you should ever steer it wrong, it knows the way back.

Now, sit your Horse tall and proud.

You are about to let the whole world see you shake from fear, thrill from excitement, breathe hard from anticipation, tense up from the knot in your throat and shimmer from the hope in your eyes.

You are about to let go.

The Horse of your emotions, your instincts, your connection to life, your heart, is feeling feisty.

You’re about to let your Horse run free.

Imagine doing it.

Imagine tolerating the fear, the excitement, the heavy breathing, the tension, the shimmer.

Imagine riding the Horse somewhere new and feeling everything you’re feeling.

Believe that anytime you want, you can stop.

Yes, you can stop.

You can say No, turn back, go forward, take a rest.

You can.

You can say No when it doesn’t feel right, and you can say Yes when it feels right.

Sometimes it can feel right, but it’s just a little (okay, a lot) scary.

Don’t let that stop you!

Fear feels way different when you’re out there riding the Horse than it does when you’re stuck stock still.

Fear is many things, and it wears many faces, and we build all kinds of defenses on top of it to pretend it isn’t there or hide it away, or fight it.

If you don’t believe Adventurers feel fear, you’ve been sitting in the safe dead-end too long.

Fear is part of the Highway of Love. Bring yours along with you for the ride.

Soon, it’ll get tired and old, and you’ll be too busy having fun to even notice if it’s there or not.

So, wear your Adventurer hat (yes, you have one!), take along all your baggage, and imagine the exhilaration of having what you want.

Then, kiss your Horse, and let it take you somewhere new – to the Highway of Love.

Let me show you all the ways in which you can let go of fear and live the love life of your dreams.

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In her Have The Relationship You Want eBook, Rori Raye teaches any woman the secret of how to quickly stop the pain and frustration in her love life and get exactly the romance, affection, attention and love she really wants (and deserves!).

Rori’s Tools will help you attract a man instead of accidentally pushing him away, no matter how uncertain things feel right now.

I’m standing at the kitchen sink, a soapy dish in my hand, and I’m enraged.

My face is screwed up in fury.

I want to hurl the dish at the window.

I’ve just imagined that my husband is doing something awful that hurts me, and I’ve gone through the entire scenario of discovery, pain and rage – all in about two seconds.

I catch myself and stop cold.

What am I doing?

Why am I doing this?

I’m a Drama Queen on the loose, creating anger instead of passion, grief instead of love.

What started me?

I sort of remember thinking about a client, or a neighbor, or a friend who’s tolerated a sub-par relationship for way too long.

I remember empathizing.

Then I remember putting myself there.

Then I remember holding onto the dish hard enough to crack it.

Makes no difference.

I go there because I go there.

Sometimes I go there to balance the scale when things have been particularly grand in my marriage and in my work, and I just can’t tolerate so much goodness coming to me.

Sometimes I go there to shake things up – as if I’ve been asleep.

Sometimes I go there as a pre-emptive strike against me, to punish me for some sin I’ve committed or believed I’ve committed, or believe I will commit.

I could analyze for days, years, eons, this life and the next and the next.

Or I could right things right now one moment at a time.

If I cannot tolerate love, I will get angry and push it away.

If I don’t have a good reason – I’ll make one up.

If I cannot tolerate success, I will sabotage it with carelessness.

If I don’t have a good reason, I’ll make one up.

I always have a reason, an excuse, an idea.

Something I was taught long ago, in this life or the last, or the lives before.

There are so many ways to make up real reasons for everything.

There are statistics aplenty to support any point of view I could come up with.

There are charts and examples and experiences to quote for any statement I could make up about anything in this world.

So I’ll stop trying to figure it out. It doesn’t matter what I think.

It doesn’t matter what I think about myself. It doesn’t matter who’s right or what’s right.

It only matters how it feels. If I feel bad – yes, there’s a reason, a source, a belief.

And who says feeling bad is bad, anyway?

Who says feeling rage and making stuff up is so bad?

I just know I don’t like the way it feels. So I’m going to stop this right now.

Here’s how:

We women process.

Our feelings morph.

We feel good, then we feel guilty, then we feel bad, then we feel mad, then we feel lots of things.

By following those feelings around our bodies, we get to experience feeling alive.

We get to experience pain, anger, joy – the whole soup of love.

Can’t feel one feeling without getting close to another.

It’s the way it works.

We’re not all compartmentalized.

We can’t only feel joy and never encounter pain.

If we spend all our energy trying not to feel pain, we can’t ever get close to joy.

So if we focus on pain, all we’ll ever feel is Resistance to feeling pain, which is the same as Resistance to feeling joy, which leaves us with a big, fat nothing.

Feeling numb, a void, cold, bored, overwhelmed.

All the small feelings are all that’s left. To feel passion, we have to be willing to feel pain.

The amazing thing is, being willing to experience pain doesn’t always mean you have to experience pain.

Quite the opposite.

Once I start to embrace the whole soup, the scary feelings aren’t so scary after all.

It’s as if my ship was weighted down with Resistance, sinking it backwards into yucky, painful feelings, and once I lifted off the Resistance and said Okay – I’m okay with the pain – the pain never showed up.

The shoe I was spending my waking hours waiting to drop doesn’t drop.

I take my hand off my ears and there’s no screaming. Instead, my ship rights itself.

It goes on ahead – something that feels better is up ahead.

And if I do encounter pain, I find joy, bliss and peace all mixed up with it.

If our man is standoffish, then we must be, too.

We may think we’re all ready and willing and able, we may have our hearts open wide, and yet it doesn’t make sense.

To get close to a man, you have to let him in.

If we’re doing all the work and he’s just hanging out in his half of the relationship turf and not venturing into our hearts, if we’re with a man who doesn’t want to venture into our particular hearts, then all that makes sense is that we’re afraid to let a man – any man – in.

If we’re afraid to let him in because we’re afraid we’ll be abandoned, afraid we’ll share ourselves totally and then watch helplessly as he takes off, taking our whole selves with him, it’s because we’re afraid of abandoning ourselves.

What does that look like?

Either we have a man, or are attracted to men, who we know on some level will play us and leave us – thereby efficiently abandoning ourselves without having to do it ourselves (this is all about Boundaries, of course) – or we have a lovely man who wants us and so we are faced with the chore of abandoning ourselves.

Either way it’s not pretty.

We go to abandonment often.

If he’s not doing the job, we do.

We make it up.

We are all made up of so many parts and voices and energies and thoughts and feelings.

We can identify some as wounded parts, some as heroic.

When things are going wonderfully, we may habitually bounce to the wounded part, then to the angry part, then to the numb part before we feel okay back at the wonderful part.

Most of the time we’re doing this dance all by ourselves.

Our men are standing around, totally fine with us (sometimes even looking for direction to make us happy), wondering what’s come over us.

And we make it up.

Try this:

Be compassionate with yourself.

Be grateful to yourself.

Embrace yourself.

So much of why we make stuff up is that we yearn to stay in touch with our deepest parts.

We want to access the pain, the wounded parts, because that’s where the joy is stuck too – in the soup.

We want to be close to our deep feeling parts. It makes us feel deep and profound, and spiritual.

The trick is to be able to go there, and everywhere else too!

You can start easy, with inanimate objects.

Put your hand on something – the chair, the sofa, the table.

Talk to it – out loud if you can.

Say Wood table, I know you were once a tree.

I feel bad that you were chopped down.

And sawed up and pounded.

I’m sorry.

I’m so glad to have you with me.

Thank you for your sacrifice.

I feel so grateful to be able to put food and my work on you.

Thank you for supporting me, I love you.

I will not forget that you were once a tree.

Thank you.

Or a metal lamp, Lamp, I feel you all hard, I know you were once in the ground, all cozy, where you belong, and you were dug up, and put through the fire, and hammered and poured. I’m so sorry.

I feel for you.

I bless you.

Thank You for being in my home and lighting my home so I can see and read.

I won’t forget how you serve me. Thank You.

You may feel silly doing this.

You may find yourself sobbing.

You are being compassionate and grateful to the table and the lamp.

Do this for short periods – 10 to 20 seconds tops.

The moment you feel yourself in your head instead of your feelings, stop.

Now move on to yourself.

This is the place many of us never get to.

We are compassionate with others, with animals, with furniture, but not with ourselves.

Whether or not you believe you deserve this exercise, please do it.

Just try it.

A few moments at a time.

Important note – If you’re in the presence of someone – your man, or a new man – do the Rori Raye Mantra instead.

Deliver Feeling Messages.

Let your words speak what you feel.

If you’re alone – if you’re starting to make stuff up, to feel down about yourself, if the Gremlin rears up and you feel the process of going to pain, to anger, to Resistance, to numb – no matter what happened or what anyone did or said – go straight to Compassion.

Here’s The Compassion Dialogue:

Say to that voice, that part that’s speaking, thinking, feeling yucky things I feel your sadness, your doubt.

I won’t abandon you.

Thank you for trying to protect me.

I’m here for you.

I’m so sorry for your pain, and for your suffering, and I won’t abandon you.

And now I’m going to go on with feeling better, and doing what makes me feel good, and what makes me bigger and happier so that I can share more compassion with you and with the world.

I embrace you, and I won’t leave you behind. I promise.

Don’t worry about who’s who in the dialogue, who you are as the part speaking, who you’re talking too.

Just address the voice that’s hurting or angry and embrace it verbally.

Tell it you won’t abandon it on your way up the ladder of feeling good and being successful in business and in love.

Tell it you love it, will take care of it, forgive it, thank it, feel compassion for it. Just the way you did with the table and the lamp.

Just 10-20 seconds at a time, throughout the day.

And then just see what happens.

This is all very complex, and libraries are filled with psychological and spiritual texts on how all this works.

And being in your head about it will not help you at all – because you are you, and you need to know that you are on your side forever.

Loving Yourself is easy to talk about – but what does that mean, and how do you do it?

Talk to yourself, feel what you feel, embrace the soup, and use the words of the Rori Raye dialogues.

Literally, authentically Thank Yourself – each body part, each feeling part, each voice that you notice wants attention.

Literally, verbally express compassion to each part, each voice.

As you do this, your Resistance to feeling will soften.

Just a little softening is enough to get you in the soup. And from there, you can sail your ship anywhere.

Love, here we come!

Let me show you all the ways in which you can be happy and thrive in your relationship.

My FREE NEWSLETTER is packed with tools and advice to help you connect to your man, inspire his love and devotion, and finally have the relationship you want…starting today!

Simply fill in your name and email at the link below and start learning the tools that will show you how to get MORE out of your relationship.

Your information is kept confidential and there is no obligation… just valuable, free advice:

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Your Friend,

Rori Raye

I sit on it.

I want to think about it.

I want to think about what to do with it.

If the person who just said or did something that got my anger started, especially if it’s my husband or my daughter, I most especially stuff it down until I can figure out what to say.

Often the moment gets lost entirely.

I find myself grumpy or tense ten minutes later, ruminating on my anger like a cow chewing cud, and my opportunity to express myself feels lost forever.

Not so.

What I’m describing here, it seems, is me beating myself up because I didn’t know what to do with the anger I was feeling.

What’s sometimes worse is when my husband is angry.

At me.

I can handle his anger if it’s towards others.

I get behind him, confirm his righteous indignation, his enemy is my enemy.

I’m a great team player.

So where am I when he’s angry at me?

What team am I on?

The first split second I feel his coolness, I’m on team Rori.

I get my back up, I protect my back, I face off.

I’m the star goalie, defender of Rori, no angry words could possibly hurt me, I never, ever, ever did anything wrong.

Or I did everything wrong. I bounce from anger at him for being angry with me to anger at myself for causing such unbearable conflict.

I blame myself for severing love, even for this moment. It doesn’t occur to me until sometimes hours later that acting as if I’m on team Our Relationship would not only be better for the relationship, but for me, too.

All I need to do is share my anger.

We all know from reading every book on communication ever written that we’re supposed to communicate in “I feel” messages, not “You did” messages. And yet — How do you do that?

Most of us don’t even know what that looks like, much less how to get the words out.

Not one woman (including me) that I’ve met has even seen it in our lifetime, except maybe in the movies.

Not only do we not know what it feels like to really talk in “I feel” messages, we hardly ever even know what it is we even feel!

Those of you who have been to my workshops know that a big part of my work is helping women access their feelings and then express those feelings in words a man can hear.

One of the emotions we women have the most trouble with is anger, and anger is also the emotion we often seem to have the most of!

We are all angry a good part of the time.

Perhaps it’s disappointment, or irritation, or pure rage.

Some of us have gotten seriously sick trying to hold in so much anger.

Some of us can only attract men who offend us, who make us angry, because we are so angry.

Putting a smiley face on our anger just makes it all worse, because on top of the authentic angry inferno anyone who stands next to us can sense (no matter how dense we think they are), we’re adding the disrespect of trying to hide it from them.

We’re pretending it’s not even there — though it’s like a great big elephant sticking out of our chests.

That angry elephant trumpets through our words no matter how hard we try to disguise it.

When we pretend, we appear at best like automatons, at worst like liars.

We can seem completely out of touch with ourselves and at the same time complain about how men can’t get in touch with their feelings!

So, what to do?

1. Agree that anger, even murderous rage, is just a feeling.

It’s just energy.

And it’s most likely covering pain.

Because anger truly does feel better than pain, it’s a very worthwhile and helpful emotion.

2. Admit to ourselves that what we’re feeling is anger, and that it belongs to us, not to the man across the dinner table.

Admit that it most likely has absolutely nothing to do with that man across the table.

It may be anger from the last relationship, the last two dozen relationships, or our relationships with our parents.

And then admit that if it is about the man across the table, and he’s said or done something clearly hurtful, you not only don’t have to tolerate it — you can handle the next step! Which is:

3. Share it. This is not about venting, getting it out, or “communicating.”

It’s about sharing your feeling state in order to both keep yourself healthy and deepen your relationship with another human being. Say “I’m feeling angry.”

Period.

If he asks you why –- say “I feel really angry.

And hurt.

And now I’m feeling confused.

And now I feel a little silly even telling you.”

Or “Ouch — that really hurt — it feels terrible.”

(Notice I didn’t say “You made me feel terrible” or “That makes me feel terrible”, I just said “I feel terrible.”)

It may seem like a little thing, and yet my work is based on the idea that these little things add up to big things, and then pretty soon your life has changed for the better and you’ve already lived through all those big changes that right now seem so terrifying.

Learn how to go a few rounds with him, responding in the moment — even if it gets to you screaming “Now I’m so angry I feel like hitting you! I don’t want to be here anymore!” and leaving the space.

If you have to do this a lot, you may want to look at why you’ve chosen to stick around with this man at all — which brings us right back to the question of why we hide the stuff in the first place.

Is it because we’re afraid to look at what’s really going on in the relationship, what’s really going on in our hearts?

I know it seems too simplistic to just share your feeling state.

We want to explain, to help him understand.

Actually, we just want to slap him around.

We want to punish him.

And that gets us, and the relationship, nowhere.

So where does all this sharing of feelings get us?

Every single woman I’ve taught to do this (including myself) has told me that it shifts the conversation.

It shifts the entire relationship.

Where there was once tension and a feeling of detachment, there’s now a feeling of play and connection.

Sharing our feeling state is an outrageous act of bravery.

Any man in the room can see that.

And any man can feel the utter authenticity and vulnerability of it.

Any man can feel how much you must trust and respect him to be able to open up like that, without attacking him.

Without so much as mentioning his name.

And any woman who does this, even a little, experiences a freeing up inside.

All of a sudden all the pretense goes away, and the fear of dropping the pretense goes away.

All of a sudden the need to defend, the need to be guarded goes away, and the fear of dropping our guard goes away.

There’s suddenly nothing between you and your man.

He can feel it.

You can feel it.

Where it goes from there is out of your hands.

And that, once you get used to it, is liberating.

It opens the door and parts the curtain and gives you the chance to really let love walk in.

And then it does.

Let me show you all the ways in which you can be happy and thrive in your relationship.

My FREE NEWSLETTER is packed with tools and advice to help you connect to your man, inspire his love and devotion, and finally have the relationship you want…starting today!

Simply fill in your name and email at the link below and start learning the tools that will make a man commit to you for life.

Your information is kept confidential and there is no obligation… just valuable, free advice:

Click Here For Your Free Newsletter And eBook Download

Your Friend,

Rori Raye