ABUNDANCE

It’s hard to fathom financial abundance today.  But it’s a great reminder to be grateful for the abundance in our lives that really matters: family, friends, chocolate, a fine merlot and a little dog named Chi Chi.

SILENCE

Interesting how we feel the need to shout out to the world the minutiae of our lives yet, we are silent on the really important issues like depression, anxiety, isolation, and other achingly awful things that people live with everyday.  

Certainly if there is sensationalism to be made of these things then platitudes are broadcast far and wide, sandwiched between commercials for cheeseburgers and wrinkle cream.  

On any meaningful discussion, however, we are mute. 

I think of Clara Hughes who like Sisyphus compelled to roll a rock up a hill, seems to be single-handedly trying to talk about mental health, but can’t get any traction.  It’s like nobody cares.  SILENCE.

GREATEST GOOD

This, essentially, is what the flight imperative is about:

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own." ~ Benjamin Disraeli

BAKED IN

There are so many of us that feel unlovable. The feeling that if we didn’t have the parents we needed growing up,  haven’t attracted the right person, or the right circumstances into our lives, then it’s because we’re unlovable, unworthy.  The reality though is that our lovableness, our worthiness was baked into us at birth.  

While we may not feel our un-lovableness every single day, the symptoms of that deep buried hurt manifests in our destructive behaviours, in the decisions we make that don’t serve us, in the abusive company we keep that doesn’t miss an opportunity to confirm our dysfunctional view of how unlovable we truly are.  

The reality is that we wear our un-lovableness on our sleeves.  The footprints are scattered throughout our lives.  Not until we can disabuse ourselves of this lie we carry inside can we affect the change we want outside.

Martha Beck once again wraps it up nicely:

“You are lovable. Can you show me any baby in any nursery who isn't priceless? No. There's no such thing as a worthless newborn. And the essential value that was born into brand-new-baby you can never be extinguished. This means that even if you think you're being absolutely honest, believing yourself to be anything other than astonishing, incomparable, and infinitely precious makes you a habitual liar.”

WEEDS

It is tragic that a disaster natural or otherwise has to occur in order for us to see our lives in relation to things that really matter.  We get lost in the weeds that are our daily lives and stuck in our pain and dysfunction.  

It is also tragic to remain stuck in analyzing our ‘stuckness’ which is where a lot of us are right now.  We’re in fact so mesmerized by our navel-gazing that we can’t see opportunities to get over ourselves when they come along.  

This is why it sometimes takes a jarring incident like a divorce or a death or some other cosmic intervention to lift our heads above the mud for us to recognize opportunities that ironically are most of the time, right in front of our noses.  

QUESTIONS

I think it’s no accident that we start asking hard questions about the quality and direction of our life around the age of 50.  If we’re lucky and have taken good care of ourselves we have a good 30 - 35 years left.  It’s a critical time.  Big shifts in our lives happen around this age especially for women.  Our parents become frail, ill or pass away, our major relationships either end or are transformed, our children leave the nest, our careers lose their meaning.  

Questions about who we are and how we fit into the environment we’ve created for ourselves pester us around this time because chances are, we aren’t living the lives we really want to be living.  

FEAR NOT

True willingness is to allow for your best future.

"Fear not the strangeness you feel.  The future has already entered you.  It is pulling you though life by your heart." ~ Martha Beck

WILLINGNESS

Willingness is not only about opening up our hearts to the possibilities of living our lives more fully, willingness is also about making up our minds to ACT.  

Having the vision is great, but without the willingness to act, the vision is and always will be just the beginning.  And a lot of us get stuck right here, at the beginning, knowing what needs to be done but lacking the willingness to do it.

EMPATHY

Empathy isn’t about thinking you know how someone feels.  Real empathy is about knowing how someone feels.  We know either because we’ve been through something similar, or because we have taken ourselves out of the equation and been genuinely still, present and listening for the other person.

TRIFECTA

Whatever affects us at the deepest level is what affects every human being on this planet.  And it might surprise you to know that the list of what affects us this deeply is very short: Fear, Anger, Shame, all other concerns we may experience have the underpinnings of this trifecta.   

I would actually go so far as to say that there is only a singular emotion that rules all dysfunction, FEAR, all other problems emanate from this.

SOLILOQUY

People have forgotten how to have a conversation.  

There’s two people involved in a conversation.  And those two people are not just sharing thoughts and ideas, they’re exchanging the human experience.  Most importantly they’re closing the gap between them. 

It’s not about two people, in the same room, at the same time, facing each other reciting their independent soliloquies. 

No. That’s twitter imitating life.

FEWER BETTER

I don’t buy that multitasking is efficacious.  We end up doing a whole bunch of things poorly.  Our memory suffers too because we’re so busy ‘getting stuff done’ that we’re not actually paying attention so we don’t remember details, specifics, things that could actually be important.

Pride of workmanship and accomplishment should still mean something as should quality over quantity.  

STRONG WOMEN

They're a little bit perfectionist, a little bit martyr.

While strong and independent women are positive role models in our culture, chances are these characteristics were born from trying to cope with feeling vulnerable.  Scratch the surface of any strong woman and you’ll find someone who’s had to overcome some serious vulnerability.  She became strong to survive.

The problem is that this coping strategy, at some point, doesn’t work anymore because in an effort to appear strong we forget how to say NO, how to set boundaries.  Rather, we become martyrs who feel compelled to take on every and all responsibility.

Truly strong women are vulnerable.  They are vulnerable in the way a tree survives a  storm.  We bend, we lean, we surrender control for our own good, but we don’t break.

FANCYPANTS

Oh yes, I’m sure there are those out there who think the sun shines beams out of your behind, but how about your inner circle? You know the people you can take for granted because they’ll always be there.  The ones who are so familiar they get on your last nerve.  Are they just as impressed?

Sometimes there’s a great distance between our public and private selves.  It’s so much easier to be nice to strangers, they have no frame of reference to call us on our crap.  But who do you think is more valuable to our growth?  Those closest to us or strangers?

Strangers can be great members of a mutual admiration society where everyone blows smoke, strokes egos, stays on the surface and feels warm and fuzzy.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  We cannot grow into authentic, compassionate human beings until we align our public and private selves to be one and the same.  Until we treat those in our inner circle with the care and respect we so often reserve for strangers.

SHOW UP

If you do nothing else today, just show up --- for someone else.  Be present, 100% of you.  Never mind  the 'important' thing you ought to be doing, all of you is needed for someone else today.

NEED/WANT

Need is elemental - it’s what your spirit is asking for

Want is superficial - it’s what your entitled attitude is asking for

PERFECTION

I love this:

“Writer’s block is another way of saying that the author prefers the ideal work still locked in the imagination than what they see coming from their keyboard.”*

I submit that it doesn’t just apply to writers.  If at any time we hold back from doing something, achieving a goal or following a dream,  it’s because we’re harboring an ideal of this thing we’d like to do, in our imagination, that is whole, complete AND perfect.  

This idea in our heads psyches us out because our first tentative steps will look absolutely nothing like what’s in our heads.  We recoil at our feeble, ugly, misshapen attempt.  Some of us will give it some time and try again, and again, until lo-and-behold, it starts to take form and see some semblance of that perfect thing.  

Most of us will not go back and try again.  Most of us will bask in the glow of that perfect thing that exists only in our minds and ignore the sense of profound regret that descends on our hearts.  Perfection is in the eye of the beholder and the mind’s eye cannot be trusted.  

True perfection comes from the doing, from something we have achieved and can look at and see. Perfection comes from taking action, again and again and again.
*How to overcome procrastination, and perfectionsm

Published on April 8, 2013 by Nigel Barber, Ph.D. in The Human Beast

AWESTRUCK

It’s unfortunate that our society has reduced it to a banality but to be truly awestruck is to be struck by wonder.  Observed in silence and stillness in reverence and respect, in wonder and in dread.   

All things that simply ARE like flowers and trees, rocks and oceans, dogs and horses and children, have the capacity to strike awe into our hearts.  It elevates our humanity to be awestruck.  It connects us to the elemental spirit that makes us whole.

EXPRESSION

The negative feelings in our bodies generate negative energy.  If this negative energy has nowhere to go it will manifest as illness in our bodies.  Better to build this negative energy an escape hatch.   

Our creative expression, whatever it may be, can serve as a means through which to dissipate some of this negative energy.  

Creative doesn’t need to mean ‘art’.  Creative can mean running, or cycling, dancing, playing the yukulele, even basket weaving.  So long as it serves as a channel for negative energy to travel through.  So long as it’s a way for bad energy to leave your body.

Next time you're running or cycling, rather than zoning out, zone in instead.  Try zoning into the negative energy, wether it’s anger, fear or shame, whatever way this negative energy manifests in your body, zone in.  As you zone in, increase the intensity of whatever you may be doing for a couple of seconds and then back off.  Do this until you feel the bad energy leaving your body.  It’s a productive way to use your creative mode of expression. 

BEST

We do our best until it is brought to our attention that it is no longer our best.  We don’t do our best in a vacuum.  Whether the realization comes from our own growth, or whether the realization comes from something or someone external to us, our best is an evolving thing.  

Here’s the critical thing.  If we’ve always done the same thing, refused to grow, refused to listen, refused to see when ‘our best’ was clearly NOT, then we abdicate the right to state that we’ve done our best.

PERFECT

Not so perfect today does not diminish yesterday’s perfection and tomorrow’s potential for perfection. 

Not every day is a perfect day.  But we can diminish our view of a less than perfect day by focusing on the things that are perfect.  Little things.  Like a smile from a perfect stranger.  Sometimes we have to focus on the elemental, the very basic stuff to keep things in perspective, to keep our hope alive for the bigger perfection to come.

HEALING

Our body is a great miracle in healing.  We just need to listen to what it wants.  It’s not complicated, high quality nourishing food, rest and play.  Lots and lots of play.

It’s surprising how frequently we fall short of providing these very basic things.  

Especially play.  Those of us who were raised to be responsible, worried or anxious from a very early age, find play suspect, uncomfortable, hard.  Little wonder that our worried and anxious bodies suffer.

Even a little play heals a long way.

ALL

All is well

All will be well

All manner of things will be well

Allow for spirit to give you the metaphor for what you want - feel the whale moving toward you.

Feel it in your body, don't think it.

How is this problem like  a TREE, a DOG, a CAR ??? juxtaposing things to come up with a solution from a different place that created the problem.
~ Martha Beck

LAUGH

A 4-year old laughs at least 300 times a day.  A 40-year old, only four.*

Is it that 4-year olds just know better jokes? 

As we get older we actually need to look for stuff that makes us laugh and that should be our homework every day. Plan that something funny happens (by accident on purpose) to cross our path every day.  I think the world would be a much better place if we all cultivated funny.

*http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-possibility-paradigm/201106/are-you-meeting-your-laugh-quota-why-you-should-laugh-5-year-ol

YOUTH

Why is health associated with youth?  Have you seen what shape our youth is in?

We need to rethink that whole chasing youth paradigm and health is just the beginning.  The bigger problem is that if we’re busy chasing youth, we’re not busy appreciating our own present moment, at whatever age it may be.  We’re not learning the lesson that ‘our’ particular time is teaching us.  See I think that’s where wisdom comes in, being present in our particular time.  What I know for sure is that wisdom is NEVER attained by chasing youth.

CHEAP

Yup, we know this.

Talk.  It’s cheap.  

True integrity shows itself in the doing not the talking.  

It’s healthy to see potential in ourselves and others but at some point that potential better materialize into something, into some sort of action, otherwise, it’s nothing but cheap talk.  There's no integrity in cheap talk.

LUXURY

We don’t consider every day to be a luxury.  Gratitude reminds us that while the sun rising and setting is a given, our receiving another day is not.  The opportunity to celebrate our life is truly a luxury.