Alex Mill

11/10/2025

20-Minute Guidance Appointments (Nov. 13)

This Thursday, I’m opening a few complimentary 20-minute Zoom sessions for anyone who could use some private support — whether you’re seeking clarity around a challenge or a gentle reminder of your inner stillness.

You can learn more and reserve a spot by reading a bit further off this post 😉

04/10/2025

🧘🧘‍♀️🧘‍♂️

02/11/2025

In the world of conditioned mind, up is down, and black is white.

What the voices in our heads talk us into doing is typically counter to what would be in our best interest.

That’s why learning to discern the voices from the “still small voice” of intuition is so important.

This understanding also applies in circumstances outside of ourselves—in relationships with others.

I was once coaching a client who relayed the following story.

She told me about her husband and how he had become completely withdrawn and uninterested in her.

After a series of questions, what surfaced was she had resorted to confrontation to get the love she wanted from him.

This included accusing, nagging, blaming, shaming, and even threatening him.

In the coaching, I gently revealed why this approach would never help her get the love she was looking for from him.

I drew out my “cat analogy” to illustrate this point.

I asked her to imagine a cat hiding under a chair.

“Now,” I said to her, “imagine you’re yelling at the cat. You hope this will encourage it to come out from under the chair and cuddle with you. All your anger isn’t working, so you get louder. Now, the cat is even more resistant to coming out, so you throw something at the chair. Bam! Sure, the cat may come out now, but it will not be in a cuddling mood!”

She laughed and understood: Nobody warms up to a crazy person.

In fact, this tactic provokes from him more of the same behavior that originally upset her.

Her husband became more withdrawn and less interested in being with her the more she fought.

To help her stay conscious of this process, she eventually called it “porcupining.”

She added “not to porcupine her husband” to her agenda because, really, who wants to cuddle with a porcupine?

She got it.

So what to do instead?

In my experience, cats (and partners) enjoy a loving, welcoming, hospitable, and cuddle-able environment.

If you create this space, they’ll suddenly feel safe.

Because there’s nothing more inviting than someone at ease with themselves and not desperately trying to get something from you.

When you practice love, generosity, kindness, self-fulfillment, confidence, and completeness, others become attracted to you.

They crawl out from under their chair and curl up into your lap.

Now, there’s no guarantee that this approach will produce the results you’re looking for.

Those are merely by-products of how you are being.

Often, clients will discover that not needing love to come from the outside will become fulfillment enough.

They’ll focus instead on their projects, goals, and dreams.

They’ll focus on their friends, children, and communities.

It’s too distracting to bother dragging someone else along for the ride.

And do you know what?

At that point, it really doesn’t matter.

Their partners will either join in with their energy because that’s where the party is happening, or they’ll find their own way.

Either is fine.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

02/10/2025

So what’s it going to be?

Now or never?
Or lifetimes?

Will you practice like your hair’s on fire?
Or will you be casual about it?

One of my mentors, Steve Chandler, used a perfect distinction to teach the coaches in his school.

He said, “I can be serious in my profession, but I don’t have to take myself seriously.”

In this simple statement, he made it obvious that seriousness has a time and a place.

In one instance, being serious is necessary to produce success; in another, it is detrimental.

The same is true with spiritual practice.

I take my practice extremely seriously.

Staying conscious is a non-negotiable way of being and living life.

It’s not something stapled to my to-do list.

I am not practicing for the sake of attaining results.

In fact, seeking an enlightened ego keeps me blind to the simple task of being present.

Ironically, the moment I’m a "somebody" is the moment I’m lost.

So, our focus in practice?

Be going as fast as you can when you fall on your face!

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

02/07/2025

You can find wisdom in anything; because when something is said out of context, you can make a case for it being true.

But context is everything.

Without having all the information, you can’t make a centered decision.

My teacher used to express her frustration with the monks when one of us would show up to receive guidance from her.

We’d ask her how to proceed on a particular issue and leave out some important details.

The monk would explain everything, she’d make a decision, and then the monk would say, “Oops. So sorry. No, I’m sorry...that would not be a good course of action because I forgot to tell you about this detail...”

With any luck, that would solve it.

But I’ve overheard several conversations in which the poor monk continued to say, “Oops!” only to have my teacher grit her teeth and wonder if the whole story would ever get out.

I can see the same phenomenon occur on the other end—with the monks.

Guidance would get pulled out of context, and suddenly we would start saying, “But the guidance I received was always to use two pans in the oven.”

Now, the monks have inadvertently created a rule out of a contextual incident that may or may not apply to the current situation.

And we’d continue to use it.

It could be months down the line when my teacher shows up in the kitchen and asks me, the Cook, “Why on earth are you using two pans in the oven?”

I’d shrug my shoulders and explain to her that the guidance I received was that this is how we’re doing it.

By the look on her face, I could tell this was the wrong answer (and another out-of-context guidance decision made into a rule that led to a breakdown).

Assumption, lack of clarity, and failure to understand the context are what create sabotage in communication.

Often, a simple understanding of the principle behind the guidance could fix everything.

For example, two pans in the oven when you’re attempting to achieve x.

Now, with the reason and the underlying principle from which the decision was made, everyone can move forward confidently.

We now know how the guidance was arrived at and when it is applicable.

This is the practice and the aim we’re striving for.

It’s what happens when we speak from Center and understand that context is important as we avoid assumptions, leading to breakdowns.

Conscious, compassionate communication makes for clarity.

A wonderful principle to practice.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

02/06/2025

Imagine you set up an email auto-reply to forward incoming emails to another email address.

Then, imagine you set that second email address up with an auto-reply forwarding emails back to the first address.

What happens?

You create an endless loop of emails bouncing back and forth to each other.

That’s what’s happening inside the mind when it’s lost in discursive thought.

Judgment arises.

Then, judgment arises to judge the judgment.

Then, feeling bad arises for the judgment of the judgment.

Every thought compounds the previous one needlessly with no benefit whatsoever.

“You weren’t paying attention. That’s why this happened.”
“Not paying attention is bad.”
“You should pay more attention.”
“What’s wrong with you for not paying more attention?”
Smack!...

Right into a pole.

You were listening to the voices banter about not paying attention when you should have been...
..PAYING ATTENTION.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

02/05/2025

I had a big laundry list of things wrong with me.

This list sparked my obsession with becoming "a personal development project."

I would finally turn myself into the ideal human I knew I could be.

There’s a big trend in that right now.

Big headlines that read, “Become the person you have the potential to be.”

It’s really quite glamorous.

Full of productivity and bio hacks, positive mindsets, and activities.

After spending my time visioning, I knew exactly what the person I could be looked like.

I knew how he would talk, the kinds of things he’d accomplish, the thoughts he’d have in his head, the feelings he’d have in his body, the relationships he’d have in his life, and the way he’d see the world.

Oh, and most importantly, how others would see him.

I had a sobering moment looking at who I was, and this sickening dread fell over me.

I got angry at the miserable person I really was who was holding me back from becoming perfect.

All these flaws!

It just seemed insurmountable and unfair.

And then, in a moment of intuitive grace, while I was writing something in my journal and caught my reflection in the mirror, I finally understood what the practice had been teaching me.

My eyes opened to the parts of me I despised.

I realized that they were despised by the voices of self-hate—and that self-hate was not me.

These small, innocent parts of me who have been downtrodden since I was a kid opened my heart to compassion.

I saw how they were bullied and on the receiving end of constant abuse—kicked while they were down, made fun of, discouraged, and shamed.

With my heart wide open, I remarked how these “poor, pathetic souls” were really my saviors.

The sinners I was taught to hate were actually saints, and they were teaching me how to love unconditionally.

The irony was, I owed them my life.

They were my doorway to saving myself disguised as damnation.

From that moment forward, I knew that my salvation lay in extending compassion to the targets of greed, hate, and delusion.

Wherever compassion was missing, it was my job to bring it.

Whatever was wrong was suddenly made right through my own love.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

02/04/2025

One of the most helpful awareness practice tools that can aid us in relationships is projection.

Projection is nothing more complicated than “what you see is who you are.”

When you begin to pay close attention and do some deep spiritual work, you’ll realize how much of an assumption it is to believe that there’s an objective reality “out there” in which something is “true.”

Take a room full of people, and you’ll see that they all have their own ideas about what “truth” is.

This truth ranges from what is good taste, what styles are favorable, what’s moral, what’s important in life, etc.

You can narrow that down to just two people, and you’ll begin to see the same phenomenon.

Maybe it’s your life partner or a family member.

You’re not the same, right?

It’s really quite fascinating (or startling!) to get it that you don’t objectively see life.

For the sake of spiritual practice, if you start to look inward, you’ll realize that all it takes is you to begin the contradictions.

One moment, you’re identified with a happy-go-lucky spirit, and the next, you’re identified with a strict, by-the-books spirit.

You can feel close and connected to people in one moment and want to hit them in a rage in the next.

In this way, “what you see is who you are” can help you determine who you’re identified with inside of you—which aspect of your personality is up at any given moment.

Complicate all of this further by throwing in some voices that interject opinions, judgments, and self-hate into the mix, and you’ll see that “you” are in flux as much as (if not more than) life is.

Nothing is stapled down or “real,” and who you think you are is a complete and utter fiction made up by the narrative that goes on in the background of your consciousness.

In fact, when people get present to how much of an influence the voices have over their lives, they’re typically left stunned and speechless.

You see, the voices translate the world we experience into the meaning we carry around with us.

They are our full-time simultaneous interpreters.

The idea of the voices as simultaneous interpreters became the inspiration for a cartoon I drew while I was at the monastery, (included below).

This cartoon offers a graphic representation of how life is filtered by our projections, beliefs, assumptions, and voices.

If you've ever been in situations where you've repeatedly drawn the same conclusions that seem real, chances are good you're buying into a story that The Simultaneous Interpreter is telling you.

This insight is a golden opportunity to take a step back and question the authority in your head.

Understand that everything you experience is a projection coming from you, and the only thing you ever get to experience is yourself.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

p.s. To see the cartoon that accompanies this post, please visit:

  “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain   O ne of the most helpful awareness practice tools that can aid us in relationships is projection. Projection is nothing more complicated than, “what you see is...

02/03/2025

One of the most helpful awareness practice tools that can aid us in relationships is projection.

Projection is nothing more complicated than “what you see is who you are.”

When you begin to pay close attention and do some deep spiritual work, you’ll realize how much of an assumption it is to believe that there’s an objective reality “out there” in which something is “true.”

Take a room full of people, and you’ll see that they all have their own ideas about what “truth” is.

This truth ranges from what is good taste, what styles are favorable, what’s moral, what’s important in life, etc.

You can narrow that down to just two people, and you’ll begin to see the same phenomenon.

Maybe it’s your life partner or a family member.

You’re not the same, right?

It’s really quite fascinating (or startling!) to get it that you don’t objectively see life.

For the sake of spiritual practice, if you start to look inward, you’ll realize that all it takes is you to begin the contradictions.

One moment, you’re identified with a happy-go-lucky spirit, and the next, you’re identified with a strict, by-the-books spirit.

You can feel close and connected to people in one moment and want to hit them in a rage in the next.

In this way, “what you see is who you are” can help you determine who you’re identified with inside of you—which aspect of your personality is up at any given moment.

Complicate all of this further by throwing in some voices that interject opinions, judgments, and self-hate into the mix, and you’ll see that “you” are in flux as much as (if not more than) life is.

Nothing is stapled down or “real,” and who you think you are is a complete and utter fiction made up by the narrative that goes on in the background of your consciousness.

In fact, when people get present to how much of an influence the voices have over their lives, they’re typically left stunned and speechless.

You see, the voices translate the world we experience into the meaning we carry around with us.

They are our full-time simultaneous interpreters.

The idea of the voices as simultaneous interpreters became the inspiration for a cartoon I drew while I was at the monastery, (included below).

This cartoon offers a graphic representation of how life is filtered by our projections, beliefs, assumptions, and voices.

If you've ever been in situations where you've repeatedly drawn the same conclusions that seem real, chances are good you're buying into a story that The Simultaneous Interpreter is telling you.

This insight is a golden opportunity to take a step back and question the authority in your head.

Understand that everything you experience is a projection coming from you, and the only thing you ever get to experience is yourself.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

p.s. To see the cartoon that accompanies this post, please visit:

  “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain   O ne of the most helpful awareness practice tools that can aid us in relationships is projection. Projection is nothing more complicated than, “what you see is...

02/02/2025

You are not at war with the mind.

The mind is not something to be “shut off.”

The thing that is at war with the mind is your problem.

You identify with this illusion because you can.

It carries you along for the ride like a hijacked passenger.

You’re not learning how the voices in your head work so you can do something about them.

You’re not fighting to get rid of them.

You’re not in a battle to convert them into positive ones.

You’re also not turning away from them and burying your head in the sand.

What you are learning is this: Your relationship with the voices is what keeps them real.

You’re not leaving goals, hard work, self-sacrifice, busyness, and hustle in exchange for peace, bliss, ease, relaxation, and fun.

Those two sides of a duality bind you to the world of the conditional.

The voices would LOVE to have you swing back and forth from wrong to right and good to bad, so you believe your well-being depends on circumstances.

As long as you assume one is preferable—you’re lost.

So you stay at war.

You are fooled by the hard work to change or the passive resignation of quietism.

Both miss the mark.

Acceptance is an end to all of that.

Acceptance is awareness.

It is not analysis.

Awareness sits and observes all that arises REGARDLESS of what arises.

It really doesn’t matter what you see.

It’s THAT you see.

In seeing, acceptance is.

And with acceptance...

Freedom.

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

01/27/2025

Other people are a golden opportunity to see ourselves more clearly.

We see others as different and, therefore, try to change them.

We want them to mirror our best selves and stop mirroring what we cannot stand or repress about ourselves.

“Mirror” is the keyword.

We have a problem with others because the filter in our heads constantly evaluates them based on our beliefs and assumptions.

We don’t realize that we’re projecting our own voices, standards, meanings, and evaluations onto them.

Here’s a little exercise to see how projection works:

Find someone you admire.
Now, come up with three adjectives to describe this person.
Next, find someone you dislike.
Now, come up with three adjectives to describe that person.

Now, look over your adjectives.

What did you come up with?

Spend some time with them and inquire deeply.

If you do, you will learn a great deal about yourself because every one of those adjectives is you.

If you can see that, the spiritual game now becomes not how others differ from you but how they are exactly like you.

Some people will complain, “But I’m not like that. I would never allow myself to be like that.”

That’s a very big clue, right?

Somehow, you’re being held back from being a certain way because the voices would punish you if you ever fell out of character with how you ought to be.

The truth is, you sometimes sneak that way of being in permissible situations.

Or in ways the voices justify as being okay.

I once coached a woman who worked at a company for many years and was never promoted.

She was triggered because another newer employee suddenly asked for a promotion and received it.

The adjectives she used to describe the promoted employee were “pushy, arrogant, and domineering.”

When we explored these, she could see that she would never do what this woman did because of the inner judgment she’d get if she tried.

The voices would call her pushy, arrogant, domineering, and worse!

I then asked her if she thought that employee would call herself those adjectives.

She smiled.

Obviously, she wouldn’t.

So I asked her if she wouldn’t use those adjectives, which ones would she use to describe herself?

So she started to inquire. Instead of “pushy,” she saw that this woman was unafraid of asking for what she wanted.

So perhaps “assertive.”

Good! How about arrogance?

Again, the word “confident” seemed more accurate.

“Domineering?”

She laughed and said, “Um...good leader.”

More laughter.

Enlightenment!

Then, we did the only thing worthwhile at this point.

We committed to work on helping her become assertive, confident, and a good leader.

In a magic shift, her projections shaped the coaching work we would do together.

We helped her build her skills to get more of what she wanted and end the pattern of being held back.

She saw how the voices put a negative spin on being powerful, which would just not do if she were going to succeed.

There’s a lot of talk about how you should use “negative” things that happen to you as opportunities for growth, but there’s not much mention of how to do that.

Projection is a wonderful tool to keep in your back pocket as a way to learn more about yourself.

Using it non-judgmentally can facilitate real change for you from the inside out.

I invite you to do the exercise for yourself!

In lovingkindness,
Alex Mill | Zen Life Coach

01/20/2025